Latest news with #Gabbard
NDTV
3 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
US Spy Chief Accuses Obama Of "Conspiracy". Ex-CIA Official Hits Back
A former CIA official who led the intelligence assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election has slammed Tulsi Gabbard's claims of a "treasonous conspiracy" against Donald Trump, calling them false and uninformed. Susan Miller, who served as the CIA's head of counter-intelligence at the time, said Gabbard's accusations against former US president Barack Obama and his national security team were "based on false statements and basic misrepresentations." Tulsi Gabbard, now Director of National Intelligence, has accused Obama-era officials of "manufacturing" intelligence to make it appear that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Trump's 2016 campaign. She claims the objective was to delegitimise Trump's win and initiate a prolonged effort to undermine his presidency. Speaking to The Guardian, Miller said that her team's findings were based on multiple verified sources and legitimate intelligence practices. Miller, who is not mentioned in Gabbard's report, said she felt compelled to speak publicly. "My reputation and my team's reputation is on the line," she said. "Tulsi comes out and doesn't use my name... but basically says this was all wrong and made up." Miller, a 39-year CIA veteran, also questioned Gabbard's qualifications to challenge the intelligence community's work. "Has she ever met a Russian agent?" she asked. "Has she ever given diamonds to a Russian who's giving us, you know? Has she ever walked on the streets of Moscow to do a dead drop? Has she ever handled an agent? No. She's never done any of that. She clearly doesn't understand this." Miller and members of her former team have hired legal representation to protect themselves against potential charges. Miller is now represented by defence attorney Mark Zaid. The matter has been referred to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who recently announced a Justice Department "strike force" to investigate. Reports suggest Bondi was caught off guard by Gabbard's request. Gabbard has called for criminal charges against several former officials, including Obama himself. Obama has rejected the allegations as "outrageous and ridiculous," calling them a distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein files, which reportedly mention Trump. Former intelligence leaders James Clapper and John Brennan also refuted Gabbard's claims in a joint op-ed in The New York Times, calling her claims "patently false" and accusing her of attempting to "rewrite history."
New York Post
6 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump-Russia probe whistleblower ‘pressured' by Obama intel officials to sign off of 2016 election report: ‘I need you to say you agree'
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a whistleblower's account Wednesday detailing the pressure an Obama-era intelligence official applied on a subordinate to get them to sign off on an assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. 'I was pressured to alter my views,' the senior intelligence analyst-turned-whistleblower claimed in documents Gabbard used as evidence in her bombshell report earlier this month, detailing the 'treasonous conspiracy' Obama officials engaged in 'to subvert President Trump's 2016 victory.' 3 Gabbard released a whistleblower's account of the pressure the Obama intel community applied to get the whistleblower to sign off on a revised assessment of the 2016 presidential election. LENIN NOLLY/SIPA/Shutterstock Advertisement The analyst – who worked on a 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which determined 'foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome' – recalled that 'my concurrence was sought to enable [redacted] to sway the views of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)' — so that DIA would sign off on a revised ICA. The new, 2017 ICA relied on the discredited Steele dossier and claimed the Kremlin orchestrated hackings of Democratic National Committee emails and intervened in the presidential contest in favor of Trump. 'There is reporting you are not allowed to see, if you saw it, you would agree,' the analyst recalled a supervisor telling them in early January 2017, when they asked to review the new reporting in the alternative assessment. Advertisement 'Isn't it possible Putin has something on Trump, to blackmail and coerce him?' the supervisor continued. 'You need to TRUST ME on this.' When the whistleblower refused to sign off on the new assessment, the 'visibly frustrated' supervisor stated: 'I need you to say you agree with these judgements, so that DIA will go along with them!' 'I remember this conversation very clearly,' the whistleblower wrote in the account, 'as it was a difficult situation and I listened, and chose my responses, with care.' 'I was aware that I was defying the [National Intelligence Office's] direction to me (to misrepresent my views to DIA) based on a conscious decision to adhere to [Intelligence Community] standards, tradecraft, and ethics.' Advertisement 3 The 2017 intelligence community assessment determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. AP The DIA did not end up joining the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency (NSA) on the 2017 ICA. The documents also show the whistleblower made repeated attempts to report concerns about the information used in the 2017 ICA to multiple government officials, including the inspector general for the intelligence community, former Special Counsel John Durham, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), to no avail. 3 Gabbard described the Obama administration's efforts to discredit Trump's 2016 election win as a 'treasonous conspiracy.' Getty Images Advertisement 'The Whistleblower put their own well-being on the line to defend our democratic republic and ensure the American people learned the truth about how President Obama directed the creation of Intelligence Community Assessment that knowingly promoted falsehoods claiming Russia helped President Trump get elected in 2016,' Gabbard said in a statement. 'In doing so, the Obama Administration sought to delegitimize the 2016 election and President Trump's presidency, subverting the will of the American people and enacting essentially a years-long coup against President Trump and the American people,' she added. 'Thanks to this individual and other courageous whistleblowers, the American people are finally learning the truth about the dangerous consequences of weaponized intelligence.' 'Truth and accountability will help in ensuring this doesn't happen again.'
