Opinion: MAGA’s Lies About a Deep State Conspiracy to Assassinate Trump Will Endure
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com:
Trump’s minions are spreading falsehoods about a boilerplate FBI document, and it could inspire the same kind of chaos as the Big Lie about the 2020 election.
opinion
Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. And that was before Twitter (X) came along—which explains why the canard that there was an “assassination attempt” on Donald Trump—spread like wildfire.
It all started when self-described conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly flagged a newly unsealed FBI document authorizing officers to use “deadly force” when searching Mar-a-Lago. And then, a lie that started in the fever swamps quickly made its way into mainstream conservative media, as well as the social media platforms of prominent Republicans.
Attorney General “Merrick Garland basically issued a kill order for President Trump,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. For his part, Trump claimed that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”
Never mind that the wording was boilerplate. Never mind that the same verbiage reportedly appeared in similar FBI documents when they searched Biden’s house.
Even if you put all of that aside, the “assassination” allegation was patently absurd. That’s because people who push these ideas are basically asking you to believe two mutually exclusive things.
They assert that a nearly omnipotent Deep State is being controlled by Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. This evil cabal set about using the Mar-a-Lago raid as a pretext to assassinate Trump.
The problem? Why would a super powerful conspiracy need to use the Mar-a-Lago raid as an excuse to murder Trump?
Imagine the fallout if Trump had been killed during the raid. If the FBI really wanted to assassinate Trump, wouldn’t they have simply made it look like he died of a heart attack?
If the goal was to kill Trump, would the FBI be so inept and clumsy as to execute the search warrant when Trump was out of the state of Florida and in New York? Wouldn’t an organization with unlimited resources be competent enough to know that Trump was 1,200 miles away?
Additionally, why would they put their plans in writing? And if they did, wouldn’t a Deep State this powerful and this determined be smart enough to prevent the unsealing of a document that would incriminate them?
In short, the right-wing conspiracy theorists want you to believe a) that a nearly omnipotent confederacy of powerful intel organizations is plotting something evil, yet b) is too incompetent to execute the plan—or cover it up. Foiled again!
Imagine a political party that includes “leaders” who are evil enough to invent such an idea, and lemmings who are gullible enough to believe it.
Of course, when it comes to conspiracy theories, such logical fallacies are par for the course. Years ago, I read an essay written by conservative movement leader Morton Blackwell that warned that such conspiracy theories tend to deliver an unintended consequence for the side that spreads them.
Regarding the old right’s penchant for falling for crazy ideas, Blackwell recalled that “Many conservatives became so convinced of the overwhelming power and cleverness of one or more of these conspiracies that they sank into despair and virtually ceased political activity.”
“After all,” Blackwell continued, “if one is faced with opposition so powerful and so clever that defeat is inevitable, why bother to do anything about it except to complain?”
There’s nothing new under the sun… except this: Once upon a time, such conspiracies were the work of fringe actors, such as the John Birch Society. Today, they are promulgated by popular Fox News hosts, Republican members of Congress, and even the former president of the United States of America.
Stop for a moment and consider the logical response that a misguided (ostensibly patriotic) American would have if they truly believed that the so-called “Deep State” was trying to assassinate a past (and future?) president.
If Trump cult members were incited to riot on Jan. 6 (when they were told an election had been stolen), what might an assassination attempt on Dear Leader inspire?
It goes without saying that it is utterly irresponsible and dangerous to falsely assert that a current president attempted to assassinate his political rival. One might even equate it to yelling “fire” in a theater.
What is more, this lie, like the Big Lie (the false claim the 2020 election was stolen), will live on forever.
And while bad actors are pushing it, not enough good actors are pushing back. Indeed, too many of the referees focused on pedantic criticisms of Biden have remained largely silent on this much bigger lie.
The bottom line is that no decent or sane person should, in my estimation, support a politician who advances such a dangerous lie.
The real scandal is that so many of them are poised to do just that.
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Threat actors impersonate GitHub’s safety and recruitment groups in phishing assaults to hijack repositories the utilize of malicious OAuth apps in an ongoing extortion advertising and marketing and marketing campaign wiping compromised repos.
Since as a minimal February, dozens of developers targeted in this advertising and marketing and marketing campaign have received identical flawed job affords or safety alert emails from “notifications@github.com” after being tagged in tell mail feedback added to random repo points or pull requests the utilize of compromised GitHub accounts.
The phishing emails redirect attainable victims to githubcareers[.]online or githubtalentcommunity[.]online, as first spotted by CronUp safety researcher Germán Fernández.
On the landing pages, customers are asked to signal into their GitHub accounts to authorize a brand unusual OAuth app that requests derive correct of entry to to deepest repositories, deepest user info, and the flexibility to delete any adminable repository, amongst other issues.
Many GitHub customers who have fallen victim to these assaults also file having their accounts disabled and losing derive correct of entry to to all repos—seemingly after other victims reported them for being abused to push comment tell mail.
