Opinion

BREAKING: Hunter Biden in Custody, Joe Biden to Drop Out? – Evaluation by Robert David Steele

ROBERT STEELE:  The CIA seal is bullshit.  CIA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State (despite 90% of its people being good people trapped in a bad system) and nothing good will come of CIA (or FBI) until they are audited and purged at the top.

Having said that, I rate this as 60% or more likely to be true.

There are are multiple aspects of this that merit my comment.

First, Joe Biden is the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) of our time. He is a sorry ass sack of shit politician selling influence without regard to the public interest for enormous profit, and by all reports also a pedophile who forced his granddaughter to shower with him.  This is significant in relation to what I have posited is the spiritual axis of good between John F. Kennedy (JFK) and Donald J. Trump (DJT), and related to the possibility that JFK Jr. is alive. Other than Hillary Clinton, who I believe has been dealt with behind the scenes, there is no better fall guy for the Deep State at this time than Joe Biden, and this mirroring of LBJ — who got away with it — is symbolic at a meta level.

Second, My DNC source Deep Anus told me months ago that Biden would drop out by 16 September, and then when he did not, that Biden was resisting at the same time that the RINO cross-over was demanding the top spot. Regardless of the back story, the fact is that the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the race has been on the table for over six months, and leaving it to the last minute so that on Election Day DJT is ***literally*** UNOPPOSED, making a challenge  totally impossible. Whether the House and Senate go Republican is immaterial, because I have been told that there will be over a hundred if not more resignations from Congress once DJT is confirmed as having been re-elected. While DJT has been blocked from hearing me and Dr. Cynthia McKinney on #UNRIG Electoral Reform Act, and Jared Kushner is a tone-deaf twit when it comes to consulting others, all signs point to a restoration of the Constitutional intent across all three branches of government...

Election security

 

Spies are trying to influence the election — US spies, that is

During last Thursday’s presidential debate, Joe Biden lofted a “Hail Mary” pass from the five-yard-line that had no chance of landing for a score, but he flung it anyway, desperate to deflect Donald Trump’s mention of the now infamous laptop belonging to Biden’s son, Hunter — who soon may be inducted into the Hall of Fame of loose cannons.

Biden stunningly stated during the debate that the laptop — containing emails and text messages that raise troubling and embarrassing questions for the Democratic presidential nominee — was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.  

He said this, straight-faced, after a week of a steady stream of facts that established the laptop and its contents legitimately belong to his son. So why would Biden risk looking like a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist while on the biggest stage of his long political career? 

Well, lo and behold, a sizable group of former executives of U.S. spy agencies earlier in the week had given Biden some top cover — thin as it might be — that he could use as a deflector shield when confronted with the uncomfortableness of the laptop’s existence.

Opinion

 

David Bossie: Trump will be reelected — here is his path to an Electoral College victory

President Trump has a clear path to the 270 electoral votes he needs for reelection — and the map is not dissimilar to his historic 306-vote Electoral College landslide in 2016.

I believe the president will carry Texas, Indiana and all the other reliably red states for his first 163 electoral votes. In 2016, his road to victory ran through Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. In 2020, this path remains intact, with the addition of Georgia and Arizona.

With repeat victories in these states, plus the electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional Districts, that brings President Trump’s tally to 260 electoral votes — just 10 votes shy of the magic number of 270.

Trump shocked the world in 2016 by becoming the first Republican presidential nominee to win Pennsylvania and Michigan since 1988. Even more incredibly, he was the first GOP presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since President Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984.

Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, Michigan has 16 and Wisconsin has 10. In this scenario, with the president sitting at 260 electoral votes, he needs to win just one of these three states to prevail.

