You might have heard that Donald Trump gave a weird, rambling, nonsense speech last night full of misinformation and lies, trying to spread distrust in our electoral process ahead of the 2026 midterms — so that when Republicans likely lose some of the power they currently wield across the government, Trump and his allies can pretend it was due to faulty elections. The President of the United States is literally undermining trust in elections, which is both dangerous and incredibly stupid.
At a fundamental level, none of it makes sense. He’s focused on the 2020 election, when HE was in charge of the government. Assuming that there really was a huge foreign effort then, wouldn’t it have also worked in 2024 when Trump won, but Biden was president?
But, more to the point, the newly declassified documents that the White House released, not only fail to support the rambling claims he made last night, but they actually show (pretty clearly) that China (who he blamed for foreign interference) not only deliberately chose not to engage in nefarious attacks on the US elections, but rather that the Russians, who have long supported Trump, did do so.
Let’s go through a few of the docs to show what they say.
The big one is the National Intelligence Council Assessment from 2020 (again, when Donald Trump was president). While (conveniently!) much of the Russia section is redacted, reading what’s in the document it says that Putin intended to support Trump and harm Biden:
But at the same time, it notes that while China probably preferred Biden over Trump, it was not making any real effort to impact the election beyond just spreading general anti-US messaging.
Multiple times throughout the documents, the Intelligence Community notes that while China might have the tools to exert influence over elections, it recognizes that attempts to do so would likely be exposed and lead to backlash, and thus sees little reason to take proactive measures against election infrastructure. See below, where they note that any such effort could backfire on Beijing.
There was a separate document (elsewhere described as the “minority view”) regarding China’s intent to mess with the US election, which disagrees with the majority view — but only at the margins. It notes, instead, that it believes “Beijing has taken at least some low-level, exploratory steps to undermine the president’s reelection chances…” but then later admits these steps were pretty minimal, and says that “these efforts probably have not included the use of Beijing’s most aggressive options… because Beijing wants to minimize the risk of blowback and hopes to stabilize the relationship after the election.”
Again, I feel the need to remind you, that these are the documents that the Trump administration just released to claim that China did a major hack of the 2020 elections. But the things THEY released literally say the opposite.
And while the fuller discussion of Russian attacks is redacted, it does include a few tidbits… including the fact that Russian operatives tried to spread false rumors about Joe Biden and Ukraine in the leadup to the 2020 election… and that they focused on convincing people in Donald Trump’s White House of these false claims.
On top of that this new release includes a super handy chart comparing efforts by Russia, China, and Iran — one that shows only Russia (not China) sought to manipulate the actual election process by “targeting, accessing, or manipulating election processes or election-related systems.” For China, it notes that while the country took preliminary steps, it did not observe any actual attack on our election system. But they did see it with Russia.
Can’t wait to hear again about how “Russiagate” was a hoax, when the documents that Trump himself released show pretty clearly that Russia was observed by Trump’s intelligence community attempting to manipulate the election in favor of Trump. China (whom Trump misleadingly blamed for manipulating the 2020 election) is shown in these documents not to have done anything more than “preliminary” explorations, but even the most hawkish view on China was that they didn’t want to do anything more aggressive for fear of eventual blowback.
So, uh, yeah.
Look, we all know what this was really about. Trump and his MAGA toadies know that the outlook for the 2026 midterms looks bad for the GOP. Really bad. Rather than, I dunno, figuring out why he has the lowest approval ratings of a president in ages, Trump refuses to accept the fact that he’s been one of America’s worst, most destructive, most corrupt presidents ever, and has decided to just cast doubt on the next election.
Indeed, as Tom Nichols writes, Trump’s speech last night clearly did way more damage to American elections than anything China sought to do.
The specifics don’t matter to MAGA cultists. They’ll be out there (and probably in our comments) ignoring what these documents actually say. They’ll repeat the false claims. They will claim any Democrat elected was elected via fraud. But the documents say what they say (even if the juicier bits about Russia are redacted). And they say Putin wanted Trump to win and took all sorts of efforts to help him out, including targeting our election systems. China lightly favored Biden, and while it may have taken exploratory steps, it realized that anything more serious would almost certainly blow up in its face — and chose not to interfere.
I know we live in an era where it often feels that facts don’t matter, but these are the facts. And the fact that they come from Donald Trump’s own declassification of documents that he pretends say the exact opposite of what they say is the kind of thing that I hope people remember on election day.
In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On the other was Donald Trump Jr. For months, the Trump administration had been on the offensive against the sprawling Ambani energy empire, placing it at the center of an escalating tariff campaign against India. But after Trump Jr. touched down, the two men toured the Ambanis’ private zoo, and at night they performed a Gujarati folk dance, grinning as they moved together to the music.
Four months later, an obscure Texas startup called America First Refining announced that it had received a nine-figure investment from the Ambanis’ company. The deal puzzled numerous energy investors familiar with the project, which aims to build the first major new oil refinery in the U.S. in about 50 years. The company is run by a serial entrepreneur with a history of bankruptcy and lawsuits alleging fraud. After more than a decade of failed attempts to raise money, blown deadlines and rebrands, it had been floundering.
America First Refining’s unexpected breakthrough came after it forged a previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr., who secretly acquired a stake in the startup, according to records and seven people familiar with the company. The new details reveal the role the president’s son has played in a theme of Trump’s second term: overseas investors with interests before the administration putting money into the Trump family’s business interests.
Over the past year and a half, Trump Jr. has amassed a fortune from stakes in companies ranging from crypto startups to a drone business to a firearms retailer. Some firms tied to the president’s son have received contracts or other support from the federal government, part of what critics describe as a run of Trump family self-dealing. In December, Forbes estimated that Trump Jr.’s net worth had rocketed from roughly $50 million to $300 million since the election. But the Forbes figures were based on the investments that have been publicly disclosed. The America First Refining episode suggests there is much about the family business that remains secret.
The size of Trump Jr.’s stake in America First Refining and what he paid for it remain unclear. Top executives at the startup have also said that they speak regularly with Trump Jr., according to a person close to the company. And after the Ambani investment was announced, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer took credit on social media for playing a part in the deal.
America First Refining has flexed its Trump Jr. connections during pitch meetings with foreign officials. Early last year, Trump Jr. joined the company’s leadership for a meeting in South Florida with potential investors from Saudi Arabia, according to two people familiar with the matter. Another foreign government official pitched on the project told ProPublica that the company’s team emphasized they had backing from the Trump family and suggested that an investment would help with White House access.
The Ambanis’ investment coincided with the family’s securing major U.S. policy wins that their company, Reliance Industries, had been lobbying for. “Reliance Goes From Trump Foe to Friend With Refinery Pledge,” ran the Bloomberg headline after the deal was announced. Reliance’s intent with the deal was to “smooth out” tensions between the U.S. and India, the outlet reported.
A Trump Jr. spokesperson said that Trump Jr. “has no operational involvement in AFR and is simply a passive minority investor in an American company that aligns with his worldview.”
“The entire premise of this story relating to Don is false,” the spokesperson said, adding, “Don does not interface with the Federal Government on behalf of any company that he invests in or advises.” ProPublica did not find evidence Trump Jr. was aware of refinery executives’ suggesting that an investment would help with White House access.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for America First Refining said, “The claims in this story are false,” but declined to specify what they were referring to. The company’s CEO previously denied wrongdoing in the lawsuits against him reviewed by ProPublica, and the suits were either settled or dropped.
The Ambani family had long been cultivating its relationship with the Trumps. Reliance paid $10 million to the Trump Organization in 2024 as a “development fee” for a project in Mumbai, according to the president’s financial disclosure. (Despite the payment, Reliance has not yet announced a Trump project. Reliance told ProPublica that “the real estate project is real” and “remains under development.”) Ivanka Trump attended Anant Ambani’s wedding party in India that year, where guests were treated to a Rihanna concert. Anant’s father, Mukesh — who is worth an estimated $90 billion and lives in a 27-story home — came to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s second inauguration, posing with the president at a private reception.
But by the summer of 2025, the family was under attack from the White House. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Reliance had reportedly made billions in profits by purchasing vast quantities of Russian oil at a discount. In August, as Trump grew frustrated with his administration’s struggles to bring the war to an end, the president doubled his tariffs on India to 50%. The move was explicitly designed to force companies like Reliance to stop buying Russian oil. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro publicly assailed “India’s politically connected energy titans” for “funding Putin’s war machine,” widely read as a reference to the Ambanis.
Amid this tension, Trump Jr. visited Anant Ambani on his November trip to India. At the end of the trip, Trump Jr.’s personal lawyer commented at a business conference in Miami: “I had a nice closing this morning with Don Trump Jr., who’s flying back from India today.” (The following week, the Texas startup — then called Element Fuels — filed paperwork to create America First Refining LLC. In an email, the attorney, John Willding, told ProPublica that there was “no transaction in India or with an Indian company that I was ever involved with.”)
Anant Ambani, who helps run Reliance’s energy business, personally worked on the Texas refinery deal for months before it was announced, a major Indian newspaper later reported.
As the Ambanis quietly finalized their deal with America First Refining, U.S.-Indian relations appeared to warm. In February, the Trump administration struck a trade deal with India, dramatically lowering tariffs, and also reportedly gave Reliance a license to buy Venezuelan oil. When the Iran war broke out and rocked global energy markets, the U.S. gave India a sanctions waiver to buy Russian crude. (The waiver was later expanded to all countries.)
In response to ProPublica’s questions, the White House said that “there are no conflicts of interest.” Reliance did not answer ProPublica’s questions about Trump Jr.’s and Anant Ambani’s roles in the investment deal, but said in a statement that the company did not receive “any unique or preferential treatment” from the U.S. government.
“There is no connection between Reliance’s investment in AFR and any unique measures associated with general U.S. trade, tariff, sanctions or licensing outcomes,” Reliance said. “The investment was evaluated and approved on its commercial merits, strategic fit and long-term value creation potential.”
In March, President Trump personally announced Reliance’s deal with the Texas startup on Truth Social, thanking the Ambani company for its “tremendous Investment.”
