Google hosted a PRC espionage campaign for years, and now has published a very formal report framing the “disruption” (turning off their own API keys) as a national security achievement.
The report generates false legitimacy signals. Their framing positions Google as a hero against China, when the more accurate read is that Google was the unwitting (or indifferent) provider who eventually cleaned up a mess after their Mandiant team was pulled by a customer to look at a strange binary on a CentOS server.
The surveillance of dissidents and activists through compromised telcos in over 40 countries gets a few sentences of passive-voice acknowledgment. No analysis of which populations were endangered, which governments were complicit, or what obligations Google has to all the people whose PII was being exfiltrated through Google’s own API.
The report explicitly disclaims responsibility:
This activity is not the result of a security vulnerability in Google’s products.
Doesn’t that make it even worse? No discussion of why Google’s infrastructure is trivially weaponized for state espionage, or about the design changes to prevent it now and into the future.
Users are being set up to think about a company “taking action” against China and infer the cloud is being protected, when the actual story is that Google infrastructure was functioning uninterrupted as a conduit for a state actor C2 (GTIG tracked UNC2814 since 2017, and the IOCs they released cover infrastructure active since at least 2023).
Google is the drug company that discovered its product was causing organ failure in 42 countries, eventually pulled it from the shelf, then published a press release celebrating their pharmacovigilance program. No independent review of why Google Cloud was trivially weaponizable. No mandatory disclosure of how long they knew. No liability discussion. No institutional separation between the entity that profits from cloud adoption and the entity that decided when to act.
This GRIDTIDE report operates as a legitimacy-shield function, a form of moderation theater that displaces demand for the regulatory architecture that would actually constrain the problem.
Ok, ok, I know what the counter-argument will be. Let’s be honest. The technique is catalogued in MITRE ATT&CK. It’s a known, documented, years-old pattern across every major cloud provider. Every one of these services — Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint — has the same design vulnerability: their APIs can’t distinguish legitimate use from espionage traffic because the espionage is legitimate use.
APT29 (Russia/SVR) used Google Drive and Dropbox for C2 against European embassies. APT43 (North Korea) used Google Drive and Dropbox for staging and delivery. APT37 (North Korea) used OneDrive. APT28 (Russia/GRU) used OneDrive via the Microsoft Graph API. China-nexus groups including UNC5330 used OneDrive. The Inception Framework/Cloud Atlas used Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox simultaneously. Molerats used Dropbox, Google Drive, and Facebook. Symantec reported in 2024 that the number of espionage operations using legitimate cloud services for C2 had grown significantly, identifying multiple new backdoors like GoGra, Grager, and BirdyClient all using cloud APIs.
But let’s stick to the core issue here, which is corporate disinformation.
Google is the one publishing their own hero narrative. Microsoft hasn’t published a blog post celebrating the “disruption” of APT29’s use of OneDrive. Dropbox didn’t hold a press conference about Molerats. Google is claiming credit for disrupting a problem that exists across the entire cloud industry, that Google’s own infrastructure contributed to for years, and that Google has done nothing to address at the design level.
The “disruption” was turning off specific accounts — not fixing the architectural problem that makes every cloud API a potential C2 channel. The next GRIDTIDE? Just need a different spreadsheet service, as the report itself admits. Thanks for nothing Google.
…the actor could easily make use of other cloud-based spreadsheet platforms in the same manner…
Trump bragged that the files would exonerate him. They continue to do the opposite. But even these child sex crime investigations only play background to his latest rushed march into war.
In June, Trump told the world that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated.” He gloated that he bombed Iran so hard he would take the Nobel Peace Prize. The White House tried to back him up with a page calling anyone who doubted Trump’s announcement a purveyor of “fake news.”
It’s impossible not to think of Nixon claiming “peace with honor” in Vietnam while burying the reality that the war was unwinnable — a fact the Pentagon Papers had already proved.
Well, guess who doubts Trump now? Trump.
