Yeah, but your buddy was actually trusted to handle the nukes. I doubt this kid was trusted to handle classified docs. Someone above him was very careless in properly securing them, I'm sure.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
BitJam
Active Member
re: young leaker
I worked for a while at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Some of my work involved the exact locations of secret US underwater listening stations. I didn't have a security clearance so my group hired a young Navy officer to run my programs using the secret data on a supercomputer that was inside of a bank vault.
Then strange things started to happen. A number of printers went missing from the lab. At a nearby mall some rare stamps went missing from a stamp and coin shop. The police finally figured out it was the Navy officer with a security clearance who stole the printers and the stamps. They caught him because he tried to sell the printers to the guy he stole the stamps from.
It was not the Navy's finest hour but I don't think it caused embarrassment further up the chain of command. We are imperfect beings working within imperfect systems in an imperfect world. Stuff happens. IMO things like this are sad more than they are embarrassing.
I worked for a while at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Some of my work involved the exact locations of secret US underwater listening stations. I didn't have a security clearance so my group hired a young Navy officer to run my programs using the secret data on a supercomputer that was inside of a bank vault.
Then strange things started to happen. A number of printers went missing from the lab. At a nearby mall some rare stamps went missing from a stamp and coin shop. The police finally figured out it was the Navy officer with a security clearance who stole the printers and the stamps. They caught him because he tried to sell the printers to the guy he stole the stamps from.
It was not the Navy's finest hour but I don't think it caused embarrassment further up the chain of command. We are imperfect beings working within imperfect systems in an imperfect world. Stuff happens. IMO things like this are sad more than they are embarrassing.
Yeesh, that's sad, embarrassing, and a little scary. I think more heads will roll from this incident. Those files should be kept under lock and key, not just sitting around on some senior officer's desk where any passerby can snatch them.
What an idiot.
Those must have been SOSUS sensors. I know two people who worked there in the 60s. They don't remember each other, but they must have crossed paths. One was an officer and the other enlisted.
SOSUS - Wikipedia
BitJam
Active Member
Yes. SOSUS sensors.
He was not an idiot. I think it was a psychological disorder because it seemed like a part of him wanted to be caught. I saw him once afterward and he was disturbingly calm. It was ironic that the US government didn't trust me but did trust this fellow. Overall I see the situation as tragic. He had a wife and kid. Goodness knows what happened to them.
petit_bateau
Active Member
Hungarian smoke signals
Hungary quits Russian-controlled investment bank in Orbán U-turn
www.reuters.com
and, of course coincidence
www.theguardian.com
Hungary quits Russian-controlled investment bank in Orbán U-turn
Hungary to quit Russian International Investment Bank after U.S. sanctions
Hungary's government has decided to withdraw its representatives from the Russia-controlled International Investment Bank (IIB) and will quit it, the Economic Development Ministry said on Thursday.
www.reuters.com
and, of course coincidence
Viktor Orbán’s political allies in Hungary in sights of US sanctions
Congress group drafts legislation targeting officials and government supporters, mainly affiliated to Fidesz party
www.theguardian.com
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Multiple articles say it's not unusual at all for a 21 year old to have high clearance in the military. From other discussion comments of videos, plenty of former or current military personnel say in general there are a lot of young people in the military trusted with important roles. Keep in mind you can enlist starting at 17 years old. He was in Intelligence Support Squadron and works on cyber transport systems as a network manager. The documents were slides that were used for briefing and it's common for young people to be tasked to prepare them (which this one may have been). It's highly doubtful this was left on a desk and snatched. The volume and continued access suggests he had continuous access and it was not just a chance access. None of the articles are suggesting he did not have clearance for the documents, but rather that he did a criminal act by leaking them.
A 21-year-old with top secret access? It’s not as rare as you think
The Strange Saga of Jack Teixeira Reveals New Security Challenges
Also, given he was a network manager, he could have had electronic access as part of his job. Let's not forget other big leaks had people that either worked in IT for the military (like Edward Snowden who worked in network security) or had IT experience or a IT related position (Chelsea Manning had software development experience and participated in the hacker community even though her actual job title in the military was intelligence analyst).
