- Whether or not US intel agencies (or foreign proxies) will be leaking intelligence to Ukraine.
- Given what I’ve previously mentioned[1] as the unbelievably strong US intel penetration of Russian institutions, the likelihood that sources, and most especially HUMINT sources, will be disclosed to Russia. That would of course be catastrophic at multiple levels, and with enduring consequences.
Russian agent implies he's employed by the Russians and I don't think that is true. They do seem to have a lot of influence on him though. Grok gives him a 75-85% likelihood he is a compromised asset https://x.com/i/grok/share/WQepvCpIJl2EJ0F7tHNbLAhm6
Nitpicking over nomenclature is petty. Other applicable descriptions might be "asset", "tool", or "useful idiot".
One of the keys of tradecraft is to convince people to assist a specific contracted officer (that is, a direct employee of an intelligence service) without necessarily being part of the service, or even aware of doing its bidding.
On usage within the CIA, specifically between "agent" and "asset":
An intelligence asset is an individual who provides information and services to the CIA but is not officially paid or technically controlled by them. An agent, on the other hand, is someone who officially works for the CIA. They are paid by the CIA and are under their relative control as an employee.
Either way, the relevant discussion is whether or not the subject is, knowingly/intentionally or otherwise, assisting a hostile power. And there's strong circumstantial evidence that this is the case, sufficient to be the topic of international chatter, e.g.,
Though agent/asset is fairly clear. Trump isn't "someone who officially works for" the Russians.
I think it's good to try to be clear about Russian influence because they are so sneaky with it. Like with Brexit - the leave campaign was basically funded by the Russians but how it was done, probably is there was a businessman, Banks with a struggling business. He got befriended by the Russians and someone connected to them put tens of millions of investment into his business. He then funded leave and can claim it's all his UK sourced money. The actual money came through an opaque offshore trust in a secrecy enforcing tax haven so you can't prove it.
Probably Trump's dealings are similar - he has business issues which were sorted by Russian investment in an opaque way with favours down the line. Banks wife it seems by the way was an actual Russian agent ie recruited and paid salary by the Russian services.
A key success factor to various informational influencing techniques, whether state-sponsored intelligence, marketing/advertising, targeted manipulation, or other, is that often vagueness and deniability are core intentional methods deliberately employed.
That's not always the case, and omerta, (virtue/loyalty) signalling, and the like, also have value, but those most often move up, from lower ranks to higher. That is, it's the lower ranks which are interested in signalling virtue, trustworthiness, and/or loyalty to some boss.
A centralised intelligence service, state or otherwise, tends to operate clandestinely (often represented in name or descriptions, e.g., "clandestine operations" or "clandestine agency", etymology "secret, hidden", see: <https://www.etymonline.com/word/clandestine>). These also operate within existing control centres (hence, the everlasting problem of determining trust and institutional loyalty within government and other organisations, and the problem of moles or turncoats), and along existing social fracture, ideological, or affinity points (e.g., racist or nationalistic rhetoric, claiming religious preference, or narratives which people both want to believe and which act as "cold readings" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading) or "dog whistles" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)), where meanings may be fluidly interpreted according to audience background (this has long been a staple of Middle Eastern rhetoric, from both Israeli and Arabic camps, as well as of course numerous others), or where the actual meaning is, again, covert and clandestine, but apparent to the intended audience.
Of course, apologists for a side employing these tactics will point to all these obfuscations as proof of innocence, when they are in fact key elements of the offensive. What often reveals this is leaks of internal discussion which emphasise such points, or of words and deeds at odds. History of corporate disinformation (lead, asbestos, mercury, pollution generally, CFS/ozone depletion, cigarettes, alcohol, automobile safety, fossil fuels/global warming) reveal many such cases, see Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt for numerous examples and tells: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt>.
Obviously a Russian agent would retain his trusted status with Ukraine leadership, feed them false information, and feed Russia true information. This is not what's happening here.
IMO a true agent would 1) announce an unverifiable top secret something-or-another uncovered WMDs-or-similar-boogeymen[1] in Ukraine, then 2) convince Ukraine to capitulate or send in boots. Why not cut to the chase?
This argument relies on false equivalence and a straw man. It compares accusations of being a "Russian agent" to U.S. alignments with Islamists, but the two are not analogous. It also presents a false dilemma by asking if the U.S. is "captured" by Islamists, ignoring more complex geopolitical factors. Additionally, it implies causation (U.S. involvement leading to Islamist takeovers) without considering other historical influences. While the argument raises a valid point about shifting alliances, it does so using misleading rhetorical techniques.