Terror threat

 

Greek Orthodox priest shot with sawed-off shotgun outside a church in Lyon, France

A Greek Orthodox priest who was closing a church in Lyon, France, was shot Saturday by a lone assailant using a sawed-off shotgun, the France National Police said.
The 52-year-old priest was shot in the stomach and his condition is considered life-threatening, according to police and the Lyon prosecutor's office.
The assailant fled after the shooting and remains at large. A police spokesperson said the shooter was dressed a long black coat and a black beanie, and seemed to be hiding the shotgun under his coat.
Residents of the neighborhood and a municipal police patrol reported hearing two shots near the Hellenic Orthodox church in Lyon's 7th district on Saturday, the Lyon prosecutor's office said in a statement.
They saw a person running and later found the wounded priest at the back door of the church, prosecutors said.
A motive for the attack motive remains unknown, according to the statement.
The Lyon public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation on charges of attempted murder and are coordinating with the national anti-terror prosecutor's office, according to the statement.

Public security

 

Protests Won’t Be Enough to Stop a Coup

Casting a ballot by Election Day is just the first thing Americans have to worry about. What if President Donald Trump and his allies stop the counting of ballots, or delay vote certification until Republican state legislatures can play hanky-panky with the electors? What if civil war breaks out? “We’ll take to the streets,” Joe Biden supporters tell one another. Isn’t that what people do?

Protesting is certainly what a lot of people will think of doing, and will do. It’s what Protect the Results, a coalition of more than 100 grassroots groups, is recommending, at least for now. Of the more than a dozen election-protection organizations that have popped up over the past two months, Protect the Results is probably the best-known. As of this writing, you can find more than 450 events around the country on its website, many scheduled for the day after the election. I signed up for one in New York City and got an email telling me to be ready to report to an address on Fifth Avenue on November 4 in the “highly likely” event that national protests will be necessary.

But I’m not sure that amassing on Fifth Avenue the day after the election will be the right call—at least if votes are still being counted and Trump hasn’t falsely claimed victory. Protests alone won’t be enough to stop what might be coming, and to be effective, they should be timed just right. Early in October, I came across a webinar called “How to Beat an Election-Related Power Grab” being offered by a then-obscure group named Choose Democracy. 

Poll results

 

Positive Trump polls spark polling circle debate

Most pollsters show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a sturdy and stable lead over President Trump at a time when tens of millions of people have already voted and there is almost no time to change the course of the race.

But a handful of contrarian pollsters believe Trump’s support is underrepresented and that election analysts could be headed for another embarrassing miss on Election Day.

The battles have spilled on to social media, where some well-known political analysts have dismissed polls that show Trump leading Biden.

The Trafalgar Group, which was the only nonpartisan outlet in 2016 to find Trump leading in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Election Day, shows Trump with small leads in both states, which would be keys to another Trump win in the Electoral College. Nearly every other pollster shows Biden with a comfortable lead.

Trafalgar’s Robert Cahaly says there is a hidden Trump vote that is not being accounted for in polls that show Biden on a glide path to the White House.

Health security

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposes stay-at-home order in England as coronavirus cases surge

England will adopt a second national lockdown as coronavirus cases run rampant in the United Kingdom, closing all nonessential businesses but leaving schools open for the next four weeks as it tries to suppress the virus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Saturday.

People will be ordered to stay at home unless it’s for essential purposes, including education, medical reasons, or to shop for groceries, Johnson said during a press conference in London. Pubs, bars and restaurants must close except for takeaway and delivery.

Some industries that can’t work from home, like construction and manufacturing, will continue. The lockdown will take effect starting Thursday and will end on Dec. 2, he said.

“Now is the time to take action because there is no alternative,” Johnson said. The U.K.’s government program that financially assists furloughed employees will be extended during the lockdown, he said.

Corruption

 

Joe Biden’s silence on Hunter’s emails speaks volumes: Goodwin

Ed Koch never missed an opportunity to tell his side of a story. When a newspaper or television report said something about him he saw as wrong or unfair, the late New York mayor invariably fired off a letter of complaint.

The habit was so pronounced that I once asked him why he bothered, especially when the issue was minor. His answer: If you don’t object, your silence is assumed to be agreement.

Attention, Joe Biden. This is why your silence in the face of serious allegations of corruption is highly suspicious. It makes you look guilty.

If you are innocent, why don’t you say so?

As a very strange presidential campaign enters the final days, one of its strangest features is taking center stage. The Democrats’ presidential nominee, who has spent most days in his Delaware basement, has not disputed charges that he was secretly involved in his family’s business schemes, including while he was vice president.