Eight months from announcing the end of nuclear programs, the pathological liar just said to Congress that Iran is “starting it all over” and pursuing “sinister nuclear ambitions” that require a devastating strike.
As usual, Trump contradicts himself and therefore cannot be trusted. At least one statement is a calculated lie. The evidence says both are.
The DIA’s own early classified assessment found that only one of the three nuclear sites that Trump unilaterally bombed in Operation Midnight Hammer was arguably inoperable.
One of three. That’s a miss.
The other two continued operating, clearly not eliminated as told. The obvious question is why lie about the job being finished, since he could have said then that another strike is on the table. While Trump called everyone who disagreed the liars, the IAEA’s director general said Iran could resume enrichment within months, which is literally what’s happened. Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence also assessed in 2025 that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon.” So Trump not only lied about the effectiveness of American attacks, he publicly repudiated his own intelligence chief, undermining truth about the threat, without providing evidence.
The obliteration lie was used to sell military waste as an easy decision. The imminent threat now is a lie told to justify the next failure.
The whole propaganda track is sequential fabrication to cover up a deranged political agenda. It’s far more likely Trump demands Tehran build a giant triumphal yellow arch with his name on it than that he cares at all about Iranian weapons programs.
Trump’s Yellow ICBM Cake
The Niger yellowcake forgery has been updated. Trump lied to Congress when he claimed missiles in Iran will “soon reach the United States of America.”
His own Defense Intelligence Agency said last year that Iran could develop a militarily viable ICBM by 2035 at the earliest, even if it decided to pursue one. It hasn’t decided, so the date keeps slipping further away. That’s why Secretary of State Rubio wouldn’t commit to a timeline when pressed. The US intelligence community has been wrong on this exact prediction for a quarter century. Remember the 1999 estimate predicted Iranian ICBM flight tests by 2010. That deadline passed sixteen years ago. Iran has no strategic incentive to change. Trump offered none, and that’s a huge red flag.
The reason the prediction keeps failing is that an ICBM aimed at America is mission suicide. It is the kind of mistake that would unite American public opinion and trigger total response. No rational actor invites that. And between the two countries, America looks less and less like the rational one. After all, who is the one saying drop a big one, with no strategic outcome attached?
The actual Iranian missile threat is the one Trump repeatedly fails to address. Iran’s huge battle-tested medium-range arsenal, deployed without hesitation during the 12-day war with Israel last June, can already strike every American base across the Middle East and parts of Europe. Ramstein. Aviano. Incirlik. The Gulf installations. That capability is proven. It’s current inventory and has a combat record. But “our bases in Germany are vulnerable” doesn’t sell preemptive war to an American audience that can’t find Ukraine on a map.
So guess why we’re seeing Soviet-era propaganda about big bad foreign missiles landing on Indiana.
Forty-Five Years of Failing to Break Iran
The United States has been trying to break Iran since the 1950s, and the record is uninterrupted failure.
Reagan’s team negotiated with Tehran to delay the hostage release until after the 1980 election, actively using Iran to destroy Carter’s presidency. Then came Iran-Contra: the same administration that publicly backed Saddam’s invasion of Iran secretly sold weapons to Tehran and used the proceeds to fund illegal wars in Central America. Iran was an instrument of American power — used first to win an election, then as an off-books ATM.
And even with full-spectrum American backing, they couldn’t get Saddam to break Iran. The US ran his war. The DIA provided satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions. The CIA funneled billions through Gulf states. The Commerce Department licensed dual-use exports that became chemical weapons precursors. Reagan sent Rumsfeld to shake Saddam’s hand in 1983. Washington provided the targeting data Iraq used for chemical strikes on Iranian positions, and knew it. Washington reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and engaged the Iranian navy directly in 1988.
A solid eight years of American-backed conventional invasion, and Iran fought them all to a stalemate. America caused over a million Iranian casualties and the regime didn’t fall.