As BleepingComputer reported on Thursday, after having derive correct of entry to to the victims’ repositories, the attackers wipe the contents, rename the repository, and add a README.me file instructing the victims to reach out on Telegram to derive higher the guidelines.
They also claim to have stolen the victims’ info sooner than destroying it and created a backup that could maybe maybe well lend a hand restore the wiped repositories.
Phishing landing pages (BleepingComputer)
BleepingComputer has but to receive a reply from a GitHub spokesperson after reaching out final week for more miniature print referring to the Gitloker extortion advertising and marketing and marketing campaign.
Then again, GitHub workers has beenreplying to community discussions about these assaults since February, pronouncing the advertising and marketing and marketing campaign targets GitHub’s mention and notification efficiency and asking those targeted to file this malicious job the utilize of the coding platform’s abuse reporting tools.
“We designate the peril precipitated by these notifications. Our groups are currently engaged on addressing these unsolicited phishing notifications,” one GitHub community manager said.
“We wish to remind our customers to continue to utilize our abuse reporting tools to lift any abusive or suspicious job. Here’s a phishing advertising and marketing and marketing campaign and is no longer the least bit times the consequence of a compromise of GitHub or its programs.”
GitHub workers also instructed customers to rob the following measures to be obvious their accounts usually are no longer hijacked in these assaults:
Win no longer click any hyperlinks or reply to these notifications. Please file them.
By no come authorize unknown OAuth apps, they can present your GitHub legend and info to a third derive collectively.
Cloud computing has always been marketed to enterprises as a more cost-effective way for companies to access the compute resources they need, because they only pay for what they use and can easily scale back how much they are using, based on demand.
Enterprises were encouraged, on the back of these benefits, to streamline their on-premise datacentres and start migrating the applications and workloads that resided in them to the public cloud.
In the early 2010s, it is fair to say that companies had a much wider choice of public cloud providers to entrust their data to, with (the technology firms formally known as) HP and Dell both having enterprise propositions in this space, alongside Rackspace and the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Towards the latter half of that decade, HP, Dell and Rackspace (and a handful of others) had all bowed out of the public cloud race, with the rise of AWS often cited as a factor in their decisions to pivot their business models towards a mix of private and managed cloud services provision.
This, in turn, has paved the way for the cloud infrastructure market to become the three-horse race it is today, with AWS leading the charge, followed by Microsoft and Google Cloud.
With around two-thirds of an entire market dominated by just three players, it is perhaps unsurprising that the hold companies like AWS, Microsoft and Google have on the cloud infrastructure services market is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny in various markets across the world – and the UK is no different.
In September 2022, the communications regulator Ofcom launched year-long probe into the UK’s £15m cloud services market, with particular emphasis on the actions and activities of the market’s biggest players: AWS, Microsoft and Google.
The study’s aim, as outlined by Ofcom at the time, was to “assess the strength of the competition in cloud services and the position key companies hold in the market” under the terms of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is an act of Parliament concerned with preserving market competitiveness.
Halfway through its investigation, Ofcom published an interim report in April 2023 that singled out AWS and Microsoft, specifically, for engaging in anti-competitive behaviours that it claimed might financially disadvantage UK consumers and businesses.
The “behaviours” were serious enough for Ofcom to confirm it was consulting on whether to refer the UK cloud infrastructure services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
This was in the wake of its investigation bringing to light evidence that users were being hampered in their ability to switch from one cloud provider to another or add additional ones to their roster of technology providers.
Despite opposition from both Amazon and Microsoft, Ofcom confirmed – at the time its final report into the UK cloud infrastructure services market dropped in October 2023 – that it would be referring the market to the CMA for a further anti-trust probe.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Why did Ofcom refer the UK cloud services market to the CMA?
Ofcom published a full-year report that chronicled the findings of its 12-month investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure market in October 2023 that raised red flags about some anti-competitive behaviours it claimed AWS and Microsoft are both known to display. This is why the market has been referred to the CMA.
These red flags included concerns about the fact cloud providers charge customers egress fees to transfer their data to a competitor’s environment, which Ofcom claimed could discourage users from switching between providers.
The report also flagged interoperability restrictions as being another matter of concern, as it means users often have to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications to work in different cloud environments.
The offering of committed spend discounts, which Microsoft and AWS are both known to do to public sector users, was also raised as a red flag by Ofcom as it incentivises users to back a single cloud provider for all or most of their cloud needs, the regulator claimed.
Ofcom’s full-year report also devoted several pages to detailing concerns it had received about how Microsoft charges users more for running versions of its cloud products in its competitors’ hosting environments.
“We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure. The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers.”
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: What will the CMA investigation cover?
It will be the CMA’s responsibility to fully investigate the anti-competitive behaviours flagged in the Ofcom report. As well as this, the CMA also has powers to intervene and roll out changes to how the likes of AWS and Microsoft behave to correct any anti-competitive behaviours its work brings to light.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Who is overseeing the CMA investigation?