Doubly strange, Biden also has remained silent about the explosive claim by a former partner in one family venture. Retired Navy Lt. Tony Bobulinski told The Post and others that he met with Joe Biden in 2017 to discuss a partnership with Chinese executives tied to the ruling Communist Party, a deal where Bobulinski says the former vice president is the “big guy” who had a concealed 10 percent stake.

Corruption

 

Why Joe Biden's Conduct is Dangerous to America

Thanks to the New York Post, the bombshell story on the Hunter Biden laptop has finally emerged. Finally, because this time a major political story has not just been underplayed by the media, it was initiallyblocked by Big Tech. Twitter asked the NY Post to delete the story. Is this still America?

The scandal has erupted under circumstances only a Hollywood screenwriter could imagine. According to computer repair man John Paul Issac, a drunken Hunter dropped off a laptop at his Delaware store and then forgot to pick it up. Realizing who Hunter was, Issac turned the laptop over to the FBI, which virtually ignored it for months. Finally, having made a copy of the hard drive, he turned it over to known crime fighter, Rudy Giuliani.

Among the things Giuliani discovered is that the Biden family has an interesting “distribution” arrangement regarding the millions being thrown at Hunter’s businesses by countries and firms seeking to buy the influence of his father. Hunter gives half of what he gets to Joe...

Laser

 

Military seeking technology breakthroughs in laser weapons for jet fighters and armored combat vehicles

The Pentagon and military services are moving quickly to develop newer, stronger, more-mobile laser weapons. Much of this includes laser scaling and size, weight and power (SWaP) improvements to arm jet fighters and even destroy enemy ballistic missiles in space.

Army Scientists and weapons developers are designing lasers strong and durable enough to travel into space. They also are trying to build compact transportable lasers able for fast-moving, jet fighters and transportable infantry devices.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Ala., is power-scaling lasers for missile defenses. The Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., meanwhile, is miniaturizing strong mobile power systems for jet fighter laser weapons, and the Army is already arming Stryker armored combat vehicles with high-power lasers to defend against enemy unmanned aircraft.

Spy work

 

The 200 Millisecond Mission: Inside the Secret CIA Plan to Steal Soviet Missile Data

On February 13, 1966, a high-altitude reconnaissance drone flew a top-secret mission over Vietnam. North Vietnamese air defense picked up the drone’s disguised U-2 spy plane radar profile on its approach to Hanoi. In response, a Soviet-made SA-2 Guideline missile streaked towards the drone, turning it into a fireball of metal seconds later—the mission was over.

From all appearances, the small skirmish would've been a clear win for the North Vietnamese, but all was not what it seemed—this "SAM Sniffer" was created to be destroyed. In the 200 milliseconds before its demise, the drone’s electronics would—if everything went according to plan—record details of the missile's radar tracking, guidance systems, and its warhead fusing and transmit them before it was too late.

Under the codename United Effort, the CIA had planned and prepared for this mission for three years in the hopes of attaining data that no manned aircraft ever could. Several drones had tried to learn the SA-2’s secrets—they all failed.

Innovations & technologies

The U.S. Army Wants to Know Where Enemy Bullets Are Coming From

Traveling at supersonic speeds, a bullet exiting a gun barrel generates acoustic “shock waves” propagating through the air from the tip of the projectile, producing a sound “signature” which can be detected by specially engineered sensors, according to Raytheon BBN engineers.

This technical process, simply put, saves lives as it enables soldiers to instantly know the exact location of incoming enemy small arms fire, offering an opportunity for a precise and lethal counterattack amid high-intensity combat. A technology which does this, made by a Raytheon subsidiary called BBN, already exists and has been deployed with U.S. Army soldiers. It’s called Boomerang, and a set of six different sensors can instantly find the source of incoming bullets from moving vehicles and stationary locations.

“The way a shock wave works is it generates and propagates at the speed of sound. While the bullet is moving, a stream of waves comes off the tip of the bullet that propagates through the air. From six sensors I can locate exactly where it came from,” Brad Tousley, President at Raytheon BBN, told Warrior in an interview.

