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Maybe North Korea Didn’t Hack Sony

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According to the White House, the FBI, and lots of other folks who really should be pretty sure of these things before making statements or taking action, North Korea was behind the infamous Sony hacks that have been in the news for most of the end of 2014. Apparently, the US was confident enough to retaliate by shutting down Internet to the entire country:

North Korea called U.S. President Barack Obama a “monkey” and blamed Washington on Saturday for Internet outages it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures. The National Defense Commission, the North’s ruling body chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, said Obama was responsible for Sony’s belated decision to release the action comedy “The Interview,” which depicts a plot to assassinate Kim.

And yet, as I’ve been paying attention to the story I am not convinced that we’ve got the write villain. It’s articles like this one that, as far as I can tell, make the strong case that the hack was actually an inside job pulled off primarily by disgruntled ex-employees of Sony itself. One of the first things to point out, for example, is that the hackers showed absolutely zero interest in “The Interview” until after media reports arose alleging a possible North Korean connection. Only at that point did the hackers make an issue out of it, as though taking a convenient opportunity to throw researchers on the wrong track.

Other reasons to think that North Korea might not have been to blame? Logs indicate that files were transferred at a rate that you would only get by physically plugging a device into the server to download files, not by moving them over the Internet. Specific IP addresses and user credentials were known to the hackers ahead of time, not discovered during preliminary hacks. Linguistic examination of online communication by the hackers (Guardians of Peace or GOP) suggests they are native Russian speakers, not native Korean or English speakers.

The leading theory, from where I’m standing, is that an angry, laid-off worker with tech skills (security researchers believe they have identified her individually) teamed up with the kind of hackers who resent Sony for attacking the Pirate Bay and other anti-piracy measures and maybe some friends left inside the company to pull off the hack. Why would the government get it wrong? Well, it’s not like it’s the kind of thing that North Korea wouldn’t or couldn’t do, so I don’t think it was a stupid mistake or a conspiracy theory or anything. But I don’t have a lot of confidence in the federal government’s ability to do this kind of analysis correctly and even less confidence in their ability to correct a mistaken impression once it takes hold at a senior level. Would you want to be the one who told the President he’d gone public with bad intel?

On the other hand, I can’t really think of a worse possible reason to start World War III than mistaken accusations about hacking a movie studio, so I really do hope they figure this one out.

 

How to Respond to Terrorism with Love

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Earlier this morning, a tense standoff in Australia ended in gunfire. A single hostage-taker initially held 17 hostages, of whom 12 had been released. When police heard gunfire inside the building, they responded immediately. The hostage taker and two hostages are dead. Three people are injured, including one police officer. All this info comes from an ABC News article, which also includes an apparent connection to radical Islam:

Two people inside the cafe were seen holding up a flag with Arabic writing on it that has been used by extremists in the past — raising fears that a terror attack was unfolding in Australia’s largest city.

Also this morning, I found an article with the headline: Australians Just Showed the World Exactly How to Respond to Terrorism With #IllRideWithYou. The article describes the origins of the #IllRideWithYou hashtag in which Australians are volunteering to accompany Muslims who wish to wear their religious clothes (e.g. hijab) on public transportation but are afraid of animosity or retaliation in the wake of the hostage crisis. The pictures–and the sentiment behind them–are noble and touching.

2014-12-15 I'll Walk With You
Read the bottom one first.

I agree with the idea of #IllRideWithYou. Even if you take–simply for the sake of argument–the strong and controversial position that the scripture or theology of Islam tend towards violence, it does not follow that all Muslims are violent. So, even in this extreme case, the correct response to peaceful, law-abiding Muslims is support and compassion.

But I do not agree with the headline. This is not the one true correct way to respond to terrorism. There are two correct responses. #IllRideWithYou is one half. Here’s what the other half looks like:

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That photo[ref]from coverage at USA Today[/ref] shows one of the hostages running into the arms of a police officer moments after escaping the chocolate store through a side entrance. As lovely, as beautiful, and as necessary as the compassionate outreach of Australian commuters may be, none of that was what you would have been praying for if you were a hostage or had a family member held hostage in that store. There is also bravery and even love in the willingness to use violence–and be subject to the threat of violence–in lawful defense of the innocent.

A courageous and just society needs both of these responses. Not just one or the other.

This fits very nicely with Walker’s post from earlier today. He pointed out an article by Hernando de Soto in the WSJ arguing that–in the long run–you overcome terrorism not just with dronestrikes but also with economic development that gives people a better life.[ref]Walker and I wrote about this connection between love and economics for the journal SquareTwo: “No Poor Among Them”: Global Poverty, Free Markets, and the “Fourfold” Mission[/ref] As coldly calculating as the discipline of economics and the emphasis on free markets may appear, a focus on economic liberty and investment and development is really nothing but a sincere and informed desire for other humans to prosper and draw closer to us in webs of trade, communication, mutual interest, and interdependence.