Time of India
a day ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Even nuclear experts are at a loss right now
Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, admittedly struck the wrong note in a melodramatic video she put out after visiting Hiroshima, which was destroyed by an atomic bomb exactly 80 years ago. 'As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,' Gabbard said, 'political-elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.' That reference to unspecified warmongers hewed to her unfortunate pattern of spreading conspiracy theories. Her boss, President Donald Trump, wasn't pleased. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Project Management Design Thinking healthcare MBA Leadership Cybersecurity Product Management Operations Management MCA Data Science CXO Management Technology Digital Marketing Degree Data Analytics Others PGDM Public Policy Healthcare Finance Data Science Artificial Intelligence others Skills you'll gain: Portfolio Management Project Planning & Risk Analysis Strategic Project/Portfolio Selection Adaptive & Agile Project Management Duration: 6 Months IIT Delhi Certificate Programme in Project Management Starts on May 30, 2024 Get Details But Gabbard was right about her other point: that we — Homo sapiens — may be closer to the brink than ever before. That's what I keep hearing from experts on nuclear strategy in Washington. The danger today may not be as acute as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it is much more diffuse, complicated and unpredictable than it has ever been. And while those in the know can summarize how we got to this point, nobody, as far as I know, has any good ideas about where to go from here. The diagnosis is essentially a long list of separate but simultaneous developments that collectively upset the relatively simple balance of terror that stabilized the late Cold War. At that time, two nuclear superpowers held each other in check while a few other nations kept small arsenals for deterrence and almost all other countries abided by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, meant to limit the spread of these diabolical weapons. Entire ecosystems of expertise had blossomed in academia and government to model the scenarios that might lead to Armageddon, and the resulting game theory, though sophisticated, was relatively straightforward. Stipulating that a nuclear war 'cannot be won and must never be fought,' the big two — Washington and Moscow — negotiated arms-control treaties to reduce the number of warheads and weapons. After the Cold War, strategists shifted to studying other threats — terrorism and such — because nuclear annihilation seemed passé. Live Events Instead, it tops the horror rankings again. The last remaining arms-control treaty between Washington and Moscow, called New START, expires in six months, and no efforts are underway to extend or replace it. One of the two parties, Russia, has been acting in bad faith and breaking nuclear taboos by threatening to use lower-yield weapons (sometimes called 'tactical' or 'battlefield' nukes ) in Ukraine and stationing warheads in neighboring Belarus. Worse, a third nuclear superpower, China, is turning the former dyad into a triad. Whereas Beijing long maintained only a minimal deterrent, it has in recent years doubled its arsenal to about 600 warheads and is rapidly adding more, with the apparent goal of having 1,500 or so in a decade — roughly as many as the US and Russia each currently have deployed. This new reality forces strategists in Washington to contemplate what would happen if Russia and China ever coordinated attacks on, say, Eastern Europe and Taiwan. Such a two-front war could start 'conventional' (meaning non-nuclear) but escalate to the use of battlefield nukes, at which point further escalation spirals become incalculable. The US is already modernizing — albeit with huge delays and cost overruns — its missiles, bombers, submarines and warheads. Should it now also add to its arsenal overall, to deter or be able to fight both Russia and China at once? Experts agree that nuclear deterrence is not a pure numbers game (all sides would soon just be irradiating rubble). And game theory is far from clear about what is stabilizing and destabilizing in the real world; the math in such a 'three-body problem' becomes forbidding. Nor does the number three capture the horror of this analytical hairball. In total, nine countries have nukes. And even if the recent American strikes on Iran set back Tehran's program for a while, other countries may build their own. They could include US allies, such as South Korea or Poland, if they lose faith in the US nuclear 'umbrella.' More players mean more scenarios for people to miscalculate. (An especially dangerous period is the phase when countries are making nukes but do not yet have them because adversaries may contemplate preemptive strikes.) North Korea can already hit the US with its weapons; and Washington believes that Pakistan is also building missiles that can reach America. Even that catalog doesn't do justice to the new threat landscape because the types of warheads and delivery vehicles are changing. For example, more countries are investing in those tactical nukes I mentioned, which are 'limited' only in theory but in practice likely to set off uncontrollable escalation to full-scale nuclear war. China is also building hypersonic glide vehicles which, unlike ballistic missiles, can circle the Earth inside the atmosphere and disguise their destinations. Russia is thinking about putting nukes in space. And Trump wants to place a defensive 'Golden Dome' up there, which would pose its own strategic problems. Add to these twists the imponderable of artificial intelligence, which drastically accelerates human decision-making and thus increases the potential for human error, especially under pressure. Those risks become even worse wherever AI meets misinformation. (During the recent clash between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, fake photos of damage went viral in both countries.) Scientists warn about the combination of misinformation 'thickening the fog of war' and 'giving the launch codes to ChatGPT.' Bright minds are studying these developments, including Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, two nuclear experts who served in the administration of Joe Biden and are now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But diagnosis is one thing, prescription quite another. The US 'will need innovative approaches,' they conclude — without listing any. 