Now part of Raytheon, Boomerang-maker BBN began with innovative ideas from three MIT professors who envisioned a way to engineer these kinds of advanced acoustics years ago.

Economic security

 

Household Incomes and Spending Jump Higher, Beating Forecasts

U.S. consumer spending and household incomes both rose more than expected in September, helping the economy recover from the pandemic induced downturn faster than expected.

The Commerce Department said Friday that household spending on goods and services rose 1.4 percent last month on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, the fifth consecutive monthly increase. Economists had expected spending would rise by 1 percent, repeating August’s gain.

Household incomes rose nine-tenths of a percent, boosted by higher wages in the private sector. Economists had expected income to rise by a milder three-tenths.

The government’s contribution to the economy fell, making the rise in income even more surprising. Government wages and salaries fell half a percentage point. Unemployment insurance payments fell 42 percent compared with August as the federal enhancement to jobless benefits was reduced and many Americans returned to work. Unemployment insurance payments are down 72 percent since their peak in June.

Overall private sector wages and salaries rose by a little more than one percent. Compared with February, prior to the pandemic’s impact on the economy, wages are down 3 percent. Compared with April, when lockdowns were at their tightet, they are up 10 percent.

Poll results

 

Pollster: Let's Face It, Trump's Path to Victory Is Narrow, But Real

Over the past week, we've given Trump fans a few rays of hope by covering polling data and methodologies from Trafalgar and USC that suggest another upset win could be in the offing. Biden remains the obvious frontrunner down the home stretch, having an overwhelming chance of winning the "popular vote," which translates into multiple paths to an electoral college majority (more on that below). But pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, a skeptic of the president's re-election odds, posted a Twitter thread yesterday explaining that this election's range of genuine possibilities is quite wide. The bad news for Team MAGA is that Biden is ahead, and could end up dominating. The better news, she writes, is that even if some results fall within current polling margins of error in battlegrounds, the president has a slim but realistic avenue to victory...

Intel warning

Top U.S. officials were briefed on an active threat against Pentagon leaders, say five officials

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials were briefed late last month on a threat against the Pentagon's most senior leaders while they are on American soil, not just traveling overseas, according to five senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Some officials said the briefings suggested the threat, which remains active, may be potential retaliation for the U.S. military's assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, although the information provided did not draw a definitive link.

The briefings have included information that suggests the targets of the threat are U.S. military leaders who were involved in the decision and operation to assassinate Soleimani, officials said. The briefings have also included information about a list, compiled by adversaries, of the names of military leaders who are to be targeted, according to two senior U.S. officials.

EMP security

 Pentagon releases Electromagnetic Superiority Strategy

The Pentagon released its Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy Thursday.

Intended to align DoD electromagnetic spectrum activities with the objectives of the 2017 National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and national and economy policy goals, the strategy outlines five goals which each have subordinate objectives.

"The rise of mobile systems and digital technology across the globe has placed enormous strain on the available spectrum for DOD's command, control, and communication needs. This strategy will help set the conditions needed to ensure our warfighters have freedom of action within the electromagnetic spectrum to successfully conduct operations and training in congested, contested and constrained multi-domain environments across the globe," Dana Deasy, DOD chief information officer, said in a Pentagon press release.

They include developing superior EMS capabilities; evolving to an agile and fully integrated EMS infrastructure; pursuing total force readiness in the EMS; securing enduring partnerships for EMS advantage and establishing effective EMS governance.

Energy security

 

Why nuclear power would be catastrophic for the shipping industry

Nuclear power being used to propel ships could be catastrophic, according to one of the most famous names in shipping, but the damage would be to the fundamental shipping markets rather than the usual environmental concerns about using atomic energy.

Speaking at a shipping webinar organised by the Norwegian Business Association Singapore yesterday, Andreas Sohmen-Pao, the chairman of BW Group, discussed multiple fuels of the future. On nuclear, he warned of the potentially huge market shifts the fuel could bring to shipping.

Nuclear power for shipping has been making headlines this year, and Sohmen-Pao said BW had looked at three nuclear-related companies recently.

On the possible advent of nuclear powered ships becoming widespread in merchant shipping, Sohmen-Pao said: “The change in the industry is going to be massive and maybe catastrophic because you will have ships going 50% faster because the fuel is essentially free once you’ve paid the up front capex investment and the tanks will be empty because you will have cheap electricity around the world without intermittency.”

He argued that in the advent that safe nuclear technology is developed on land and at sea there would be far less ships needed as vessels would travel faster and they would not be needed to transport energy. Approximately 40% of the world’s fleet today carries energy.

Whistleblowing

 

How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower

Before dawn on January 23, 2019, Mark McConnell arrived at the Key West headquarters of the military and civilian task force that monitors drugs headed to the United States from the Southern Hemisphere. McConnell, a prosecutor at the Department of Justice and a former marine, left his phone in a box designed to block electronic transmissions, and passed through a metal detector and a key-card-protected air lock to enter the building. On the second floor, he punched in the code for his office door, then locked it behind him. On a computer approved for the handling of classified information, he loaded a series of screenshots he had taken, showing entries in a database called Helios, which federal law enforcement uses to track drug smugglers. McConnell e-mailed the images to a classified government hotline for whistle-blowers. Then he printed backup copies and, following government procedures for handling classified information, sealed them in an envelope that he placed in another envelope, marked “secret.” He hid the material behind a piece of furniture...

Innovations & technologies

 

The U.S. Army Doubles Down On Battery Technology

The U.S. Army is expanding research efforts to solve the current challenges to battery technologies and drive advancements in battery science and energy storage that will become increasingly critical with the use of sophisticated electronics.   The U.S. Army has recently awarded a US$7.2 million contract to a battery consortium led by the University of Maryland as part of its latest research campaign on extreme battery technology.  

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory will work on the University of Maryland-led effort in partnership with Montana State University and other universities, national laboratories, and companies that are part of the Center for Research in Extreme Batteries. The cooperative agreement also includes research entities and companies in the battery and energy storage sector, such as Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, Graphenix Development Inc, Ion Storage Systems, the New York Battery & Energy Storage Consortium, Saft America, Stony Brook University and the University of Texas-Austin.

The research of the battery technology effort will focus on extreme charging, extreme safety, extreme voltages, extreme evaluations, and extreme transformational innovations to promote the development of new materials and novel battery designs such as solid-state lithium batteries. 

Election security

 

Tucker Carlson reveals that a new trove of documents implicating Joe Biden in dodgy deals mysteriously went MISSING in the post as new audio reveals Hunter's two business partners were concerned it would 'blow up big time'

Tucker Carlson has revealed that a dossier of documents detailing Hunter Biden's business deals went missing in the post, somewhere between Manhattan and Los Angeles, as he airs new audio recordings discussing Hunter's businesses.

Carlson detailed the mystery of the vanishing documents during his Wednesday evening show on Fox News.

The presenter said his team had sent documents, via an established courier, from Manhattan on Monday to Los Angeles.

At 3:44am on Tuesday someone in the courier company noticed that the envelope was empty, and the documents had been removed.

He said no one was able to explain where the documents, damaging to the Bidens, had gone.

He did not explain what the documents described, or whether they only had one copy.

Carlson described them as 'confidential documents related to the Biden camp' coming from 'a source'.

Scam

 

How a ‘diabolical’ former DEA staffer conned the intelligence community

In the fall of 2015, the head of Air Force intelligence got an odd pitch from a supposed deep cover operative.  The man said he was going undercover at various companies to ferret out would-be leakers and spies. He wanted the Air Force involved. Then-Lt. Gen. Robert Otto said the man, who had gotten in touch through another high-ranking Air Force official, spouted “all kinds of names and facts” and claimed other powerful people were on board. Otto was skeptical. “It just sounded — the technical term is ‘fishy,’ ” he said.
The military leader started asking around. By the time he met with the man a few months later, Otto was wearing a wire for the FBI. He had concluded that the program was a fraud.That meeting helped unravel a years-long scheme by Garrison Courtney, a onetime spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration who managed to burrow into the intelligence community, roping in more than a dozen public officials and as many defense contractors along the way.