Edward Snowden - Wikipedia
Chelsea Manning - Wikipedia
Maybe he did have top secret clearance. But you'd think someone with that clearance would be well aware of both the consequences and likelihood of getting caught for that criminal act. I guess he could have been living in his own fantasy land.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Well, as mentioned, other leaks were similar where the motivation is an internet argument. The temptation can get pretty extreme (perhaps even higher than if he was offered some huge monetary or material reward for it) when this happens:
BitJam
Active Member
This is certainly not embarrassing for the Commander in Chief. I don't think it's even an embarrassment for the intelligence community. This leak required a chain of at least three different people acting stupidly:Absolutely embarrassing for Biden and the “intelligence” community that a 21-year old National Guard airman is probably the person behind the leaks:
Ukraine Leaks: Air National Guardsman Arrested as F.B.I. Searches His Home
Federal officials are investigating leaks of classified U.S. intelligence revealing government secrets about the Ukraine war. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the airman’s arrest in connection with the unauthorized removal and transmission of classified information.www.nytimes.com
- Jack Teixeira, the 21 year-old member of the Air National Guard who leaked to a small circle of friends
- Lucca, a 17 year-old member of that group who leaked the documents further as part of an internet argument
- The unknown or unnamed (presumably Russian affiliated) people who spread the documents to Russia social media where they were eventually found
Civilization itself is founded on trust. It's not unusual to trust young people with confidential information like this. What is unusual is for these young people to have no respect for the law or for their government and to have little fear of violating the trust our government gave them.
If you really want to cast blame in high places then I would go after the ones normalizing authoritarianism, fascism, Nazism, and racism while denigrating democracy and the rule of law. That's exactly how you get young people to do stupid stuff like this that may well ruin their lives.
Leaders do more than give orders and make policy. They set an example that others follow, whether for good or ill. This has been known for ages and is why we have the proverb:
A fish rots from the head down.
Or as Hunter S. Thompson said:We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
Seriously? You want to blame a 17 year-old gamer for this debacle? Moreover, the third party, what obligation do they have to keep this material secret, unless they are US citizens or residents themselves?
The blame for this sits squarely with the US government, who are giving access to highly secret information to all and sundry. It's really of secondary importance which government agency will carry most of the blame after they are done with the finger-pointing.
Don’t forget that Russia needs more foodstuffs and developed industrial capability. Ukraine has both. The invasion destruction, monumental although it is, has not altered. Those realities. For context just look at Ukraine proportion on both categories during the Soviet era. Even for the fossil fuels Russia’s highest yield gas sales were through the Soyuz pipeline, despite Nordstream 1.
Were Russia subject to cost accounting the impact of war dislocation would have been far larger. As it is they generate marginal revenue while steadily diminishing future capabilities due to lack of investment and deferred maintenance.
As for the Ruble many observers are not realizing that the Ruble is not a freely convertible currency as it was for a few years. Most oil and gas exports are subject to negotiated rates so FX levels rise. I am specifically aware of only one deal, on terms highly advantageous to the importing country. In fact, despite appearances of strong results, they are happening in large part with barter, denominated monetarily to produce attractive appearances. Such practices have always been common but now are becoming dominant for Russia. Obviously European cash buyers are still paying well so offset some of Russia’s trade problems.
Ms. Nabiullina has continued as the brains behind all this. She allegedly tried to resign in early 2015 but not since then. She is formidable and probably knows all the Central Bank and trade finance tricks as well as any person alive. She is also responsible for keeping the whole banking system operating smoothly despite sanctions and disarray.
So, although I think Russian history brought us here, modern banking prowess is maintaining remarkable stability, not least by permitting remote technical support from expatriated employees.
As we concentrate on military issues here, as we should in my opinion, we might also occasionally reflect in the unexpected resilience of the Russian global economy. The BRICS are definitely active and helping each other, more publicly as time passes.
The gun barrel problem. It affects both sides, but Russia is worse off
Doggydogworld
Active Member
Most everyone has you on ignore, but I like to learn from people with opposing views. In your case, however, I cannot figure out why you continue to post links to this discredited prostitute. For those not keeping up, this is the clown who claimed Russia was on the verge of winning the war at the very moment Ukraine was liberating 1000+ square miles on the Kkarkiv front. Even the propaganda artists on Russian TV were calling it a massive debacle. But this war's Baghdad Bob remains unfazed:
Can't you find even one Putin apologist who hasn't completely humiliated himself for a few easy bucks?
That would be true were the Ruble to be freely exchanged. It is not. I made another post on that today. In short the notion that there is an FX market on the Ruble is not really true, since the only buyers are foreign trade partners buying things from Russia with contractual FX rates.
This fictional crisis has been disproven many times. It assumes a free market.
Anybody who's actually operated in FX markets understands non-convertible currencies such as the Ruble. If there are almost no buyers other than contractual ones there is no market. FWIW, since early 2022 Russian ATM's no longer dispense foreign currency as they once did. Foreigners can buy Rubles but cannot sell them. That, by definition, shows there is NO market.
Once again, Russia buys what it needs or wants mostly with barter, but also has hard currency coming through the export of fossil fuel products, those by contractural rates, nit market ones.
Just for context much global trade with many countries is negotiated with specific assigned values, not open market rates. That is true especially for major items such as aircraft and military equipment. Project finance for infrastructure quite normally is conducted with specified terms. For countries with easily convertible currencies that is often done with hedging, for others it is done by balancing assets and liabilities rather than direct hedging.
Tesla and Apple are two that tend to use asset and liability management rather than technical hedging, so both have large quarterly fluctuations that reflect the imbalances. Why? Because over years it is very, very expensive to do true hedging.