'We're approaching a tripolar world, and everything is different in that scenario,' says John Bolton, who was national security advisor in Trump's first term. 'All of our calculations on nuclear weaponry, the nuclear triad, where the stuff is deployed, how you create structures of deterrence,' he told me, 'how you engage in arms-control negotiations, all of it, all of that theorizing … all of that is on a bipolar basis.' Then he added dolefully: 'You make it tripolar and you got to start over again.' Trump seems to have grasped this reality. He has said repeatedly that he wants to restart arms-control negotiations and that he wants them to be at least trilateral, including both Russia and China. Whether his counterparts in Moscow and Beijing will rise to the occasion is unclear. Much divides those three leaders, and indeed humanity. But if we can't agree to sequester our hatreds and vanities to deal with this singular threat, none of those other things will matter.
Mint
a day ago
- Politics
- Mint
Even Nuclear Experts Are at a Loss Right Now
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, admittedly struck the wrong note in a melodramatic video she put out after visiting Hiroshima, which was destroyed by an atomic bomb exactly 80 years ago. 'As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,' Gabbard said, 'political-elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.' That reference to unspecified warmongers hewed to her unfortunate pattern of spreading conspiracy theories. Her boss, President Donald Trump, wasn't pleased. But Gabbard was right about her other point: that we — Homo sapiens — may be closer to the brink than ever before. That's what I keep hearing from experts on nuclear strategy in Washington. The danger today may not be as acute as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it is much more diffuse, complicated and unpredictable than it has ever been. And while those in the know can summarize how we got to this point, nobody, as far as I know, has any good ideas about where to go from here. The diagnosis is essentially a long list of separate but simultaneous developments that collectively upset the relatively simple balance of terror that stabilized the late Cold War. At that time, two nuclear superpowers held each other in check while a few other nations kept small arsenals for deterrence and almost all other countries abided by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, meant to limit the spread of these diabolical weapons. Entire ecosystems of expertise had blossomed in academia and government to model the scenarios that might lead to Armageddon, and the resulting game theory, though sophisticated, was relatively straightforward. Stipulating that a nuclear war 'cannot be won and must never be fought,' the big two — Washington and Moscow — negotiated arms-control treaties to reduce the number of warheads and weapons. After the Cold War, strategists shifted to studying other threats — terrorism and such — because nuclear annihilation seemed passé. Instead, it tops the horror rankings again. The last remaining arms-control treaty between Washington and Moscow, called New START, expires in six months, and no efforts are underway to extend or replace it. One of the two parties, Russia, has been acting in bad faith and breaking nuclear taboos by threatening to use lower-yield weapons (sometimes called 'tactical' or 'battlefield' nukes) in Ukraine and stationing warheads in neighboring Belarus. Worse, a third nuclear superpower, China, is turning the former dyad into a triad. Whereas Beijing long maintained only a minimal deterrent, it has in recent years doubled its arsenal to about 600 warheads and is rapidly adding more, with the apparent goal of having 1,500 or so in a decade — roughly as many as the US and Russia each currently have deployed.(1) This new reality forces strategists in Washington to contemplate what would happen if Russia and China ever coordinated attacks on, say, Eastern Europe and Taiwan. Such a two-front war could start 'conventional' (meaning non-nuclear) but escalate to the use of battlefield nukes, at which point further escalation spirals become incalculable. The US is already modernizing — albeit with huge delays and cost overruns — its missiles, bombers, submarines and warheads. Should it now also add to its arsenal overall, to deter or be able to fight both Russia and China at once? Experts agree that nuclear deterrence is not a pure numbers game (all sides would soon just be irradiating rubble). And game theory is far from clear about what is stabilizing and destabilizing in the real world; the math in such a 'three-body problem' becomes forbidding. Nor does the number three capture the horror of this analytical hairball. In total, nine countries have nukes. And even if the recent American strikes on Iran set back Tehran's program for a while, other countries may build