That’s the lesson this administration refuses to learn: Iran has been war-tested against American-backed conventional assault and came out stronger than America’s biggest regional ally. Bannon’s takeaway isn’t caution — it’s that proxies failed and only direct American force remains.
Now Bannon’s civilizational war theory, which he pitched to a Vatican conference in 2014 about an existential struggle between the “Judeo-Christian West” and Islamic power, has become the operating doctrine of Trump’s second term. Bannon pushed for tearing up the JCPOA not because it was a bad deal but because diplomacy with Iran contradicted the regime change objective. The MEK lobby, the cultish exile group that pays Bolton and Giuliani to speak at its rallies, has been the vehicle for this project for decades. Bannon’s war and the MEK’s war are the same war: permanent confrontation engineered to produce regime collapse.
The difference is that this time there’s no proxy. They’re proposing direct war against a country that already absorbed everything American-backed force could deliver — and survived.
The Gap in the Missile Gap
The fake threat inflation is well known to historians of the Cold War. Eisenhower knew the “bomber gap” was fabricated. He knew the “missile gap” was fabricated. It didn’t matter. JFK successfully ran on fear. The defense industry got big juicy contracts. The intelligence was irrelevant because the political utility of war was the whole point.
The difference from then is that the Soviet ICBM threat was real. They built them, deployed them, and aimed them at American cities. Iran hasn’t even committed to a program. Trump is running Cold War brinkmanship against a country that lacks what made the original version possible.
Same Warmonger Different Day
The bone-spur belligerent pattern is now explicit. Last summer Trump claimed he alone obliterated a nuclear program, mission accomplished, anyone who disagrees is fake news. This week he claims their nuclear program continues, developing long-range missiles to hit American cities, and he has to obliterate them this time. The administration’s own special envoy has started saying Iran is “probably a week away” from achieving bomb-grade material — for a program the president said wouldn’t exist.
These are purposeful and sequential lies calibrated to different moments. The obliteration claim covered up the failure of the first strike. The imminent threat claim erases any assessment of mission objectives as necessary let alone able to succeed. Neither is true when stated. Both serve warmongering for politicians who already decided to fight.
Trump talks about striking Iran the way he allegedly treated a 13-year-old girl, like he can punch down and there will be no consequences.
The reality of war with Iran is nothing like assaulting a child in a system built to look the other way. This is a country that absorbed eight years of American-backed invasion, over a million casualties, and chemical weapons, and came out the other side with its government and military stronger. And then Iraq, just like Panama before it, was severely punished by the CIA for the failures of the CIA. Saddam was an American asset until he wasn’t, just as Noriega was. Iran watched both disposals and drew the obvious conclusion.
Trump’s lies to Congress are far worse than pretext. They’re the words of the man who has never faced a consequence in his life, preparing to start a war against a nation that has faced nearly every consequence imaginable and is still standing for a reason.
Big Tech billionaires are exhibiting historic levels of cruelty towards society, as if to usher in harms
SpaceX filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites. The filing contains no deployment schedule, no cost estimate, no hardware specifications, and no satellite mass. It contains the phrase “Kardashev Type II civilization” and requests to waive every milestone requirement.
The FCC is accepting public comments. The deadline is unpublished, meaning it could close without notice.
Objection, Objection
The FCC has categorically excluded satellites from environmental review since 1986. The GAO recommended the agency revisit this. The FCC agreed they would, then started making the exemption permanent instead. Chairman Brendan Carr is formally arguing that orbital operations are “extraterritorial” and things falling on the U.S. are outside the scope of U.S. environmental law. It’s like a factory arguing their smoke stack is so tall it’s the next town’s problem.
There are roughly 15,000 satellites in orbit. Starlink already tangled up 300,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2025. That rate doubles every six months. A January 2026 study calculated that if any avoidance maneuvers failed, a catastrophic collision would occur within 2.8 days. Does anyone remember that in 2018 that window was 121 days? Now imagine the window after trying to fill 100X more satellites into the same space.
