Krasse Links No 50

Willkommen zu Krasse Links No 50. Letzte Woche war megavoll und ich habs nicht geschafft, sorry.

Aber nun stellt Eure Bootloader auf „industrielle Männlichkeit“, heute richten wir Musks Baby-Pipeline auf den Golden Dome der Bunkered Nation für einen Coup gegen den Endzeitfaschismus.

Jenna McLaughlin von NPR hat die unglaubliche Geschichte, wie DOGE die Daten des „National Labor Relations Board“ entwendete und sie liest sich wie ein Cyberpunk-Krimi.

Someone had disabled controls that would prevent insecure or unauthorized mobile devices from logging on to the system without the proper security settings. There was an interface exposed to the public internet, potentially allowing malicious actors access to the NLRB’s systems. Internal alerting and monitoring systems were found to be manually turned off. Multifactor authentication was disabled. And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a „user roster,“ a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB.

Berulis said he noticed five PowerShell downloads on the system, a task automation program that would allow engineers to run automated commands. There were several code libraries that got his attention — tools that he said appeared to be designed to automate and mask data exfiltration. There was a tool to generate a seemingly endless number of IP addresses called „requests-ip-rotator,“ and a commonly used automation tool for web developers called „browserless“ — both repositories starred or favorited by Wick, the DOGE engineer, according to an archive of his GitHub account reviewed by NPR. […]

Berulis says someone appeared to be doing something called DNS tunneling to prevent the data exfiltration from being detected. He came to that conclusion, outlined in his disclosure, after he saw a traffic spike in DNS requests parallel to the data being exfiltrated, a spike 1,000 times the normal number of requests.

Die Daten sind hoch sensibel und extrem wertvoll, denn private Firmen können von Gewerkschaftsgründungen, über Identitäten von Whistleblower, über rechtliche Strategien ihrer Gegner, bishin zu geheimen Daten von Wettbewerbern alles Mögliche daraus ziehen.

Der Whistleblower, der das alles angezeigt hat, Daniel Berulis, hat eine ausführliche Aussage plus Belege vorgelegt, die von forensischen Expert*innen für echt befunden wurden, dennoch bestreitet der Pressesprecher der Behörde den Vorgang. Berulis wird seitdem anonym bedroht.

Was aber am meisten schockiert, ist das Vorgehen der Hacker*innen. Sie haben sich quasi unberegrenzte Rechte für das gesamte System geben lassen und penibel versucht, ihre Spuren zu verwischen. Insgesamt 10 Gigabyte an Daten wurden gestohlen. Aber das für viele Beängstigendste ist, dass sich kurz nach dem Angriff auch eine russische IP mit den DOGE Credentials im System einloggte.

Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB’s systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in, according to Berulis‘ disclosure. The attempts were „near real-time,“ according to the disclosure. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming. Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created DOGE accounts — and the person had the correct username and password, according to Berulis. While it’s possible the user was disguising their location, it’s highly unlikely they’d appear to be coming from Russia if they wanted to avoid suspicion, cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR explained.

Auch lesenswert die Einschätzungen von Security Forscher Matt Johansen.

Auch: Berulis war sogar bei Rachel Meddow zum Interview.

Ich glaube btw. nicht, dass DOGE mit den Russen zusammenarbeitet. Wahrscheinlicher ist, dass der russische Geheimdienst längst auf einigen Devices der DOGE-Skriptkiddies wohnt, denn: warum sollte er nicht?

Aber ich finde die Russen hier überhaupt nicht das Problem?

Ich finde eher erstaunlich, dass die meisten Menschen immer noch so tun, als hätten sie Musks Coup nicht bemerkt. „Government Efficiency“, lol. Als hätte er nicht die Kontrolle über die Transaktionen der Treasury-Computer übernommen, Social Security- und alle möglichen anderen Daten abgesaugt, sein Starlink in den Behörden installiert und seine Leute auf alle strategisch wichtigen Posten gesetzt.

Ihr glaubt, Trump sei schlimm? Ich denke, er ist nur der Bootloader des Tech-Faschismus. Das Dicke Ende kommt erst noch.

Albert Lloreta erahnt ebenfalls den Silicon Valley Coup am Horizont und erinnert uns in seiner konzisen Analyse daran, dass unsere Verwirrung, teil des Plots ist.

Wherever you go these days, everyone expresses in one way or another that reality seems to have stopped making sense. Everything seems normal, but something just doesn’t add up. Absurd and incomprehensible things keep happening. They happen and accumulate at such a rate that it becomes increasingly difficult to understand anything. We live in a growing state of confusion.