their own. They could include US allies, such as South Korea or Poland, if they lose faith in the US nuclear 'umbrella.' More players mean more scenarios for people to miscalculate. (An especially dangerous period is the phase when countries are making nukes but do not yet have them because adversaries may contemplate preemptive strikes.) North Korea can already hit the US with its weapons; and Washington believes that Pakistan is also building missiles that can reach America. Even that catalog doesn't do justice to the new threat landscape because the types of warheads and delivery vehicles are changing. For example, more countries are investing in those tactical nukes I mentioned, which are 'limited' only in theory but in practice likely to set off uncontrollable escalation to full-scale nuclear war. China is also building hypersonic glide vehicles which, unlike ballistic missiles, can circle the Earth inside the atmosphere and disguise their destinations. Russia is thinking about putting nukes in space. And Trump wants to place a defensive 'Golden Dome' up there, which would pose its own strategic problems. Add to these twists the imponderable of artificial intelligence, which drastically accelerates human decision-making and thus increases the potential for human error, especially under pressure. Those risks become even worse wherever AI meets misinformation. (During the recent clash between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, fake photos of damage went viral in both countries.) Scientists warn about the combination of misinformation 'thickening the fog of war' and 'giving the launch codes to ChatGPT.' Bright minds are studying these developments, including Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, two nuclear experts who served in the administration of Joe Biden and are now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But diagnosis is one thing, prescription quite another. The US 'will need innovative approaches,' they conclude — without listing any. 'We're approaching a tripolar world, and everything is different in that scenario,' says John Bolton, who was national security advisor in Trump's first term. 'All of our calculations on nuclear weaponry, the nuclear triad, where the stuff is deployed, how you create structures of deterrence,' he told me, 'how you engage in arms-control negotiations, all of it, all of that theorizing … all of that is on a bipolar basis.' Then he added dolefully: 'You make it tripolar and you got to start over again.' Trump seems to have grasped this reality. He has said repeatedly that he wants to restart arms-control negotiations and that he wants them to be at least trilateral, including both Russia and China. Whether his counterparts in Moscow and Beijing will rise to the occasion is unclear. Much divides those three leaders, and indeed humanity. But if we can't agree to sequester our hatreds and vanities to deal with this singular threat, none of those other things will matter. More From Bloomberg Opinion: (1) 'Deployed' means ready for use at any time — for instance, on the tip of a missile in a silo. Washington and Moscow also have thousands more in storage each. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. More stories like this are available on
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
US senator's letter suggests Apple may not be the only tech company fighting UK's ‘backdoor' entry request
Senator Ron Wyden has formally requested Tulsi Gabbard , Director of National Intelligence, to initiate an investigation into the UK's alleged digital spying practices, raising alarms that British surveillance laws may be compromising the private data of millions of Americans. In a letter, Wyden suggested that Google, alongside Apple , may have been secretly pressured to allow 'backdoor' access to user data. The senator's concern stems from Google's refusal to clarify if it has received such a demand, stating only that it would be prohibited from disclosing such a request if one existed. Citing the letter, The Washington Post said Google told the Senator's office it could not confirm or deny whether the British government had demanded 'backdoor' access to private user data on its services. This raises serious questions about whether Google, like Apple, has faced such secret demands. Apple has resisted the attempts to access encrypted user data , with reports surfacing earlier this year that the UK Home Office had secretly ordered Apple to create a backdoor for encrypted messages. In response, Apple disabled its most secure data storage option for UK users, while maintaining it globally. Wyden had previously written to Gabbard, urging her to demand the UK retract its order. Gabbard had concurred, calling such a backdoor demand 'a clear and egregious violation of Americans' privacy and civil liberties.' Apple is currently challenging the order in a British surveillance court. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like She Was Everyone's Dream Girl In 90's, This Is Her Now The Latest Article Undo Google may have faced Apple-like pressure from UK: Wyden Wyden's latest letter suggests that the privacy implications extend far beyond Apple users. While Meta, offering encrypted messaging via WhatsApp and Instagram, told Wyden's office in March it had received no such backdoor requests from the UK, Google's non-committal response is deeply troubling, he said. 'When my office asked Google about backdoor demands from the UK, the company did not answer the question, only stating that if it had received [such a demand], it would be prohibited from disclosing that fact,' Wyden wrote, noting this was the same response Apple had previously given. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
