White House Hack Attack

Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

“Bill Gertz is an exceedingly unreliable source.”

???

On what do you base your opinion? I have always thought just the opposite.

Evidence? I can point to a number of Gertz articles that are pretty accurate though not earth shattering (e.g. where he quotes named sources)

The problem is that Gertz often bases his claims on leaks of information that would be classified, and specifically disproving specific stories requires citing classified information.

You have to take my word for it.

I will note that Navy publicly denied Gertz's "Russian submarines in the Gulf of Mexico" story.

You’re probably letting Gertz’s political leanings get in the way of objectively assessing his veracity.

Heck, in terms of supporting a strong defense and pointing out there are scary countries out there that would want to do us harm, I agree with him. The problem is when you overhype and mislead all the time, you actually undermine your own side.

The problem with Gertz is that he deals with a lot of pretty complex technical military issues that the average reader doesn’t really have the knowledge to deal with - and Gertz is often misleading to wrong. And he’s not nearly as connected as people think he is (or as much as he thinks he is.) For a lot of foreign threats he’s in a panic about, the US has answers, but they are classified programs Gertz doesn’t have a clue about.

Believe me, it’s hard to overhype Chinese cyberattacks - it’s a very real threat and they happen constantly. I have no actual independent knowledge of this incident, but this article is written in such a way that it’s very likely exaggerating what was compromised, based on Gertz’s M.O.

There are so many real Chinese cyberattacks you don’t need to fabricate and leak fake ones to get the public startled.

My main point is that while this story may well be true, it’s possible all the Chinese got was the schedule of staff meetings for this office and a record of how much printer paper they buy, not the launch codes for ICBMs.

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