Cybersecurity

 

Spy agency ducks questions about 'back doors' in tech products

The U.S. National Security Agency is rebuffing efforts by a leading Congressional critic to determine whether it is continuing to place so-called back doors into commercial technology products, in a controversial practice that critics say damages both U.S. industry and national security.

The NSA has long sought agreements with technology companies under which they would build special access for the spy agency into their products, according to disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reporting by Reuters and others.

These so-called back doors enable the NSA and other agencies to scan large amounts of traffic without a warrant. Agency advocates say the practice has eased collection of vital intelligence in other countries, including interception of terrorist communications.

The agency developed new rules for such practices after the Snowden leaks in order to reduce the chances of exposure and compromise, three former intelligence officials told Reuters. But aides to Senator Ron Wyden, a leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, say the NSA has stonewalled on providing even the gist of the new guidelines.

Communication security

 

Zoom’s end-to-end encryption has arrived

Zoom’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) has arrived, letting both free and paid users secure their meetings so that only participants, not Zoom or anyone else, can access their content. Zoom says E2EE is supported across its Mac, PC, iOS, and Android apps, as well as Zoom Rooms, but not its web client or third-party clients that use the Zoom SDK.

E2EE has launched in technical preview, which means Zoom is asking for feedback on the feature for 30 days. However, the company says that E2EE will continue to be available after this period. Instructions on how to enable it can be found in Zoom’s help center.

Zoom has previously offered encryption for its calls, but the data was only encrypted between each meeting participant and Zoom’s servers, rather than being end-to-end encrypted between participants. Once E2EE is enabled, you can check Zoom is using the more secure kind of encryption using the green shield at the top left of a meeting window. The shield will show a padlock rather than a checkmark if the meeting is encrypted end-to-end.

Public security

 

Homeland Security agencies prepare for civil unrest amid heightened tensions nationwide

Two of the Department of Homeland Security's immigration enforcement agencies are preparing for the possibility of more civil unrest amid a contentious election, according to officials, part of a concerted effort by federal and local authorities to prepare for large-scale protests.

The Trump administration's deployment of federal officers to US cities came under scrutiny this summer and drew accusations of DHS becoming politicized as Trump administration officials claimed local politicians of not doing enough to control protests.

Officials in cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Washington, DC, meanwhile, argued the increased federal presence was fueling protests, rather than de-escalating the situation. They, and protestors also criticized federal officers for not having clearly distinct badges, leading the US Attorney for the Oregon District to request an investigation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is putting personnel on standby in the run up to next week's election, according to a senior ICE official, while Customs and Border Protection has been regularly training personnel -- an extension of the deployments this summer, an agency official said.

Drones

 

Meet the U.S. Air Force’s Stealth Drone: RQ-3 DarkStar

Earlier this year, the United States Air Force announced that it would cut the fleet of its Global Hawk spy drones, likely as it was opting to adopt the stealthy RQ-180, a stealthy, flying-wing surveillance drone that reportedly entered service back in 2017. The service has never officially acknowledged the existence of the Northrop Grumman-produced RQ-180, which is believed to have first flown in 2010, and which may have been deployed near China last month.

However, while a few details are known about the flying wing platform, it isn’t the first stealth drone employed by the Air Force.

A DarkStar is Born

Nearly twenty five years ago the RQ-3 DarkStar took its first flight, but a year later the first prototype crashed during its second flight and not in the “going down in a blaze of glory” kind of way. It was more of a suggestion that the bugs had to be worked on the highly-advanced, stealthy reconnaissance remotely piloted aircraft (RPA).

Developed under the Advanced Airborne Reconnaissance System (AARS) program, the RQ-3 was designed to operate in high-threat environments, the aircraft incorporated stealth aircraft technology that could allow it operate within highly defended airspace.

Robots

 

Army fires tank-killing robots armed with Javelin missiles

The U.S. Army will soon operate robots able to destroy enemy armored vehicles with anti-tank missiles, surveil warzones under heavy enemy fire and beam back identified targeting details in seconds due to rapid progress with several new armed robot programs. 

