Rob Rogers for June 09, 2021

A hit, a veritable hit!

When “K” said it at the height of the Cold War competition his “my vas pokhoronim” may have been mistranslated. It’s possible that a translation of “we will outlast you” or “we shall be present at your funeral” is more accurate. The “we will outlast you” certainly seems to apply to Putin’s policy toward the US.

Always gotta wonder how many state secrets Putin’s most useful idiot handed over for his freedom.

So hacking a government email wasn’t a problem. Nor was interfering with an election in 2016. Messing with our gas though, was a bridge too far apparently. Does this mean conservatives are back on the “Russia is our enemy” bandwagon?

The underlying question that a lot of people don’t want to hear is…have we gotten TOO dependent on computers and cyber-technology in our daily lives, since it IS so vulnerable to things like viruses and similar, as well as cyber-attacks, ransomware, hackers and so forth? Not to sound like a Luddite, but maybe we have OVER-COMPLICATED things by hooking EVERYTHING up to “The Internet” in one way or another. I’m NOT suggesting that we dump them altogether, but perhaps having more MANUAL BACKUPS to vital systems that can be compromised by hackers. Also, how many jobs realistically have been lost over the years to automation in many industries that used to be done by actual people which are now accomplished by computer controlled systems, such as in the auto manufacturing industry, among others?

Remember what Scotty said in “Star Trek”: “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains!”

It’s OK for Americans to kill each other by the dozen, but when something threatens business, the ground starts shaking.

Another actual quote from Nikita Khrushchev

“We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.”

Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 prophecy is being fulfilled by one-time top KGB leader Vladimir Putin, who groomed Trump for years by granting him absurd loans (when no one else would), plying him with mountains of cash for money laundering via real estate deals, and compiling reams and reams of kompromat to dangle over Trump’s head and keep him in line.

And, after Trump took ZERO steps to rein in Putin’s cyber-attacks on the U.S., we fell far behind and now it is up to Biden to show the Russians that we are capable of beefing up not only our defensive capabilities, but also our offensive power — like not only tracing the supposedly untraceable Bitcoin path of DarkSide, but actually hacking into their account and taking back most of the ransom payment (85% of the Bitcoins were retrieved, but because Bitcoin continues to slide in value as Biden shows it is not so untraceable as its users thought, thus eliminating its most attractive feature for cyber criminals, by the time it was taken the value in dollars had dropped to little more than half of what was paid).

It’s easy to blame “Putin” and even easier to blame “the Russians” but I’m not at all sure that it’s fair to do so. I’m sure that Putin is happy to see the US brought low, but I’m not sure that he’s doing more than tacitly encourage (by allowing) the hackers. Who do appear to indeed be Russian.

Wow! Flashback.

Its the republicons best friend.

Ol’ Nikki wouldn’t have dreamt of the capabilities in the modern world.

Gotta go with Trump on his solution: throw out the computers and go back to paper and pencil.

And meanwhile we’re building aircraft carriers like it’s WW2 and authorizing the gigantic F-35 boondoggle like it’s still Korea. Yup, just like the French General Staff and its Maginot Line, we’re SOOOO well prepared to fight the last war.

“Conservatives” are the problem now.

The translation shown above was for the convenience of the Cold War. The correct translation was “You will eat our dust”