Last week, researchers published the first direct measurement of what happens when a satellite or rocket burns up overhead. One Falcon 9 upper stage dumped about 30 kg of lithium into the upper atmosphere—roughly 400 days’ worth of what arrives naturally from meteors. Along with the lithium: aluminum, copper, and lead. These metals stick around. They settle into the stratosphere, where aluminum oxides interact with the ozone layer in ways researchers have flagged but cannot yet quantify.
Every satellite ever launched comes back down and burns up. That has been the disposal plan, not unlike when everyone dumped barrels of toxins into the ocean. At a million satellites with five-year lifespans, you get about 550 burning up per day, each one shedding metal pollution into the air above your head. We know this is happening because scientists proved it for the first time seven days ago. We do not know what it does at scale because nobody has studied it yet. Nobody has studied it because the FCC has never required a study.
Environmental review under the current framework, despite the obviousness of the need, still is not triggered.
How to Object
Go to the FCC CORES portal. Create an account. File a comment on application SAT-LOA-20260108-00016.
Demand environmental review under NEPA before any approval. There is also a Reflect Orbital filing (satellites with giant mirrors beaming sunlight to Earth at night) with a March 6 deadline.
The request is simple: make the FCC comply with the law Congress passed in 1969 requiring agencies to assess environmental consequences before acting. A categorical exclusion written for a few hundred satellites does not hold above 1,000 let alone 100K. A million? Fuhgetaboutit.
…[Texas Rep. Al] Green quietly unfurled a sign declaring that “Black People Aren’t Apes,” an apparent reference to a video that was briefly posted on Trump’s Truth Social account earlier this month that depicted President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes. Republican lawmakers were incensed, with Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma at one point trying to tear the sign out of Green’s hand.
What was Mullin so angry about?
To no one’s surprise the White House recount reads like a dispatch from North Korea, a silly propaganda operation. To me, as a disinformation historian, it looks like a military-grade influence technique buffet.
I assure you that every line from the White House blog maps to a known military intelligence information warfare tactic. Most of them are catalogued in doctrine manuals from RAND, NATO StratCom, as well as the old Soviet active measures playbook.
None of this is subtle.
None of it is new.
The only thing novel is that the .gov domain has been captured by people who type like they only have thumbs.
Here is the secret decoder ring you should be able to find in any box of Cheerios.
Loyalty Enumeration
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
1. The entire “Democrats refused to applaud” list structure
Documenting who failed to perform sufficient enthusiasm for the leader transforms a press release into a denunciation register. The content of the speech becomes secondary to cataloguing the reactions of potential enemies.
Stalin’s Pravda tracked applause levels at Party Congresses. Mao’s Hundred Flowers campaign invited criticism, then used responses as a purge list. Ceausescu’s final speech was structured identically.
Dehumanization Lexicon
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
2. “Savage criminal illegal aliens — killers, rapists, gang members, and traffickers,” “illegal alien monster,” “invasion”
Categorical dehumanization collapses an entire population into threat archetypes. Once a group is linguistically recategorized as subhuman, any action against them reads as self-defense rather than aggression.
Nazi Ungeziefer (vermin) and Untermenschen. Rwandan Hutu Power radio used inyenzi (cockroaches). Ottoman authorities framed Armenians as existential threats. Khmer Rouge called targets “parasites.”
Firehose of Falsehood
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
3. Over 47 claims in a single document: “ending eight wars,” “total victory over terrorists,” “single largest drop in the murder rate in 125 years,” soaring 401(k)s, secure border, falling crime
Volume overwhelms verification. Each claim would require independent fact-checking, but the sheer density ensures no single lie gets adequate scrutiny. Documented by RAND as a core Russian information warfare technique. The goal is not persuasion but exhaustion.