This general uncertainty stops us in our tracks. It paralyses us. It is an anxious paralysis from which it is difficult to think clearly. It is terribly difficult to process the things that are happening, and even more difficult to remember them. And despite everything, the cognitive collapse does not prevent us from continuing to do our own thing. Everything is absurd, yes, but our life is still apparently normal, so we take refuge in it. We are suspended in this strange environment.

Er beschreibt präzise den Aufstieg der Silicon Valley Oligarchen durch die Plattformökonomie und wie sie diese Macht … zu mehr Macht inspririerte.

Why stop at just monopolising social networks? Intoxicated by this power, and in the name of freedom, tech leaders seek to rewrite the rules of the world, replacing democratic sovereignty with a system in which technological solutions – and therefore themselves – become the core of all decision-making. Having monopolised our attention, they now want to monopolise political power.

Silicon Valley is preparing a coup against democracy.

Carole Cadwalladr sieht den Coup des Silicon Valleys in diesem Ted-Talk als bereits gegeben an und verweist dabei insbesondere auf ihre eigene Geschichte, denn sie kämpft bereits seit Jahren in der vordersten Reihe gegen die Verbindung von Rechtsradikalismus und Tech-Oligarchie und wird seitdem mit Klagen überzogen.

Ich teile nicht alles, was Cadwalladr erzählt, insbesondere zu Cambridge Analytica, das im Grunde ein Scam war und die öffentlichen Erzählungen basically Critihype.

Aber richtig ist, dass damals der Grundstein für die Phalanx aus Tech-Oligarchie (deren Methoden ja nie scamfrei waren) und rechtsradikaler Politik gelegt wurde und ich wünschte, wir hätten wenigstens ein Drittel der Aufregung von damals für den Coup von heute.

Das Rolling Stone Magazin hat den wahrscheinlich inhaltlich detailreichsten Artikel über die Zustände im Konzentrationslager-System in El Salvador.

Disappeared is an apt description for the state of those in El Salvador’s prisons. Cristosal and other advocacy groups working with the families of the detained say that CECOT is just “the public face” of a much larger system of prisons in El Salvador holding the vast majority of those arrested under the state of exception. The Bukele administration makes it nearly impossible to track the whereabouts of an arrestee once they’ve entered the system. Family members are not allowed contact with inmates, and are given little information on their condition and location. Release papers, if they manage to secure them, are often ignored. “We do work with hundreds of families of people, innocent people have been detained, and they don’t even know for sure if they’re alive.” Bullock says. “They bring monthly packages [of basic goods] to the prisons out of fear that their loved ones don’t think they’ve been forgotten, but they have no guarantees or assurances that they’re even there or they ever received the packages.” (In many Latin American countries, prisons do not provide basic goods for inmates, whose families are expected to collect and deliver them to detention centers on a monthly basis.) […]

In 2024, Cristosal published a report detailing alleged torture within El Salvador’s prison system, unreported deaths of inmates, and the systematic dissappearances of those arrested. The organization has received thousands of complaints, investigated over 1,000 specific cases of alleged abuse, and documented the deaths in custody of over 200 prisoners.

Cristosal provided Rolling Stone with recorded testimony from a former inmate named Oscar who said he and other detainees are often forced to sign confessions by arresting officers, crammed into cells with over 250 other inmates, and regularly beaten by guards. Oscar describes witnessing food deprivation, denial of medical treatment, frequent transfers (he spent time at several prisons in El Salvador), deaths of inmates due to illness or abuse, and burials in mass graves.

In a 2023 report examining in-custody deaths investigated by the state-run Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), Cristosal was able to corroborate that the institute has investigated at least 28 deaths within prisons that were likely caused by torture. The actual number is estimated to be at least in the hundreds. Deaths in custody are often reported to be the result of chronic disease or natural causes, despite inmates’ families claiming they had no known conditions before being arrested.[…]

One man previously incarcerated at Mariona testified to Cristosal that at one point, guards “showed up with a bucket of food. We arrived on a Thursday (and it was Monday), the guard asked, ‘Are you hungry?’ When we answered yes, the guard threw the food on the floor, which was full of mud and other dirt, and said, ‘You are only going to pick the food up with your mouth and if you grab it with your hands I will take you out and I will beat you,’ and gave them five seconds to pick up the food with their mouths.”

Abu Ghraib war den Amerikanern damals noch peinlich, heute geben sie damit an.

Das Wallstreet Journal hat eine detaillierte Recherche zu Elon Musks Baby-Fabrik … Familienleben. Im Zentrum dabei steht sein Vermögensverwalter Jared Birchall.

Birchall was involved in acquiring the property for a compound in Austin where Musk imagined the women and his growing number of babies would all live among multiple residences, according to a person familiar with the matter. He is involved in other property deals across Musk’s different businesses.

Zilis lives in the gated community with their children, and Musk comes and goes. Musk also attempted to get Grimes to move to the compound, but she refused. Similarly, he tried to get St. Clair to spend some time in Austin “with our kid legion,” according to a text he sent her.

Birchall said on the December call with St. Clair the NDAs are necessary. “We have been through way too many issues where, to not sign some agreement associated with handing over 15-plus million dollars is absolutely insane and irresponsible, and because we have dealt with some very unstable, mentally unstable, people that all of a sudden misremember things,” he said.

Jaja, die verrückte Ex, wer kennt sie nicht?

Auch der (nicht immer erfolgreiche) Anwerbungsporozess für Frauen in für die Breeding-Pipeline wird ausführlich beschrieben.

Cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong was covering disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall when Musk started liking and replying to her posts. Musk’s interactions ramped up as Fong posted more political content in support of Trump, and Musk followed her last summer. […]

That was about when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child, according to people familiar with the matter. The two had never met in person.

Fong didn’t move forward with Musk because she pictured having children in a more traditional nuclear family, but confided to a few friends about the approach—including St. Clair, whom she knew as another conservative social-media figure—and how she worried that turning him down could hurt her earnings.

Relevant ist auch, dass Musk über alle Entscheidungen für das Kind die Oberhand behalten will. Ebenfalls nicht immer erfolgreich, wie im Falle von St. Claire.

While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.

15 Millionen sofort und Hundertausend Dollar monatlich klingen nach viel, aber Musk nutzt diese Abhängigkeit gnadenlos aus. St. Claire setzte er unter Druck, weil sie es wagte mit der Presse zu reden.

Four days after the post, Musk eliminated the $15 million fee offer. Then, as they went to court to discuss paternity testing and Musk’s request for a gag order, he lowered the financial offer further, dropping her support to $40,000 a month, just as her legal fees were set to balloon in the fight.

On Thursday, the Journal contacted Musk for comment for this article. On Friday, St. Clair didn’t receive her scheduled child support payment from Musk, she said. Late on Tuesday, she said Musk’s team sent her $20,000, halving her stipend again.

St. Claire hat am Ende abgelehnt zu unterschreiben. Hoffen wir, dass sie ihm den Arsch wegklagt.

Zwei meiner Lieblingstheoretikerinnen – Naomi Klein und Astra Taylor – sehen in diesem sehr lesenswerten Text im Guardian die nihilistische Endzeiterwartung des aufkommenden Faschismus.

The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.

Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.

Ich bekomme immer komische Blicke, wenn ich sage, dass die „Auslender-Raus“-Politik der Rechten ihre Version von Klimapolitik ist. Auch wenn sie das nicht zugeben: Sie kennen die Szenarien sehr genau, vor allem den Teil mit den prognostizierten Flüchtlingsströmen, doch ihre Antwort darauf ist eben nicht die Klimakatastrophe einzudämmen, sondern die Mauern höher zu bauen.

Bannon doesn’t only urge his audience to make their own bunkers, of course. He also advances a vision of the United States as a bunker in its own right, one in which Ice agents stalk the streets, workplaces and campuses, disappearing those deemed enemies of US policy and interests. The bunkered nation lies at the heart of the Maga agenda, and of end times fascism. Inside its logic, the first job is to harden national borders and expunge all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Der Begriff „Bunkered Nation“ scheint mir sehr geeignet, um die Entwicklungsrichtung der Faschisierung des Westens zu verstehen, denn unsere stetig auszubauende „Festung Europa“ bettet sich in diese Entwicklung ebenso ein, wie Elon Musks Marsträume. Gerade die Milliardärskaste kann den Zivilisationskollaps gar nicht abwarten, ist ein Überleben der Apokalypse doch der ultimative Ausweis materieller Allmächtigkeit.

Evidently uninterested in the vast bounty that surrounds him, or in ensuring Earth can continue buzzing with diversity, he instead deploys his vast fortune to bring about a future that would see a handful of people and robots eke out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars). Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren’t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.

Zum undurchdringlichen, materiell-technologischen Körperpanzer gehört natürlich auch die emotionale Verpanzerung.

Musk informs Joe Rogan that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of western civilization” and he vents, after failing to purchase a supreme court election in Wisconsin: “It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” Meaning we humans are nothing but grist for Grok, the AI service he owns.

