That Beijing is mining publicly available information is not new or surprising but fear mongering about it in Washington is good for business.

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The Times was passing on findings from an analysis by threat intelligence company Recorded Future, which says a Chinese open-source intel company has been mining publicly available information from the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank, and the U.S. Naval War College.

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, […]
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The notorious history of California’s still-standing swastika-shaped building

March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The resemblance went unnoticed, by the public at least, for decades, until Google Earth appeared and shed light on the very distinct shape of a barracks at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego.
The notorious history of California’s still-standing swastika-shaped building

China’s neighbors are buying US weapons Washington isn’t delivering

August 28, 2022August 28, 2022 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

China’s neighbors are buying US weapons Washington isn’t delivering

Even though the United States views these weapons sales as integral to deterring China from attacking Taiwan, some of the deals were publicly announced as far back as 2017.

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The reasons – government delays, supply chain issues and production requirements – are numerous, and the problem won’t be easy to fix, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Defense News.

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The U.S. government has approved the sale of 10 weapons systems Taiwan has yet to receive – some of which are not slated for delivery until the end of the decade.

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The United States has flooded billions of dollars in weapons into Ukraine, including items that are part of Taiwan’s backlog, such as Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and High Mobile Artillery Rocket Systems.

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For example, several Middle Eastern and eastern European countries are ahead of Taiwan in Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production queue. In 2019, the State Department approved an $8 billion Taiwan sale for 66 F-16s, but Taipei does not expect to receive the aircraft until 2026.

“Saudi Arabia is still ahead of Taiwan on the priority list in some cases,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told Defense News ahead of a July meeting with Taiwan’s Washington envoy. “We need to take a look at that.”

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Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy + Social Media Is a Tool of the CIA

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see.
Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy

Google is already helping the government write, and rewrite, history. Here, from its transparency report, are some stats on the amount of information it has either given to the government or wiped from the web based on requests by U.S. agencies: