RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/08/men-accused-of-impersonating-dhs-agents-have-possible-ties-to-iranian-intelligence-n1588109

The bizarre case of two men who posed as DHS agents, ingratiating themselves with four Secret Service employees, took an unexpected turn when it was revealed that the men are under investigation for having possible ties to Iranian intelligence — specifically, the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Investigators allege that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, posed as various officers and employees of the U.S. government, including members of federal law enforcement agencies, since February 2020. During that time, they got close to four Secret Service agents — including an agent assigned to Jill Biden’s protection detail — by supplying them with perks and gifts, including the use of a $40,000-a-year apartment.

The agents have since vacated the apartment, so investigators aren’t sure if their conversations were bugged or not.

The end game of the fraudsters is still unknown, although the ties to the IRGC would suggest that terrorism was a distinct possibility.

CBSNews:

Prosecutors said Thursday that Ali told witnesses he had connections to the Pakistani Intelligence Service, which the government said it has not yet verified. Prosecutors also said  the government recovered his passport containing three “older” Pakistani visas and two Iranian visas from 2019 and January 2020. There was an indication on Ali’s Iranian visa that he had entered that country at some point, prosecutors said, although they did not specify when.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/five-people-charged-for-being-spies-of-the-chinese-government-involved-in-harassment-campaigns-against-u-s-citizens/

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in New York charged five individuals with acting on behalf of the Chinese government as they attempted to spy on U.S. citizens, and to subsequently harass them for criticism of China.

As reported by the Washington Post, three separate charges were brought against each of the five defendants in Brooklyn, with the charges coming from the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants have been accused of stalking and harassing Chinese nationals living in the country who are now critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In one example, one of the spies tried to interfere with the congressional candidacy of a military veteran who said he had been a leader of the student protesters at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In another instance, the defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a former Chinese national currently living in Los Angeles. In another of the accusations, a defendant is accused of using his position within the Chinese community of New York City to seek information about prominent Chinese dissidents and anti-CCP activists, in order to send such information to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law itself,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. The Department of Justice “will not allow any foreign government” to target American citizens, he added.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/biden-so-weak-another-big-threat-organizing-us-robert-spencer/

The Islamic State (ISIS) is back. Five years after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office and quickly brought about the destruction of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is resurgent and wealthy. Could this have anything to do with Old Joe Biden’s misrule? Of course.

To be sure, there are other factors at play as well. An Iraqi security official said Friday that “recent assessments … put the group’s reserves at between $25 million and $50 million.” That could be a conservative estimate: the Wall Street Journal reported in September 2020 that ISIS had “assets ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars across the Middle East and Central Asia,” according to “officials and government records.”

The Iraqi official said that ISIS got its cash from “opportunistic extortion, looting and kidnap for ransom,” but those are not the only sources of the jihad terror group’s income. WSJ added that ISIS “still extorts local populations in areas it controls or has supporters; receives income from businesses it seized during its rule; and collects payments from human trafficking.” It also controls “a growing share of illicit tobacco markets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Nor is even that all: “donors in several Middle Eastern countries work on raising funds,” says the WSJ, in an understated reference to wealthy Muslims around the world who believe that ISIS is a worthy Islamic organization and keep it afloat financially with substantial donations.

On Friday, the group announced that it had chosen a new caliph, the brother of the former ISIS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid in 2019. The new top dog is Juma Awad al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, succeeding Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, who blew himself up to avoid being captured in a U.S. raid in Syria in February.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/01/the-increased-cyber-warfare-threat-from-a-new-sino-russo-alliance/

With the start of conventional warfare in the battle for control of Ukraine, many Americans wrongly assume that unless U.S. troops are deployed within the forces promised by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, this will be just another in the seemingly never-ending list of conflicts, wars, and skirmishes that may have little, if any, direct damaging effects on the United States.

We can certainly talk of the numerous economic implications of this war in eastern Europe. We can perhaps even argue that conflict may benefit the United States, as it might serve to provide a much-needed wakeup call to the Biden Administration that reversing the Trump-era energy policy and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at an aggressive Russia only enabled this costly and destructive military endeavor.

Also enabling this brazen action from Russia is the weakness projected by yet another Democratic Party politician who has been forced to endure the indignity of having his red line ignored by a ruthless dictator. 

As a result, this new war will certainly signify the permanent arrival of what will be the most common theater of war in the future—the cybersphere. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-chinese-hypersonic-threat-a-very-difficult-problem/

Mike Pompeo warned this week that defending the United States from a hypersonic-missile attack is “a very difficult problem.” The former secretary of state’s remarks provide the latest example of a senior U.S. official vexed by this emerging threat.

The Trump-era top diplomat was speaking Tuesday evening during a session of the Nixon Seminar — a monthly foreign-policy-discussion program — after host Mary Kissel, vice president at Stephens Inc. and Pompeo’s senior adviser at the State Department, asked whether the U.S. can protect against hypersonic missiles from China.

Pompeo, who in January called for fast-tracking new defensive and offensive technologies to deal with the hypersonic threat, suggested that the U.S. doesn’t have the technological capabilities to detect such an attack in time

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2022/01/21/cybersecurity-in-2022–a-fresh-look-at-some-very-alarming-stats/?sh=6c30802c6b61

Earlier this year I wrote a FORBES article called “Alarming Cybersecurity Stats: What You Need To Know For 2021.”  Alarming Cybersecurity Stats: What You Need To Know For 2021 (forbes.com) It included an assortment of stats on the increase in threats to our digital wellness as companies, governments, and consumers. The article was based on the backdrop of a spate of high-profile cyber-attacks such as Solar Winds, and Colonial Pipeline and had painted a dire assessment of the 2021 first half status of the cyber-threat ecosystem. Now we have reached the second half of 2021. Just when we thought it could not get much worse from a cybersecurity stat perspective, it did.

Americans Seem To Be Wakening Up To The Need for Better Cybersecurity

Let us start with a positive stat, it appears that in the U.S. most are finally waking up to the cyberthreats. Awareness is an important step! A poll by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that “about 9 in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies or certain utilities.