Midweekly Overview
Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins, 50 sec.
Navalny Bombshell - sheer incompetence of Putin’s premier security agency
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called his [almost] murderer at the FSB [present day KGB].
Pretending to be a higher up asking for a report on the failed assassination attempt, Navalny successful tricked an FSB chemical engineer/amateur poisoner/dilettante security agent/wannabe assassin, into revealing some important details around the flop.
Full video of the incredible phone call is on his youtube channel. I recommend you watch it in full. There are English subtitles.
Some things to note:
1. The FSB agent is not too suspicious that the call could be fake. He finds it plausible that a higher up would request such secretive details of an incredibly clandestine operation on an unsecured line - a cell phone call.
This suggests that either:
a. It is a common practice and not out of the ordinary.
b. Or the general culture and operative procedures are not strict enough.
c. The agent in question is exceptionally dumb.
The agent could actually be quite dumb - but this does not rule out the first two possibilities. It could be a perfect storm of all three factors.
Also, how dumb could a well-educated biochemistry specialist be? In terms of raw fluid IQ, he is probably at least in 120s..
Given that both possibilities a and b are quite plausible, this is fantastic news for the U.S.
2. CNN journalist knocks on the door of another assassination crew participant [in fact one of the operational leaders] and the FSB is not aware of this!
A foreign journalist. A journalist for the U.S. media - CNN (!) is in Moscow and is engaged in investigative journalism into the FSB’s clandestine operation, and the FSB is completely unaware.
She goes to the assassin’s apartment and knocks on his door with a camera crew.
FSB is completely unaware and fails to warn him.
This suggests that the Russian FSB does not actually have a strong operational/observational control of the key U.S. nationals in the country.
Fantastic.
Can you imagine this happening in China? That their Ministry of State Security (MSS) would fail to see this coming?
Possible, yet I doubt it…
Now, how does this happen?
How is it that Russia can produce state of the art military technology, that their cyber operations are effective and modern enough to penetrate key U.S. infrastructure, that they have all this technical talent, and yet somehow they mess up so badly? so incompetently?
It has to do with the political system and structure of incentives.
Russia has a great educational system - especially in the fields of medicine and STEM.
They produce great talent. But these technical operatives usually do not get promoted to higher up positions of leadership and operational command.
This is because in Russia, not competence but rather a willingness to do whatever it takes is the main driver of career advancement in the state security bureaucracy.
Are you a high-IQ, well-educated scientist? Great. Are you willing to assassinate an opposition leader? no? ok then, go work in a lowly position with a meagre pay.
Someone less competent but dirtier will be advanced.
Same in tech. Some competent software engineers are also amoral. They stay and hack. But most aspire to move to the U.S. and work for a start-up instead.
3. Navalny is an excellent political operative.
Before releasing this phone call, he waited for Putin to come up with an official response in his annual Q&A that took place last week.
In that conference, Putin went on an outright denial accusing CIA fabrication and citing lack of actual evidence.
Well.. that position is now untenable.
Had Navalny released the recording prior to Putin’s press conference, he would have handed him an opportunity to come up with a more credible response.
Putin could for example divert the blame on third parties in his regime [which I still think is the actual case], claim his unawareness of this rogue operation and promise a ‘‘thorough investigation’’.
But now that opportunity is gone.
This is straight out of great U.S. attorney Francis Wellman’s book, ‘‘The art of cross - examination’’.
You rivet [commit them to a specific position], repeat, ridicule.
This is exactly what Navalny did in this court of public opinion.
He committed Putin to an untenable position, made him repeat that position for a week through his propaganda mouthpieces, and now completely ridiculed that position.
This is a great opportunity for Biden admin. This story must never die. The whole world must be periodically reminded of Putinism - what it represents.
Of course our credibility for that campaign would be higher if we did not discriminate in favor of allies of convenience [Saudi Arabia / Khashoggi murder].
Biden retaliation against Russia hack
Biden’s incoming chief of staff says that the planned response will not be limited to sanctions only.
That the aim is to degrade the capacity of Russia to engage in future similar attacks.
That there is a possibility of retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure.
This is of course what I argued for last week. Retaliation was in order. American prestige/threat display capability is on the line.
However, [and I 100% know that some of you are reading this] I will repeat my call to target high profile regime operatives - and their bank accounts/ financial assets.
The whole ‘‘siloviki’’ wing of Putin regime must be convinced through a simple cost/benefit analysis that they need to back off and stay there.
Israel’s hidden message within a message
Israel sends back a message to the Biden administration via General Milley -U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Why? why use such a secretive channel? Why not instead ask your D.C. ambassador to have a talk with Biden’s future National Security Adviser?
Precisely to create that perception of ultra-secretive subject matter of discussion.
To get Iranian leadership paranoid.
To get them thinking ‘‘ what the hell is going on? are they planning another clandestine operation? asking for a permission for some military intervention? why else not trust a D.C. based intermediary? It must be something so sensitive that they must have been worried that the message would be lost in translation if a traditional route was chosen?’’
But that was not the only audience of this messaging.
Netanyahu will no doubt use future Iran conflict as a rallying point in March 2021 elections.
One of his arguments will be that he is the only one capable of persuading the U.S. to change its direction on JCPOA.
That Israel needs a man of great diplomatic wisdom and experience - a true statesman.
Clever.
Alibaba clashes with Xi Jinping
Alibaba’s parent company, Alibaba Group discontinued the Uighur facial recognition software - citing how it clashes with the company policies.
Now ordinarily, one could assume that Alibaba simply does not want to end up on the U.S. sanctions list.
That would be a reasonable proposition. But most of Alibaba’s business is in China and in Asia. Where pissing off Xi Jinping is more damaging to its business than annoying the U.S.
So why do this?
Well this is probably a retaliation to Xi Jinping earlier transgression - when annoyed with Jack Ma’s criticism of Chinese financial regulations, he cancelled the Ant Group IPO.
Choosing this method of retaliation against Xi Jinping has an added bonus of plausible deniability: that Alibaba was indeed simply shielding itself from the potential future U.S. Sanctions.
But we know better of course.
Sanctions do not happen overnight. Not against big companies like Alibaba. Especially if it a damaging sanction that requires the Congress to pass a legislation.
Alibaba’s D.C. lobbyists could have given a good advance notice and only then would they need to preemptively take certain corrective steps.
No. This is hitting back Xi.
This is an interesting dynamic. Would other corporate leaders be emboldened by this? will they also start challenging Xi Jinping? Defend their own interests more fiercely?
Since this could actually damage Xi’s authority within the Chinese Communist Party.
A lot of CCP officials and leaders are on the payroll of giant Chinese corporations. Favor trading is common. They would not want an individual leader hurt the business of corporate China [and consequently their own pockets/interests].
Back in 90s, a lot of Fukuyama fans were claiming that China would follow the steps of South Korea - that a growing and educated Chinese middle class would put the pressure on the state to reform and grant more political liberties.
That never happened and is indeed unlikely to happen in China.
The state apparatus is simply too powerful for a bottom up reform.
But a top down reform? Someone who is approved by big business? Becomes a new leader of CCP? who then subsequently introduces Chinese version of glasnost?
Still unlikely - but certainly more plausible than the first scenario.
The U.S. must incentivize these clashes - to happen more frequently at equally high profile/ high impact scenarios.
Policies [like sanctions/threats of] that encourage disobedience and noncompliance with CCP demands must be pursued.
New to this group but absolutely love this newsletter. America’s political leadership need to wise up to the hard reality that our enemies are waging economic war against our country.