Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

He really is that stupid.

Republicans do not trust women.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans in disarray!

In after Baud. Damn.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Rofer on International Relations / Pwned!

Pwned!

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Alexei Navalny is a Russian critic of the Putin government. He was nearly killed by a Novichok nerve agent in August. Yesterday, he talked to the FSB agent who poisoned his underwear and got a full confession.

Bellingcat is an investigative organization that developed out of Eliot Higgins’s investigations of Syrian munitions, particularly nerve agent munitions, when he blogged as Brown Moses. They worked with CNN and Navalny in this operation.

Bellingcat uses open source information in their investigations. They exposed the two FSB poisoners of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and have uncovered large amounts of information about nerve agent use in Syria.

[Disclosure: I consult with Bellingcat and occasionally write for them.]

The Bellingcat folks do a good job of telling their own story, with CNN’s help. So I’ll let them give the details. Here’s their full report on the Navalny investigation. The report on the phonecall, with a recording and transcript. The transcript is in English, and the phonecall video has English translation. CNN report.

Navalny called several FSB officers with no luck, then decided to pretend that he was an FSB higher-up who wanted a readout of the operation. It worked stunningly.

Why did they poison his underwear?

Bellingcat has been wildly successful in using open-source information to scoop conventional news sources and, probably, national intelligence services. National intelligence services have been reluctant to admit that open source information can be as useful as their classified sources. Bellingcat is not the only non-governmental organization doing this kind of work. The James A. Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury’s Monterey campus is also excellent. Datayo is a newcomer and much quieter than I think they should be. The New York Times has recently acquired a visualization unit who use overhead photos.

Bellingcat, with its Skripal and Navalny investigations, have shown that the Russian intelligence services are sloppy in their execution, dropping clues everywhere and leaving far too many things, like telephone numbers out in the open.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    Gin & Tonic

    and leaving far too many things, like telephone numbers out in the open.

    What also helps is that in Russia, everything is for sale.

  2. 2.

    zhena gogolia

    Reposted from below.
    The video is really something. The best part are his associates sitting next to him and covering their mouths so they don’t burst out with something audible.

  3. 3.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

     then decided to pretend that he was an FSB higher-up who wanted a readout of the operation. It worked stunningly

    Good to see that Russian security is as non existent as ours is.  But pretending to be the assassins boss is pretty funny – it sounds like the kind of silly stunt someone would pull in a role playing game while laughing “Oh this would never work in real life…”

  7. 7.

    bjacques

    I used to think that the sloppiness was deliberate, as a way of gloating that (mostly British) governments are powerless to stop them. But, as with Trump’s spectacular own goals over the years, there doesn’t seem to be any master plan after all.

  10. 10.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud:

    Voice on Phone “I was just chatting with Donald at the omelet bar at Mar-a-lago and he said, oh just tell Don Jr to give you a full briefing so here I am”

    Don Jr “Ah, you sure dad said that?”

    Voice on Phone “His words were “And if Donny give you lip, tell him Full Conformance or else from me.”

    Don Jr “Yes, that sounds like dad.”

  13. 13.

    West of the Rockies

    Russia needs to start facing repercussions, be they financial, political, the revealing of embarrassing state secrets–something!

    Please note I am advocating non-military repercussions. The tanking of their position as an energy supplier would be peachy. Hit ’em in the financial nut sack.

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    Putin gave a two-hour press conference the other day. His answer to questions about Navalny was basically, oh, if we’d wanted to kill him we would have killed him. So Navalny extracts from this guy the admission that yes, they did want to kill him, but the pilot landed the plane in time and the emergency medical staff got to him in time to save his life. It is a remarkable conversation and completely exposes Putin as a cold-blooded, lying murderer, as if we didn’t already know that but it’s nice to have some more incontrovertible proof.

  16. 16.

    The Moar You Know

    Bellingcat, with its Skripal and Navalny investigations, have shown that the Russian intelligence services are sloppy in their execution, dropping clues everywhere and leaving far too many things, like telephone numbers out in the open.

    They’re sloppy because they can be.  The Brits won’t lift a finger to touch them.  Hell, I think they’ve even stopped trying to track them.  Just take a flight into Heathrow and start killing some fuckers who’ve pissed Vlad off.  It’s a consequence-free crime; you’ll get more legal trouble mixing in your recyclables with your household trash in London than you will if you kill a few Russian dissidents.

    The US is almost as bad.

    Start sending home some agents in body bags and sooner or later they’ll stop being sloppy.

    The only thing that would work is the only thing the US won’t do – lock them out of SWIFT.

    @Gin & Tonic: or do this.  The Brits won’t allow it, though.  The Russians own 20% of London; it would break the back of the British financial system to impose real sanctions on them.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    @West of the Rockies:

    Reuters:

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The incoming White House chief of staff said on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden’s response to the massive hacking campaign uncovered last week would go beyond sanctions.