Das ist der Grund, warum sie ihre Verbrechen nicht mehr verstecken. Unsere Meinung ist nicht mehr wichtig. Wir sind aus ihrer Sicht obsolet.

An unspeakably dismal choice is being made before our eyes and without our consent: machines over humans, inanimate over animate, profits over all else. With stunning speed, the big tech megalomaniacs have quietly rolled back their net-zero pledges and lined up by Trump’s side, hellbent on sacrificing this world’s real and precious resources and creativity at the altar of a vampiric, virtual realm. This is the last great heist, and they are getting ready to ride out the storms they themselves are summoning – and they will try to defame and destroy anyone who gets in their way.

Das ist so grob der Plan: Noch eine große Party und dann zum Klimachaos im Bunker auskatern, bewacht und betreut von Robotern, bis Elon das Mars-Taxi endlich fertig hat und dann aus dem „überlegenen“ Milliardärs-Genpool plus AGI eine neue multiplanetarische, transhumanistische Spezies züchten.

Ja, wir sind in einem Trash-Scifi gefangen. Nein, den können wir nicht abschalten.

Reuters berichtet über den geplanten „Golden Dome“ der Trumpregierung, einer Art Iron Dome für die ganze USA. Der Golden Dome soll tausende Überwachungs- und hunderte bewaffnete Satteliten im All stationieren und alle ankommenden Raketen abwehren können. Dafür verpartnern sich drei Technologieunternehmen, die zufällig alle Trump unterstützt haben.

Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir (PLTR.O), opens new tab and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector’s burgeoning base of defense startups.

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel und Palmer Luckey sollen die „Bunkered Nation“ also aus der Luft abschirmen. Aber weil Broligarchs eben Broligarchs sind, gibt es Sicherheit nur „as a Service“.

In an unusual twist, SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a „subscription service“ in which the government would pay for access to the technology, rather than own the system outright.

The subscription model, which has not been previously reported, could skirt some Pentagon procurement protocols allowing the system to be rolled out faster, the two sources said. While the approach would not violate any rules, the government may then be locked into a subscription and lose control over its ongoing development and pricing, they added.

Wie wäre es, die Bundestaaten einzeln für den Schutz zahlen zu lassen? Mit speziellen Tarifen für demokratisch regierte Staaten und ab und zu fällt der Schutz auch mal aus … ups.

Bin gespannt auf das Tarifmodell. Was kann man dafür verlangen? Den 10ten? Der Königin ihr Kind? Die Wiedereinführung der Sklaverei? Den eisernen Thron?

Sam Cieri, Pressesprecher des Imperiums.

Constance Grady bringt auf Vox den kulturellen Zusammenhang zwischen der Krise der Männlichkeit mit Trumps Zollpolitik auf den Punkt.

“A lot of men (specifically, single and frustrated ones on the right who have a negative view of women) have a perplexingly reverse-SJW attitude toward women in the workplace,” explained Substack writer Cartoons Hate Her in March in the midst of the DOGE shutdowns. “They believe women are part of an oppressor class, who has for some reason been granted unfair degrees of privilege in the form of being hired for fun, pretend jobs.” In this reading, the Australian skin care executives are callously celebrating their oppressive privilege by filming themselves dancing.

In this worldview, the fun, pretend jobs include federally funded government jobs. These men further believe that because DEI initiatives mandate that women get these fun, pretend jobs — usually described as “email jobs” — women have achieved unnatural degrees of self-sufficiency. No longer do they have to rely on marrying a good provider for economic stability. With that impetus gone, women’s standards for romantic partners have skyrocketed, leaving these hapless men unable to get a girlfriend.

Cartoons Hate Her quotes an X user who berated her for arguing that single women can be happy living by themselves. “Your ‘happy life alone’ only exists because the state funnels taxpayer money into your independence LARP,” he wrote. “I call it ‘negative prostitution’ because it takes men’s money away to ensure women don’t have sex with them.”

These men read Trump’s economic policy as a project of redistributing money and jobs away from women and back to men, ultimately for men’s sexual gain. DOGE slashed away the email jobs in the government, they argue, while tariffs will force a recession that will ultimately kill the email jobs of the private sector. Meanwhile, tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs, which are understood to be the rightful domain of men, back to the US. By the time the process ends, they believe, men will be gainfully employed and now-destitute women incentivized to sleep with them, and the world will be restored to its proper order.

Dass die Incel-Ideologie einmal eine eigene ökonomische Schule begründen würde, hatte wahrscheinlich auch niemand auf seiner Bingokarte.