Several of the new platforms now operate with a Kongsberg-built first-of-its-kind wireless fire control architecture for a robotic armored turret with machine guns, Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles and robot-mounted 30mm cannon selected by the Army to arm its fast-emerging Robotic Combat Vehicles. These now-in-development robotic systems are intended to network with manned vehicles in high-risk combat operations. 

The fast-evolving concept is to optimize state-of-the-art networking between manned armored vehicles operating in a command and control capacity and forward-positioned armed robots capable of testing enemy defenses, performing surveillance under enemy fire or simply firing upon and destroying enemy targets when directed by humans. 

Made by Kongsberg, the MCT-30 turret is the first remotely-operated turret to be qualified and fielded in the United States, and a wireless fire-control has been demonstrated in ongoing testing. The system recently demonstrated “secure transmissions of video and fire-control data including command signals over radio from the weapon station and the missile,” a Kongsberg statement says. A similar demo for the RCV-Medium is slated for next year.

Election security

 

Election Interference: Google Suppresses Breitbart News in Search – Even with Exact Headline

Google, the world’s most powerful technology company, is actively interfering in the coming election by burying links to Breitbart News in its search results.

In July, Breitbart News published data showing that Breitbart’s Google search visibility is down 99 percent compared to the same period in 2016.

RealClearPolitics later published data corroborating this, and showing that the same silent expulsion from Google search results has happened to a variety of other conservative news websites as well.

It appears that Breitbart News links are being hidden on Google searches even when users search for the exact string of words in an original Breitbart headline. When links to Breitbart stories do appear, it is often below obscure websites that plagiarize Breitbart’s content.

Search ranking is critical for web traffic from Google. The search analytics industry has found that the top three search results on Google drive over 70 percent of clicks.

In a new video, Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow reveals in additional detail the depth of Google’s suppression of Breitbart’s reporting.

“Breitbart News is, according to Amazon-owned Alexa.com, one of the top five news publishers in the United States, yet if you search — verbatim — Breitbart headlines in Google, you won’t necessarily get any Breitbart results at all,” Marlow said.

The video goes on to demonstrate Google’s suppression of Breitbart News.

In one example, the viral Breitbart News story, “Maskless Nancy Pelosi Goes to San Francisco Hair Salon Despite Coronavirus Restrictions,” fails to return any links to the site on Google.

Health security

 

Mossad brought Chinese coronavirus vaccine to Israel

The Mossad brought China’s coronavirus vaccine to Israel in recent weeks in order to study and learn from it, Channel 12 reported on Monday.
Multiple government sources indirectly confirmed the report.

The report comes as countries and companies around the world race to develop a vaccine, with cyberattacks and espionage reported against a number of developers.
Israel is trying to reach agreements to purchase coronavirus vaccines from several other potential developers, according to a senior Health Ministry official who is in the know.
“There are several diplomatic efforts going on behind the scenes,” he told The Jerusalem Post in a private briefing. “We are trying everything we can to ensure Israeli citizens have access to a vaccine as soon as possible.”
However, it was unclear why the Mossad specifically was involved as opposed to the Foreign Ministry and the Health Ministry.

Environmental security

 

'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle” – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal.

High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating.

The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases – known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilisation as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change.

The international team onboard the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh said most of the bubbles were currently dissolving in the water but methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected and this was venting into the atmosphere.

Electronic surveillance

 

Senators Urge Investigation After CBP Admits to Warrantless Cell Phone Surveillance

Customs and Border Protection is using commercially available location data from cell phones to conduct warrantless tracking of people inside the U.S. and refused to provide lawmakers with a legal justification for these activities, according to five senators.

In a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, five Democratic senators questioned CBP’s use of subscriptions with data broker Venntel, a government contractor based in Virginia, which gives them access to commercial location data.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, asked the inspector general to examine the legal analysis CBP performed—if such analysis exists—before the agency began using the tool.

“CBP outrageously asserted that its legal analysis is privileged and therefore does not have to be shared with Congress,” the letter reads. “We disagree.”