    Ron Klain said Biden was mapping out ways to push back against the suspected Russian hackers who have penetrated half a dozen U.S. government agencies and left thousands of American companies exposed.

    “It’s not just sanctions. It’s steps and things we could do to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to engage in this sort of attack,” Klain said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

    Options being mulled by the Biden administration to punish Moscow over its alleged role include financial penalties and retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

    […]

    I don’t think Biden’s people have any illusions that physical consequences are required to get Putin’s attention and change his behavior.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    West of the Rockies

    @Baud:

    Oh, I think I will apply to the Grudges and Resentment section! Maybe the Passive-Aggressive unit needs some help in reception.

  27. 27.

    germy

    What ever happened to the two people who poisoned Kim Jong-Nam?

    They claimed they didn’t know what they were doing – that they were told it was for a prank TV show or something?

    I’m curious what happened to them, and if their story was true.

  29. 29.

    The Moar You Know

    I think it’s not gonna matter in the long run.

    @Cheryl Rofer:  Not sure which this is in reference to but I’ll just take it as “the existing condition of full-fledged cyberwar that exists between the West and Russia” and say as an IT guy in the trenches (and out of them frequently dealing with management and the government) that America WILL NOT take this seriously until one day, we will all wake up and check our bank balances and everything will say “$0.00”.

    THAT’S when we will start taking it seriously, and that will be far, far too late.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    In other news, ScienceMag:

    The authors of a Nature Communications study that suggested female scientists who have female mentors have worse career outcomes, provoking social media outrage and criticism of their methods, have retracted the paper. The move comes 1 month after journal editors announced they were launching a “priority” investigation of that paper, Retraction Watch reports today.

    The study, published on 17 November by researchers from New York University, Abu Dhabi, combed through more than 200 million scientific papers to identify several million mentor-mentee pairs, then tracked their co-authorships and citation records to evaluate the impact of mentorship. Their conclusions, including a finding that “current diversity policies promoting female-female mentorships, as well-intended as they may be, could hinder the careers of women,” angered many researchers. Critics attacked both the study’s conclusions and the methods used to reach them.

    In a retraction notice published today, the authors wrote that they recognized the validity of some of the complaints, including concerns about “the use of co-authorship as a measure of mentorship.” The authors added that although they “believe that all the key findings of the paper with regards to co-authorship between junior and senior researchers are still valid,” they “feel deep regret that the publication of our research has both caused pain on an individual level and triggered such a profound response among many in the scientific community.”

    Nature Communications itself weighed in. “In an editorial accompanying the retraction, the editors argue that this was not a case of retracting a paper just because some found distasteful, but that there were serious issues in the methods,” Retraction Watch reports.

    The editors also wrote that they had “reviewed our editorial practices and policies and, in the past few weeks, have developed additional internal guidelines, and updated information for authors on how we approach this type of paper. As part of these guidelines, we recognise that it is essential to ensure that such studies are considered from multiple perspectives including from groups concerned by the findings. We believe that this will help us ensure that the review process takes into account the dimension of potential harm, and that claims are moderated by a consideration of limitations when conclusions have potential policy implications.”

    (Emphasis added.)

    Good, good.

    That last bit is most important, IMHO. It’s far too easy these days to sort though a mountain of data and come up with some explanation with a “significant” p-value less than 5% that might instead be explained by something else (e.g. a problem with the data). Journals need to be much more aware of the implications of publication of stuff like this.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    geg6

    Navalny is like some kind of superhero.  He continues to amaze me just by being alive, let alone trapping his would-be assassins.  He makes Putin his bitch like no one else.  Russia, why don’t you rise up and put this man at the top?!?!?!  I know nothing of his ideology, but certainly he’s gotta be a better leader than the low life KGB thug leading them now.

  35. 35.

    Anomalous Cowherd

    @Mary G:

    Yeah, if their OpSec is that bad, how did they manage to penetrate US networks and keep it hidden for months?  Sounds like we need some competent cyber security gurus. Maybe Putin’s plan was for The Donald of the Bigly Hands to screw around with things until he unwittingly created the conditions for a breach.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    @Cheryl Rofer: I wondered why the first guy – who was called and said “I know who you are” and then hung up the phone – didn’t immediately call the others who were involved, to warn them not to fall for that trick.

  40. 40.

    SFAW

    @geg6: 

    Navalny is like some kind of superhero.

    Like Butchie Doe?

    [Sorry, local reference. Butchie Doe was a Boston mobster who survived a multitude of attempted hits.]