Seriously - why then have all the moves against Ukraine were when Trump was not in office?
Russia has been invading Ukraine for _14 years_, first under Obama/Biden then under Biden/Harris. Clinton was secretary of state. And the west continues to buy gas from them, etc.
Maybe there's some 4d chess I'm missing but feels like gaslighting on how tough we've supposedly been on Russia aside from Trump.
I'm addressing the extraordinary claim that "Trump is a Russian agent" and that now we are suddenly now being soft on Russia.
If so, why didn't Putin mount a full invasion in 2016-2020? Why wait until 2022 when the supposedly tough Biden administration (which included veterans from the 2011 Crimea invasion)? It feels like gaslighting that, at minimum, we've been nothing but soft and ineffectual on Russia the entire time.
> If so, why didn't Putin mount a full invasion in 2016-2020?
One possible explanation is that Russia is a petro-state. The average oil price between 2010 and 2014 was about $130/barrel. Then in a few short months it dropped by 50% and stayed there until this day (with a short exception around the start of the invasion when it was above $100 for about half a year).
> why then have all the moves against Ukraine were when Trump was not in office?
In regards to the timing of the two Russian invasions, perhaps Putin felt those were his best chances to make such moves.
The first time when Russia invaded Crimea on February 20, 2014 was because of the Maidan Revolution. At the time Ukrainian government was a mess. The then Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, who was an ally of Putin, was to be ousted on the next day of the Russian invasion and eventually fled to Russia.
As for the timing when Russia invaded Ukraine again on February 24, 2022, I think one of the reasons was because of US troops chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan happened a few months ago. And after that, the US would be politically
unlikely to get itself involved directly in another overseas war so soon; and Putin hoped this time it would be a blitzkrieg coup, and then he could replace Zelensky with a puppet president.
I am not saying that Putin intentionally invaded Ukraine at a time when Trump was or wasn't in office; I only feel that these are two very opportune moments for Putin to seize, which both happened to be at times when Trump was not in office.
You’re giving Trump too much credit. He simply admires Putin as the authoritarian leader of a world power, and neither sees the geopolitical implications of the Ukraine conflict, nor does he feel moral/ethical repulsion towards what Russia has done there.
I'm not swayed by the arguments that the white house is compromised. But I do appreciate the significance of the question "find the daylight between the actions of the white house and the actions of an ideal agent".
You're a physician, your patient is running a fever of 42°C, that's very quickly going to become fatal. Do you administer antipyretics and cold compresses now, or do you debate the likely causes, and attempt the root cause analysis?
First we would have to agree that the patient is actually 42C. Faulty instruments or clerical errors could have lead us to believe the patient was 42C.
The fist thing the doctor would do would likely be place their hand on the patients forehead and then take additional readings to confirm the prognosis.
Last thing you would want to do is cold plunge a patient when instrumentation has extreme bias.
> First we would have to agree that the patient is actually 42C.
This is known as rejecting the hypothetical. The only time it's a good faith argument is after you've agreed with the conclusion.
If you do agree with the argument, you should cite something verifiable that the white house has done that's incompatible with the original assertion. Which is the actions are indistinguishable from an ideal agent. Do you have any provable examples?
This is what's going on ^, people like you and me cannot agree on anything because whatever happens truth has no value whatsoever, there are two groups of people, being fed two flavors of reality
Half of the US think trump is saving them, the other half think we're witnessing the end of the republic. Depending on which bubble you live in you get bombarded with information going your way.
> How does his behaviour in this administration differ markedly from his first?
Was there a government purge during the first term ? Did we have 20 years old non vetted civilians getting access to critical systems ? Did we have the entire tech sector rallying behind trump ? Did we have a foreign billionaire melding with internal politics straight from the oval office ?
It was a clown show with minor influence on the long term direction of the US and the world, it's hardly comparable to what we're witnessing right now.
If you care for a broader view, you can step outside the US media bubble, as I (being of course based on Altair IV) do frequently.
The US media supportive of the present administration are a distinct anomaly globally.
There were numerous signs of pro-Russian sentiments in the first term, as well as a well-documented set in the Mueller report (see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Conspiracy_or_c...> for an overview), misrepresentations and denials notwithstanding. Your list is grossly deficient and spurious.