Russian IRA operations 2014-2020. Goebbels’ principle of the Big Lie scaled through repetition. Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob” during the 2003 invasion. Erdogan’s post-coup media blitz in 2016.
Atrocity Propaganda
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
4. “The grieving families of innocent American women and children murdered by criminal illegal aliens — including the mother of Iryna Zarutska”
Showcase individual victims of the target group to generalize criminality across an entire population. The named victim creates emotional specificity; the category does the political work. Individual tragedy becomes collective indictment.
The Nazis published Der Stürmer with a regular feature on crimes allegedly committed by Jews. The British WWI Bryce Report fabricated Belgian atrocity stories. Willie Horton was the American domestic version.
Blood Libel / Ethnic Financial Crime
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
5. “Ending widespread fraud schemes — like the $19 billion Somali fraud scandal that burdened Minnesota taxpayers”
Attach an outrageous financial crime to a specific ethnic community as a collective. Position the native population as victims. The dollar figure gives false precision. Whether a kernel of fraud exists is irrelevant — the function is to weld an ethnic identity to criminality in public memory.
Medieval blood libel against Jews. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Chinese Exclusion Act propaganda about wage theft. Japanese internment justified partly through claims of economic sabotage.
Child Protection Pretext
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
6. “Protecting minor children from the horrors of irreversible sex changes”
Position the state as rescuer of children from a demonized minority. “Protect the children” is the single most reliable authoritarian mobilization frame because it makes opposition impossible to articulate without appearing to endorse harm to minors.
Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” (1977). UK Section 28 (1988). Putin’s “gay propaganda” law (2013). QAnon’s child trafficking mythology. Nazi campaign against “degenerate” influences on youth.
War Buried in Consumer Metrics
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
7. Military invasion of Venezuela listed between gas prices and tax cuts
Normalization through sequencing. Embedding an act of war inside a consumer satisfaction list makes conquest read as just another deliverable. By the time the reader scrolls past “No Tax on Tips,” the overthrow of a sovereign government is just another bullet point.
Mussolini buried the invasion of Ethiopia inside domestic economic messaging. Bush administration embedded Iraq escalation inside State of the Union laundry lists. Israel’s settlement expansion reported alongside economic indicators.
Sovereignty Laundering
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
8. “The decisive military action that brought indicted narcoterrorist Nicolás Maduro to justice, crippling drug cartels and liberating our hemisphere”
Reframe military invasion of a sovereign nation as law enforcement. “Indicted” provides the legal costume. “Narcoterrorist” merges drug policy with war on terror framing. “Liberating our hemisphere” recycles Monroe Doctrine language to present aggression as regional stewardship.
Panama 1989 (Noriega). Grenada 1983. Iraq 2003 framed as “liberation.” Soviet “fraternal assistance” for Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979.
Claim credit for trends that precede your administration or result from factors beyond executive control. Economic indicators move on multi-year cycles; presenting inherited momentum as personal achievement is a universal autocratic move.
Mussolini and the trains. Stalin and industrialization (achieved through mass death). Putin claiming credit for oil-price-driven GDP growth in the 2000s. Xi claiming poverty reduction that was already trending.
Phantom Threat / Voter Fraud Myth
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
10. “Protecting the integrity of our elections by preventing illegal aliens from undermining our democracy”
Manufacture a nonexistent threat to justify voter suppression infrastructure. Noncitizen voting is statistically negligible, but asserting its existence creates the pretext for purging voter rolls and restricting access. The “protection” is the weapon.
Jim Crow literacy tests framed as “election integrity.” Hungary’s Orbán used “Soros-funded” migration to justify election law changes. Putin frames managed elections as defense against Western interference.
Militarism as Nostalgia
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
11. “A World War II hero who helped liberate the largest internment camp in the Philippines,” “Warrior Dividends,” law enforcement “respected once again”
Wrap current militarism in the unimpeachable moral authority of WWII. Conflating a genuine hero’s story with contemporary military adventurism transfers legitimacy from a justified war to unjustified ones. “Warrior Dividends” monetizes the mythology.