  41. 41.

    gene108

    @Anomalous Cowherd:

    Part of me feels the cybersecurity grunts knew about it, but no one higher up would bother escalating things, because showing Russia can hack us would upset Donnie.

    It’d just prove that Russia’s more than capable of helping him win in 2016.

  45. 45.

    Ruckus

    @bjacques:

    Even if trump had some sort of master plan, it would be crap.

    Because he’s blinded by narcissism and greed.

    How often do you think that might just be the entire operational thought process that he and his possess?

  46. 46.

    jonas

    @The Moar You Know:  They’re sloppy because they can be.

    Was just about to say the same thing. And with Trump fully in control of the GOP for the foreseeable future, even if out of the WH, Putin knows he can count on Republican politicians at all levels to continue running interference for him as a sign of loyalty to Trump.

  47. 47.

    germy

    @Wag:

    I’d forgotten about the LOL shirt!

    What a strange story,  Historians of the future will wonder if we were all high.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @The Moar You Know:

    Allowing their financial system to be owned by russians has done wonders for them hasn’t it? Do you think they ever thought once about who the wealthy russians are and how and why they were able to get wealthy in russia?

  50. 50.

    The Moar You Know

    Do you think they ever thought once about who the wealthy russians are and how and why they were able to get wealthy in russia?

    @Ruckus: Nope.  Not for a second.  Just like how Americans and Canadians pay no attention to who the wealthy Chinese are – not to mention how they got that way – who are buying scads of West Coast real estate.

  52. 52.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @Baud: Create a Department of Vengeance and put Hillary in charge of it.

    :-)  I just wanted to see this again…………….

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @The Moar You Know:

    Thought you’d agree. Money buys everything and anything. People are not only available, they might be some of the cheapest and easiest things to buy. Although, like in every other situation buying the most expensive thing is no guarantee of quality, the cheapest one is often a very good sign of a lack thereof.

  54. 54.

    Frank Wilhoit

    “…the Russian intelligence services are sloppy…”

    Time was, they knew better; and even today, this kind of thing could be cleaned up very quickly, if the motivation was there.  Can it be that the motivation isn’t there: that it is all performance for them, as it is for us?

  55. 55.

    ...now I try to be amused

    Bellingcat has been wildly successful in using open-source information to scoop conventional news sources and, probably, national intelligence services. National intelligence services have been reluctant to admit that open source information can be as useful as their classified sources.

    1. An honest intelligence officer wrote that much of their time is spent reading newspapers and other open-source publications.
    2. Jim Dunnigan wrote in Strategy & Tactics magazine that they found material in Russian publications that was classified secret in the US. Likewise they found material in US publications that was classified secret in the Soviet Union.
  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @Frank Wilhoit:

    I think the sloppiness is, if not precisely the point, then at least a potential message.  I’m sure they’re perfectly happy when an operation goes without a hitch and they get away cleanly.  But getting caught and facing no real consequences is at least as intimidating to dissidents.

  58. 58.

    Ruckus

    @Frank Wilhoit:

    The bigger any process involving humans gets, the bigger the possibility of sloppiness gets. Less control, more chances for miss communication, more chances for confusion, more chances for miss understanding, more chances for fuck ups. It’s why extremely important things are supposed to have cross checks. Two people to read a court filing to make sure the line above the signature doesn’t have the words “plenty of perjury” in it.

  59. 59.

    The Pale Scot

    @The Moar You Know:

    The Brits won’t allow it, though.

    Fukem

    UK is out of the EU in less than 2 weeks, their influence and usefulness is fading. The shitshow that is going to be UK politicos trying to keep things together is going to run over any other international concerns the UK might have.

     

    The UK’s red lines means that they are going to be way outside the Single Market. The treaty process that allowed them to cobble something together with the EU end date is 12/31. After that the UK is a third country with the same access as Armenia. The UK hasn’t worked to keep the Interconnector that sends electricity from Europe to the UK nominal. Or set up certification for their air traffic control. They need to hire and train thousands of custom agents, so far they’ve hired 16. They have spent little on ferry customs infrastructure, 100’s of millions on container port infrastructure.

     

    COVID, especially the current embargo the Europeans have placed on the UK due to this new strain, will cover up the Brexit ruins for a couple of weeks. But people will notice that small continental businesses are no longer taking their business. Toyota and Nissan have stashed about 2 weeks of parts, after that they need JIT deliveries from the continent

     

    I should add that all indications point that it will be a generation before UK, if it still exists, would be accepted back into the EU. Most Europeans don’t care about the UK and have already moved on

  60. 60.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Ruckus: Yes, but the other angle is when you hire your friends/tribal affiliates instead of people who know how to do stuff. If you’re performing, you hire your friends. If the outcome actually matters (arguably an obsolete concept), you hire people who can get outcomes.