Love of fellow man doesn’t always look like what we expect it to. Sometimes it comes in the form of sympathetic hashtags. Sometimes it wears body armor and wields automatic weapons. And sometimes it spouts statistics, theories, and economic jargon. We need to broaden our concept of what it means to love if we are to love as expansively as these dark times require of us.

 

Sauron and the Metaphysical Moscow

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A friend of mine from Moscow has been posting for several days about a cool event scheduled for December 11th. The Eye of Sauron was going to appear on a tower in the Moscow-City business center. It would have been huge, and very prominent. Well, Svecheniye- the art group behind the project- have just announced that they are scrapping the whole thing. They stated that there was nothing political or religious about their Eye of Sauron project, but they received intensely adverse reactions. While the Russian article I read did not specify who pressured Svecheniye, it seemed pretty obvious. Several news articles have been more explicit.  The Russian Orthodox Church strenuously objected to prominently displaying a “demonic symbol of the triumph of evil” in Moscow because it would bring disasters upon the city. For the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow is a profoundly holy city, the Third Rome. As an Estonian scholar noted, it is crucial to that church’s self-identity.

Moscow is not only the most important city but it is chosen by God and in a way set apart from other places on the earth. Moscow has a special religious function. It is the Christian centre. It is in some way closer to God. But that is not all… Moscow is the Third Rome and “the third stands, and there will never be a fourth.“ Moscow is the last Rome. Moscow was the centre of history and therefore its fulfilment. This means that Russia had to preserve its rich store of faith in purity in the last phase before the end of the world. And this fact puts a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of the Russians.

With this kind of metaphysics, the Tolkien fans never stood a chance. Never mind that Sauron symbolizes the hubris and ultimate futility of evil, not its triumph. The political power of the Russian Orthodox Church means that it can win these battles quite easily.

The Racist History of Disease, Africa, and Immigrants

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I tend to react to the Ebola scare with the following:

A recent article from The Washington Post provides further reasons to react in such a way:

The long history of associating immigrants and disease in America and the problematic impact that has on attitudes toward immigrants should make us sensitive to the impact of “othering” African immigrants to the United States in the midst of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Scare-mongering about infinitesimally small risks in one context serves no purpose to the greater good of trying to curb disease transmission and relieve people’s suffering in another context.

The article is full of links to various studies on colonial history, political history of immigration, Ebola breakouts, etc.

An excellent read. Check it out.

The Peshmerga Vs. ISIS: A Military Appraisal

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This is a fascinating article by Kenneth Pollack on what likely occurred when ISIS attacked the Kurds this summer, and is well worth a read.

The long and short of it is that the Peshmerga is still a good force, but it is not quite what it used to be.

For one, the manpower has changed. Between the 60s and 80s, most of the Peshmerga recruits grew up in the harsh, rugged environment of the mountains. Being able to handle a rifle was necessary for survival (wolves still preyed on flocks and the various tribes settled scores with each other and with the government) so it is no surprise that the Kurds were “uncanny marksmen” in the words of an Israeli military advisor who trained them in the 60s. In recent years, Kurdish society has become increasingly urban. The recruits are “not terribly different from young city-dwellers across the world… more likely to have played “Call of Duty” than to have hunted or fired an actual weapon in anger.”

Second, the Peshmerga hasn’t seen significant action since 1996, and that was a civil war amongst similarly-armed Kurdish factions.

Third, they have rested on their laurels a bit, and have let training and discipline slip. “In that respect, they were probably unprepared to take on the highly-motivated ISIS troops they were suddenly forced to fight.”

Fourth, they suffer from a deficiency of heavy weapons like artillery and armoured vehicles, and what they have got is very dated, being at least 30-40 years old, if not older.

ISIS took the Kurds by surprise, but they fought back, managing to negate some of ISIS’s advantages. Still, as Pollack notes, “ISIS’s modus operandi is that when it is thwarted on one axis of advance, it simply turns and attacks in another direction,” and the article helps explain what is going on right now

ISIS has advanced to the Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria, triggering a massive flight of Kurds. The situation in Kobane is desperate, and despite its valiant efforts, the YPG, the Kurdish militia, suffers from many of the same disadvantages that gave ISIS its initial victories against the Peshmerga. The YPG is less than ten years old (and has been fighting for only three), is formed of Urban youths, and has no heavy weaponry at all. ISIS, on the other hand, has deployed its newly acquired tanks. The Kurds of the YPG are literally fighting with their backs to the wall, but due to these weaknesses they cannot hold out against ISIS if they receive no outside help on the ground.