Reagan’s WWII references to justify Cold War escalation. Putin’s “Great Patriotic War” cult used to legitimize the Ukraine invasion. Mussolini invoking Rome. Every authoritarian regime attaches itself to prior military glory to launder current aggression.
Unfalsifiable Victory Claims
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
12. “Ending eight wars,” “total victory over terrorists abroad,” “peace through unmatched American strength”
Declare victory in conflicts the audience cannot independently verify. Which eight wars? Total victory where? These claims exist in a verification vacuum — they cannot be checked in real time, and by the time anyone tries, the news cycle has moved on.
Nixon’s “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.” Soviet claims of victory in Afghanistan. The forever war’s perpetual “turning the corner.”
Populist Bribery
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
13. “No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, No Tax on Social Security,” “Trump Accounts” for newborns, banning corporations from buying single-family homes
Scatter enough consumer-facing promises to create personal financial stakes in regime loyalty. Each item targets a specific demographic. The policies need not be real or enacted — the announcement itself is the product.
Perón’s aguinaldo (mandatory bonus). Chavez’s Bolivarian missions. Erdogan’s pre-election handouts. Putin’s pension increases timed to elections. Bread and circuses, updated for the 401(k) era.
Sacred Calendar
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
14. “National Day of Patriotic Devotion, 2026” in the related articles
Sacralizing the regime through mandatory civic ritual. Creating regime-specific holidays displaces existing civic traditions and establishes the leader’s calendar as the national temporal framework.
Mussolini’s Fascist calendar (Year I of the Fascist Era). Franco’s “Day of the Race.” Nazi Nationalfeiertag. North Korea’s Juche calendar. Turkmenistan’s Ruhnama Day.
Enemy Media Designation
What They Published
How It Works
Who Did It Before
15. “Media Offenders” page linked in site navigation
Official government designation of press outlets as enemies of the state, maintained as a permanent institutional feature rather than rhetorical flourish. Converts press criticism from democratic function to act of disloyalty.
Nazi Lügenpresse (lying press). Stalin’s purges of journalists. Erdogan’s mass closure of media outlets post-2016. Orbán’s systematic acquisition of independent Hungarian media. Duterte’s shutdown of ABS-CBN.
The Architecture, Not the Ingredients
Any single tactic on this list normally would be dismissed as deranged political hyperbole, excessive partisan messaging, or rhetorical overreach that causes conflict. That is exactly how military intelligence sets up a disinformation buffet to work. The effect does not depend on any individual dish, because it serves them all simultaneously on official White House china. As Trump loyalists monitor everyone in the house, those who digest what’s served are in trouble, while those who resist are in even more danger.
Nazis wore red. A scene from a 2025 movie about Hitler pressing women into tasting his food for poison, based on the 2018 book: “Le assaggiatrici”
Content is each of the fifteen individual tactics. Architecture is the system that connects all the content, such as the .gov blog post methodology. The White House use of military intelligence doctrine in an attack on the American public does three things at once with a known authoritarian architecture:
Establishes a loyalty test (who applauded)
Designates enemies both domestic (Democrats, media) and foreign (immigrants, Somalis, Venezuela)
Buries an act of war inside a consumer rewards program
That triple function of loyalty enforcement, enemy designation, and normalization of violence does something far beyond an actual press release. It is an operations order, which comes along with news that mass political prisons are being rushed at high cost to begin spraying people with “war power” authorized pesticides.
Use of the .gov domain and a blog post to attack Americans tells you how far and informal a normalization of military dictatorship has already progressed. Every technique was field-tested by a regime that did not survive its own ambitions. The historical record is not ambiguous about where an all-you-can-eat buffet approach to military intelligence leads.
The only question is whether Americans recognize the price of swallowing what Trump is dishing, before the bill is due.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