  61. 61.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: If the point is actually quell general dissent, you certainly don’t want to be too successful at fading into the probable. And if you don’t mind burning your own personnel, why bother with over-scrupulous stealth?

  62. 62.

    Feathers

    I see London, I see France,
    You’ve got Novichok in your underpants.

    Deepest apologies, I am my inner five year-old sometimes. I have been on a Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie kick, and am imagining David Suchet as Poirot or Jeremy Brett as Holmes saying, “You see, it was the poisoned underpants.” Wondering how much this will penetrate the zeitgeist.

  63. 63.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @Feathers:

    Deepest apologies, I am my inner five year-old sometimes.

    My inner twelve-year-old thinks:

    1. Poison underpants.
    2. ???
    3. PROFIT!
  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @scav:

    If the point is actually quell general dissent, you certainly don’t want to be too successful at fading into the probable.

    Yes and no.  There’s more than one of avoiding fading into the probable.  The way you want to do it is the way they’ve done it inside Russia: people keep dying in things that are officially declared accidents but which are so obviously not that everyone gets the point.  This happens without people blowing their cover or revealing interesting methods.  In contrast, the stuff that’s been caught happening overseas just seems sloppy.  They can claim intimidation and proof of impunity as a consolation prize, but I think they’d probably be happier if their operatives maintained cover and their methods weren’t shown to be sloppy.  The deaths of prominent dissidents would be enough of a message.

  67. 67.

    scav

    @Roger Moore: I really don’t know. There’s the ideal and then there’s satisficing behavior. If the ideal takes time and money, many just go for good enough. If there are no costs (that you’re unwilling to pay) to being sloppy, why bother? There are also questions of style — some bullies really enjoy the public sand kicking and the swanning around bare-chested riding a stegosaurus.  In a world of Trump, Bojo and minions, I’m not sure I’m thoroughly expecting optimal practices from team Putin.

  69. 69.

    mad citizen

    @The Pale Scot: I’m curious what the source is for this “The UK hasn’t worked to keep the Interconnector that sends electricity from Europe to the UK nominal.”

    According to a recent article at powerengineering.com, ““While Britain is set to leave the EU, as far as power markets are concerned it is set to increasingly look less like an island.”

    https://www.powerengineeringint.com/world-regions/europe/uk-interconnectivity-with-europe-to-rise-despite-brexit/

  71. 71.

    debbie

    More than a bit surprising that Kudryavtsev shot his mouth off like that. How long until he takes a leap out the window?

  73. 73.

    The Pale Scot

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    What is the UK with COVID-19 and no-deal Brexit going to look like…

    A no deal Brexit means the UK trades with the EU on WTO terms. That means Britain must put standard tariffs on food, auto parts, a whole range of items. It also means that Britain cannot discriminate. Chicken coming from Nigeria must be treated the same as chicken from France or Nigeria can bring a suit against Britain at the WTO (as long as the chx meets UK standards, which they have not yet published). It’s the same with everything, If Britain waves thru meat and produce from the EU they have to to do the same for every other export, so pop goes Britain’s Agri industry. The most immediate WTFs are the thousands of SMEs that sell small amounts of goods to the UK and are just going to say fuck it, it’s not worth the hassle. Horticulturalists are getting these letters now, “we won’t be shipping to the UK until this Brexit thing is sorted out” 

    Amazon isn’t going to collect VAT taxes, so sellers are going to need to keep stock both in the UK and in Europe to manage the paperwork. Capt. Kirk has announced that his store will not be shipping to the UK because it’s not worth the hassle

    @mad citizen:

    I’m curious what the source is for this “The UK hasn’t worked to keep the Interconnector that sends electricity from Europe to the UK nominal.”

    Energy Becomes Barnier’s Brexit Bargaining Chip

    Unless the UK does a long backpedal, the UK’s access on preferential is terms is over. As a 3rd country it will be competing with the Ukraine on price, and deliveries into the EU will have to have tariffs attached. This all WTO mandated, or as Boris calls it, Australia terms

    Leaving the SM is like Pennsylvania seceding and trading with the USA on the same the same terms as Tongo. The Brexiteers want to slash regulations and compete globally on price (by reducing wages, benefits and environmental protections). They think they could replace say Cali lettuce with lettuce from Cuba, both would have the same tariffs but the Cuban lettuce would be so much cheaper. What exactly they think the could export other than laundromat services for criminal enterprises I don’t know.

     

    This is an episode of Leverage where the whole team is doing poppers and huffing glue. I see no sense or final goal in the UK gov’s actions. It’s all just reacting to daily headlines.

     

    The UK is fucked. At least in the US Trump’s powers were restricted by the federal system. In the Uk everything is run from London as far as International relations go, The Scots will use this to pry themselves loose of a sinking ship, but the margins are tight

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