Those Darn Medical Missionaries

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Dr. Kent, the Christian medical missionary who survived contracting Ebola. Also, apparently, a more alarming concern than Ebola itself.
Dr. Kent, the Christian medical missionary who survived contracting Ebola. Also, apparently, a more alarming concern than Ebola itself. (At least if you’re a certain kind of intellectual who might write for Slate.)

I’ll give Brian Palmer this: in his article for Slate he’s not at all shy about telling us how he really feels. It’s great, he says, that Christian medical missionaries are out there trying to do good works in Africa: “Rather than parachuting in during crises, like some international medicine specialists, a large number of them have undertaken long-term commitments to address the health problems of poor Africans.” And yet, after all the kind words like these he has to say for medical missionaries, they only serve to underscore the weirdness of his central point:

When an infected American missionary was flown back to the United States for treatment…  a fair number of Americans were thinking a much milder, less offensive form [thinking that he should “suffer the consequences” or that he was “idiotic”]. I’ll hold my own hand up. I still don’t feel good about missionary medicine, even though I can’t fully articulate why.

So let me point out the first obvious irony, which is for someone flying the proud flag of rationalism and skepticism to be so open and honest about his totally irrational and credulous animosity towards Christians. Gee, if only we had a word to describe irrational, unarticulated prejudices…The sad part is that religious skepticism has descended so far below the heights of freethinking iconoclasm that no one even seems to remember when rejecting theism was a carefully considered intellectual proposition that actually meant something. Now it’s a fashion statement. Some of us don’t like normcore. Some of don’t like Christianity. People are weird, am I right?

I’m definitely not the first to take Palmer to task, and I’m avoiding the most obvious problem with his argument. David French handled that admirably in his piece for the NRO:

In other words, [Palmer] has a problem with medical missionaries because they’re not operating in first-world hospitals with first-world reporting systems and first-world systems of legal accountability? If there weren’t staffing shortages, drug shortages, a lack of large health-care facilities, and all the other issues that dominate developing-world medicine, we wouldn’t need medical missionaries.

French is right, and so I don’t repeat it. Instead, let me raise just one other issue. It’s subtle, I think, until you state it out loud. Then it seems really, really awkwardly obvious. We’re on the threshold of an unprecedented humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Africa with the potential to kill millions (both directly and from the resulting chaos and upheaval) and, on the verge of this nightmare, Palmer thinks it’s a good time to talk about the queasiness with which he regards the religiosity of strangers? That is what the threat of a continent-wide pandemic makes him think is a really pressing issue?

Now that’s some privilege right there.

Cronyism in Hong Kong

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With the Hong Kong protests still raging–protests that were possibly inspired by the Occupy movement in the U.S.–I was reminded of the “crony-capitalism index” put out by The Economist earier this year. Check out who tops the chart:

Now, the methodology of the index is admittedly crude (even recognized by The Economist itself), especially since it concentrates on rich individuals and “rent-heavy” industries. But worth thinking about.

NYT: What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola

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Michael T. Osterholm’s piece on Eblola for the NYT pretty much confirms what I’ve been thinking about this unfolding crisis. First: what’s to stop the virus from spreading from West Africa to megacities in the developing nation. He mentions Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasha, or Mogadishu (in Africa) or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City, or Dhaka. If you’re curious, here are the population figures for those cities:

Just for some context, New York City has a population of 8,405,837 and a density of 27,779 per square mile. So some of these cities are more than twice as big and Dhaka, at least, is more than twice as densely populated. Of course, unlike New York City, they don’t have First World sanitary and medical services. The devastation wreaked by an outbreak in such densely populated regions could be horrific, not to mention the accompanying chaos from fear and quarantine measures.

The other fear, however, is that the virus will mutate to become airborne. Right now it is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluid of someone who is infected, which is why First World nations are probably not as vulnerable to widespread contagion. But, like many viruses, Ebola mutates a lot. What’s particularly worrisome, however, is that the more people that get sick, the more copies of the virus there are to mutate. Every new host is trillions of new chances for an airborne version to emerge. This is why fighting the outbreak now is a global concern, other than for the obvious humanitarian reasons.

I’m not writing this as a scare article. There’s no guarantee that the virus will mutate. This is the worst Ebola outbreak ever, but it’s certainly not the first. I had just wondered, myself, if mutation to an airborne strain wasn’t the primary reason for concern. But I hadn’t heard anyone mention it. Until now. Looks like it is the primary concern. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. (Osterholm’s piece has recommendations for hos to fight the virus now, most of which involve the UN.)

Leading British Muslims Issue Fatwa condemning ISIS

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2014-09-03 ISIS

According to the Independent, some prominent clerics based in the UK have jointly issued a fatwa condemning ISIS and specifically condemning British men who run off to join the militant group. On the one hand, this isn’t really big news. Al Qaeda has called ISIS extreme, after all. Still, it’s encouraging to see a prominent example of Islamic religious authority being used to counter Islamic terrorism.