So Russia, possessed of one of the world's most talented Central Bank Presidents (several of us have repeatedly mentioned her) is using those traditional barter techniques. The most common generic instruments are called 'factoring' and 'forfait' finance but there are many different solutions. For many years (i.e. more than 200 of them) Germanic, Italian and Syrian groups dominated this business. Some of the ones that originated then are still around and some are now giants ( Names like Safra, UBS, NCB, Deutsche and others did this long, long ago). Russia has always loomed large in those markets because they've always needed more imports than they had in foreign currency.
I apologize if this is long winded and seems irrelevant. The point is simply that Russia can and does get the foreign goods it wants, usually legally. When the Aeroflot A330's begin to get maintenance in Iran is when the system is under threat, but even that is less than meets th eye because Dubai sources always supply what Iran needs. (Dubai, before oil, was the major entrepôt for Iran and India, although Kuwait rivaled them for parts of Iran. Russia, as we should know, has been a major player in that trade during and after Imperial times.
(note: I'm old, I was once a banker in and for several of the mentioned countries doing trade finance.)
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
MJ Greene sides with the traitor
www.nbcnews.com
Why oh why is this nut job on a national security committee ?
Marjorie Taylor Greene defends National Guardsman suspected of leaking classified docs
The Georgia lawmaker's comments were at odds with those of fellow Republicans and drew backlash from Democrats.
www.nbcnews.com
Why oh why is this nut job on a national security committee ?
I put a laugh on this simply because this all assumes an open market. Russia actually chooses to show 'devaluation' to send public messages. There are almost no free market buyers. Therefore there is almost no market. Some very intelligent people, mostly well informed really do not understand the reality.The title of the video said the ruble was down 34% in 4 months. Jake also references his previous video from last summer: why is the Russian ruble so strong right now? where he explains why the Russian economy is screwed despite the propped up ruble.
Sure, the time scale you use to look at a price can change the picture immensely (see: Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable). Jake zoomed out and looked over the past 19 years which shows the ruble was relatively stable until 2014 when sanctions in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea kicked in and the ruble lost about half its value. Then there was a huge drop right after the 2022 war started but, as explained in Jake's previous video, Putin bolstered the ruble short term. It has now fallen to its pre-war value.
Jake then explains why he thinks the ruble will continue to fall. Russia propped up their currency by, among other things, buying back rubles with foreign reserves. Their limited supply of foreign cash is running out so the devaluation due to the new sanctions is starting to kick in. Even if you don't view this rapid drop in value as a collapse, @madodel's observation seems accurate; the mirage of a stable ruble is collapsing.
Jake then references this article Russia’s Finance Ministry reports first quarter budget deficit of 2.4 trillion rubles which says they have already used up 82% of their allotted yearly deficit for 2023 in just the first quarter primarily due to gas and oil revenues being down 45% compared to the same period the last year. He then covers the large emigration out of Russia, noting that the people Russia needs most to keep their economy going are the ones who are fleeing.
Before this war started, Jake covered finance and investing. He may not be the world's top expert but he's not pulling his coverage of the ruble from out of his hat. IIRC there was a lot of angst (and joy) about the sanctions not working as evidenced by the strong ruble. Jake provides context that shows the sanctions are working and this is now reflected in a weakening of the ruble after Russia pulled out all the stops to prop it up.
They did have fairly easy access to Dubai maintenance, but that was eliminated duo to heavy politics, so now they've sent A330 to Iran where they've managed decently with traditional Gulf smuggling techniques but have very limited scale. Further those workarounds do serve but are always very limited scale especially for Airbus. The older Boeings have been easier due to used supplies, and A330 older supplies also are available. Russia, though, bought mostly newer ones so...smuggling does not really scale so well. Personally I expect the Chinese sourcing to compensate soon, an easy route for Iran, but Iranian mechanics are not plentiful.Sanctions do work, as anyone trying to catch a plane in Russia will be very aware
Aeroflot to cut half its fleet as sanctions bite
Western sanctions have had a major impact on Russia's airline industry. But what has the impact been? And can Russia recover?wavellroom.com
This is beginning to feel a lot like the Cold War in some respects.
Wow! That really is a big deal. Hungary traditionally has not been ready to alienate anybody with money, since Constantinople. Urban most be very, very worried. Did the earthquake disaster actually weaken him?Hungarian smoke signals
Hungary quits Russian-controlled investment bank in Orbán U-turn
Hungary to quit Russian International Investment Bank after U.S. sanctions
Hungary's government has decided to withdraw its representatives from the Russia-controlled International Investment Bank (IIB) and will quit it, the Economic Development Ministry said on Thursday.
and, of course coincidence
Viktor Orbán’s political allies in Hungary in sights of US sanctions
Congress group drafts legislation targeting officials and government supporters, mainly affiliated to Fidesz party
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