Privacy experts have long warned data brokers like Venntel are able to share detailed information about people’s lives using location data from apps users may not even realize are tracking such information. Many argue the need for more regulation around data privacy is urgent. Even when anonymized, geographic data can contain enough detail to re-identify individual users.

Poll results

 

Don't believe the polls — Trump is winning

We predict that President Trump is going to win the 2020 presidential election — and win big.

While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it’s close, they suffer from at least three problems.

First, the tone of the questions. There is significant evidence from behavioral psychology that suggests that the way a question is framed predetermines the range of potential answers. In fact, Gallup has found that respondents can answer very differently to questions with the same topic even in the same survey based on the language that’s asked. And the use of metaphors can even dwarf the importance of pre-existing differences between Republicans and Democrats.

One of the reasons respondents do that is because of a tendency to give socially desirable answers, which was the case especially during the 2016 election. Most people don’t like confrontation, so the easiest, albeit not necessarily the best, solution is to avoid it. Right now, saying that you’re voting for Trump/Pence is often not the socially desirable answer. In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics.

Second, the sample of respondents. Who responds depends on many factors, including the medium (e.g., landline versus cellphone), the location, the sample size and demographic factors. Moreover, the pool of respondents is not necessarily the same as the pool of likely voters. Even though election polls all contain a margin of error, that margin of error is unreliable if the underlying sample does not reflect the population. Researchers have also identified self-screening as the major contributing factor to the polling failures during the 2016 election cycle.

For example, distrust of pollsters also leads to lower response rates for Trump supporters. Rasmussen finds that 17 percent of likely U.S. voters who “strongly approve” of the job President Trump is doing say they are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote in the upcoming election. By comparison, only 8 percent of those who “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance say the same.

While proper sampling methodology matters more than the size, having a representative sample with enough people still helps considerably. Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar Group notes how their work to create minimum samples sizes of 1,000 voters, added to their work to doggedly pursue the “quiet Trump voter,” led to Trafalgar being one of the most successful battleground polling firms in the country in 2016. Cahaly explains that “we don’t do a state with less than a thousand. You see these polls, 400, 500, 600 people for a state. I don’t buy that. Your margin of error is far too high.”

Third, the content of the current news cycle. What’s going on in a particular moment in time can influence voter attitudes, particularly in swing states. For example, the recent revelation of Hunter Biden’s hidden emails on his laptop, coupled with the link to his father in a potential corruption scheme, has come at an opportune time for the president. Moreover, if the economic recovery continues, the good news may continue putting wind in Trump’s sails.

Fire safety

Hundreds of thousands lose power as Northern California braces for more wildfiresundreds of thousands lose power as Northern California braces for more wildfires

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in dozens of California counties Sunday as weather forecasters predicted the most powerful winds of the year and the potential for more raging wildfires, officials said.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which supplies power to millions across Northern and Central California, had shut off electricity to 225,000 customers by Sunday night, said Mark Quinlan, the utility's incident commander. Another 136,000 were expected to lose power by midnight, he said.

The outages are expected to hit 36 counties, he said.

The company, which pleaded guilty this year to having caused the state's deadliest wildfire, has taken to shutting off its electrical grid to prevent its equipment from sparking new fires.

"Unfortunately, this event is going to transpire as predicted," the company's meteorologist, Scott Strenfel, told reporters Sunday night.

Extremosm

 

Islamism Converges With Cancel Culture

Samuel Paty wanted to teach his students a lesson about free speech. He ended up paying with his life. Paty, 47, a middle-school teacher in a Paris suburb, announced to his civics class in early October that he would show some of the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published in 2015 and that students were free to opt out of viewing the images.

The teacher was immediately denounced on social media. In a viral video, the Muslim father of one of Paty’s students related a series of fabrications. He falsely claimed that his daughter attended the class on free speech, that the teacher banned all Muslim students from the room and later showed the class a “photograph of a naked man” as if it were a portrait of “the Prophet of Islam,” and that his daughter had been excluded from the school in retaliation for her objections. 

On social media the father posted Paty’s name and the school’s address and encouraged all Muslims who shared his concerns to assist him in having the “rogue” instructor fired. The father and his entourage repeatedly described the affair as an act of racism and Islamophobia.