There is a part of the video that is exactly about what we're going through: information overload to the point that most people can't form an opinion, you have your extreme position, I have mine, they're mutually exclusive yet we both think we're right
> too many things would have to fit perfectly for it to make sense
things like immediately reversing course on military support for the only country at war with Russia? things like torching relationships with our closest allies we've spent decades, if not centuries building?
things like repeatedly and publicly praising Putin? things like both ex-KGB officers and current UK legislators publicly stating the possibility?
I don't know why you think it's quite so far fetched. it's not a certainty but at this point I would say the preponderance of evidence calls it "likely"
> things like immediately reversing course on military support for the only country at war with Russia
America has a tremendous interest in not being at war with the world’s second largest nuclear power. We also have no interest in sacrificing good relations with Russia for the sake of Ukraine.
We should definitely go back to the good relations we used to have. Maybe if we're nice to them again they won't be running around with polonium, forcing migrants through Belarus, sending in little green men to their neighbors, and generally trying to destabilize the entire West. They're just misunderstood - it's not a country of thugs, they just want to live in peace and pump oil. Hey maybe if we have good relations we'll even be able to benefit from their recent invaluable contributions to science and technology.
That was bad, and this is bad. Iraq was bad, and this is bad. Brilliant.
We should care because it's an easy way to make friends and remain the most powerful country in the world. Well, was easy, when you could trust the US to not change their tariffs on you every three days. Art of the deal!
What is the relevance of “bad” versus “good?” Would the U.S. do anything differently today if Mexico was taken over by hardline communists? Why should we build a foreign policy around expecting other countries to behave differently than we do?
Considering we currently have a foreign policy solely based around giving 48 hour dopamine hits to the most newsmax-brain addled 25% of the population, that would be a significant step up.
Democrats would not want to invade Mexico or plot a coup, because we're not morons. Trump doesn't have a consistent policy about getting involved or not in foreign countries no matter how much you want to convince yourself that he's the second coming of George Washington.
He's a mentally challenged 80 years old failed businessman who loves people he perceive as strong, that would explain all of that.
Lot's of americans and europeans are fan of Putin, because "he tells it how it is", he doesn't like gays, &c. Trump is a simple mind so it's not really surprising. He also sucks Saudi's and Israeli's balls all day long for the same reasons
It's an extraordinary claim. I think the reason I dismiss it as unlikely as when I look back at the steel dossier and muler investigation 1) if there was something, it's very likely they would have found it then 2) in hindsight both investigations were completely discredited and shown to be largely a institutional response to the shock which was 2016. This current re-emergence of 'trump is a Russian agent' is kinda surprising in that context. 3) I think the current behavior can be explained by a desire to end the conflict, while feeling no particular allegiance to Ukraine.
I mean theres lots one could say here. Probably the most straightforward is igor danshenko, who was the primary source for the steel dossier, stating that he never intended for the claims to be taken seriously.
You're conflating the Steele Dossier and the Mueller investigation [1].
> However, the House Intelligence Committee, then controlled by Republicans, released in 2017 a report that stated that the Russia investigation had not started from information in the Steele dossier, but from information that the FBI received on George Papadopoulos.
Do not draw a false equivalence between a private investigation self-admitted by Steele to be an unverified "starting point for further investigation" [2] and an official completed US investigation created by Republican Rod Rosenstein, led by Republican Robert Mueller. Republican William Barr, after preemptively declining to charge obstruction of justice, declining to release the executive summaries of the Mueller investigation to Congress, and omitting multiple details about whether Trump's actions were knowing vs. unknowing, still affirmed ten instances of potential obstruction [1][3].
Ceasing assistance is a bit different than providing assistance to the enemy.
The US helped support Ukraine for several years. That was nice. Someone else can now redirect domestic resources to that cause. We've had our turn.
The real question is who benefits from the tall apocalyptic tales told to taxpayers that if families part with their dollars to at least equally corrupt foreign lands, they will be safer from the evil russians. It's not clear to me that the international meddling of the US this century has performed the claims of the war cries, and we're exhausted of servicing them.
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations & collisions of her friendships, or enmities.
Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?
I think you're mistaking globalist foreign policy for the free market with this one. Intetnational trade is the lifeblood of every significant American business.
- Whether or not US intel agencies (or foreign proxies) will be leaking intelligence to Ukraine.
- Given what I’ve previously mentioned[1] as the unbelievably strong US intel penetration of Russian institutions, the likelihood that sources, and most especially HUMINT sources, will be disclosed to Russia. That would of course be catastrophic at multiple levels, and with enduring consequences.
________________________________
Notes:
1. For example <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31480538> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41273077>.