The CMA appointed an inquiry group to oversee the investigation on 5 October 2023. The group comprises four members: CMA inquiry chair Kip Meek, Robin Foster, Paul Hughes and Colleen Keck.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: How long will the CMA investigation into AWS and Microsoft last?
The CMA’s investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market is due to run until April 2025, meaning that by the time it ends, it will have run for about 18 months.
The investigation’s length has raised eyebrows and proven to be a great source of concern for UK cloud market stakeholders, who fear the 18-month timeline will pave the way for the companies under investigation to gain more share and influence at the expense of other, smaller providers.
And AWS made a similar announcement on 5 March 2024, with its pledge to waive the charges associated with transferring data out to the internet when users want to migrate workloads from its public cloud infrastructure.
In a blog post, announcing the move, the company claimed more than 90% of its customers never incur fees when transferring data out of AWS, because the company already offers 100 gigabytes per month of free transfers from its datacentre regions to the internet.
“If you need more than 100 gigabytes of data transfer out per month while transitioning, you can contact AWS support to ask for free data transfer out to the internet charges for the additional data,” the post stated.
“It’s necessary to go through support because you make hundreds of millions of data transfers each day, and we generally do not know if the data transferred out to the internet is a normal part of your business or a one-time transfer as part of a switch to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the company added.
The AWS blog post made no reference to regulatory pressure being a factor in its decision to waive data egress fees, but did say the move is in keeping with its view that moving to the cloud should give users choice and flexibility.
“We believe this choice must include the one to migrate your data to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the post added.
And doing so will not require users to close their accounts with AWS or change their relationship with the company in anyway, it added.
Just over a week after AWS said it was scrapping data egress fees, Microsoft published a brief blog post confirming that it was doing the same.
“We support customer choice, including the choice to migrate your data away from Azure,” said the Microsoft blog post. “Azure now offers free egress for customers leaving Azure when taking their data out of the Azure infrastructure via the internet to switch to another cloud provider or an on-premises datacentre.”
Technical and interoperability barriers were also flagged by Ofcom as complicating the lives of enterprises that might want to mix and match cloud services from competing providers. Therefore, Ofcom said the CMA could address this by forcing the hyperscalers to be more transparent about how nicely (or not) their technologies play with their competitors’ offerings.
One area that might be trickier for the CMA to fix is the offering of committed spend discounts, Ofcom acknowledged, because putting a stop to customers being able to access preferential pricing on products would mean higher prices and costs for users.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has there been any shift in behaviour from AWS and Microsoft since the CMA investigation started?
On the whole, it has been business as usual for AWS and Microsoft. There has been no let-up in Amazon’s use of committed spend discounts to lure in public sector customers, for example.
Despite the offering of discounted pricing being a key area of focus for the CMA’s inquiry, details emerged in December 2023 that AWS had quietly renewed the preferential pricing scheme it had in place with the UK government.
This pricing scheme, known as the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA), has already been used to call off several multimillion-pound contracts, including one valued at £450m with the UK Home Office since its introduction in late 2023.
As reported by Computer Weekly in February 2024, Microsoft confirmed it had opened discussions with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body with a view to resolving its concerns about how it charges more for customers opting to run their own software in its cloud.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has the CMA released any interim findings from its work so far?
On 23 May 2024, the CMA published the first in a series of working papers, to give stakeholders an insight into the shape its investigation is taking. The publications were released with the caveat that the working papers’ contents is not intended to give readers a steer on any provisional or final decisions the CMA is making.
The working papers include one examining the UK cloud market’s overall competitive landscape, along with others separately looking at how the charging of egress fees and the offering of committed spend discounts might impact which providers companies choose to use.
Investigation Discovery’s ‘Who is Luigi Mangione’ premieres tonight — right here’s where to movement it on-line completely free
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It’s been over two months since Luigi Mangione — the 26-one year-old suspected of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson — allegedly shot the businessman in sizable daylight. Even though a trial date for Mangione has now no longer yet been established, a brand modern documentary by Investigation Discovery targets to provide a deeper perception into his mind.
At a Peep: How one can Watch Who is Luigi Mangione On-line
Location to air on Monday, February 17 at 8 p.m. ET, this hour-prolonged documentary is now no longer going to easiest characteristic interviews with key figures mad regarding the case, love NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, Mayor Eric Adams, and skilled criminologists and psychiatrists, but this can even embody statements from these that knew Mangione individually.
After being apprehended in Pennsylvania in dreary December, Mangione pleaded now no longer guilty to affirm homicide and terrorism costs and remains in custody. This case, which has been one of essentially the most talked-about events of the previous one year — rapidly caught the glory of social media enthusiasts (with many commenting on Mangione’s look) as smartly as these which absorb expressed their enrage towards the American healthcare draw.
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Who is Luigi Mangione Release Date
Who is Luigi Mangione premieres on Monday, Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET. The documentary is an hour prolonged.