After the announcement, Willding, the Trump Jr. lawyer, shared the news on LinkedIn: “Just so proud to have been part of this one.”
Willding rowed back his claim in an email to ProPublica. “I have never worked for or advised AFR and had zero involvement in their deal with Reliance Energy,” he said. “I simply saw the press release and was excited for them.” America First Refining’s spokesperson called Willding’s comment “moronic and false.”
In June 2025, Willding registered a new entity in Wyoming called TX Fuels, LLC, listing the company’s address as Trump Jr.’s mansion in Jupiter, Florida. In his email, Willding said his “only involvement in AFR was handling the legal paperwork” for the Trump Jr. LLC’s investment in the startup.
Trump Jr. first hired Willding in May 2021, according tointerviews the lawyer has given. A corporate deal lawyer in Dallas, Willding has referred to himself as “outside business counsel to the Trump family” and has said he talks to Trump Jr. or Eric Trump almost daily. A former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voter who fell hard for MAGA, the attorney has installed a portrait of President Trump over the mantel in his living room.
Willding’s practice has boomed during the second Trump administration, bringing the lawyer to Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. “Everybody in the world wants to do business with the United States right now,” Willding said at a conference in June 2025. “Every company wants to do business with the Trump family.”
There are other fingerprints of the Trump world on the refinery deal.
Howard Lutnick’s firm Cantor Fitzgerald — which his sons took over when Lutnick became Trump’s commerce secretary — is working as the financial adviser to America First Refining, including on the Ambani investment deal, Cantor Fitzgerald announced. (Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment.)
And the Trump administration played a direct role helping America First Refining find potential foreign investors, according to public comments from the company’s CEO, John Calce. “We have received support from the White House,” he told a local news outlet. The National Energy Dominance Council, led by the interior and energy secretaries, has “helped us with, candidly, introducing us and helping us meet some of these people overseas,” Calce said on an industry podcast.
America First Refining has recently explored going public, according to three people close to the company. That could allow its current investors to start cashing out even if the refinery never gets built — a milestone many energy industry insiders still view as a long shot. Reliance made its investment in the startup at a valuation of at least $1 billion, according to America First Refining’s announcement.
Building a refinery at the Port of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast has been Calce’s mission for a decade. A former Yale offensive lineman, he started his career as a high school football coach after an unsuccessful attempt to make the NFL and now describes himself as a “lifelong entrepreneur.”
The project has been serially delayed, out of money, rebranded and trailed by angry former business partners. At one point, Calce’s companies were being sued simultaneously by eight other firms. In 2022, during bankruptcy proceedings for an earlier iteration of the project, the trustee appointed to impartially oversee the case sued Calce too. The trustee alleged that Calce and other insiders had improperly siphoned away cash and other assets. (Calce denied wrongdoing. The case was ultimately settled.)
During the Biden administration, as the company sought financial support from the Department of Energy, it pitched itself as a climate-friendly green project that would also help “people of underrepresented social demographics” in Brownsville, according to records from that period. The company failed to get enough money from outside investors, and the planned construction was delayed.
By the company’s own estimate, building the refinery will take years and cost $3 billion to $4 billion. Even if it’s built, profitability could be hard to achieve. Many energy investors told ProPublica there’s a reason the U.S. hasn’t seen a major new refinery in decades. “Refineries cost a lot of money and essentially make pennies on the dollar,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist in Houston. “Wall Street is not going to finance a new refinery.”
Even after the start of the second Trump administration, the company was in jeopardy, according to interviews and documents. It laid off workers last year, and, by late 2025, with delays continuing to plague the refinery, officials at the Port of Brownsville believed the project looked to be dead, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.
That has not stopped Calce and his team from making grandiose claims to the public. Earlier this year,a website went live for another Calce company called Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals. It claims to have a far-flung network of oil storage terminals in places like the Netherlands and Singapore, more than 850 employees and a C-suite of experienced energy executives. But ProPublica could find no evidence that the executives are real people or that the storage terminals actually exist. The phone numbers on the website are also currently listed online as the contacts for a Houston baklava caterer, a Dallas-area taxi service and an OB-GYN office. The numbers are dead.
America First Refining’s political ties, though, may have boosted its standing with Texas state regulators. In February, shortly before the Ambani investment became public, the company sought an extension on its permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Inside the state agency, emails obtained by ProPublica show, officials scrambled to approve the request.
“Need to get this one logged and processed asap,” wrote one official.
“You are going to have to do this one. I will explain why in person in a few,” wrote another. “You can guess if you check out the name.”
America First Refining got its approval the next day. A spokesperson for the Texas agency did not address questions about the emails. “This request was processed quickly due to the quality of information provided,” the spokesperson said.
When Russia kicked off its war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine for completely made up reasons, there were global efforts to isolate Russia as a result. Many of those efforts have waned in the years since, unfortunately. You may recall that there was a small effort among video game companies and platforms to deny sales and service to Russia as part of this cultural blockade. While the war still rages on, and anyone who wants to can call all of this effort a failure, the point is that gaming companies and platforms took something of a moral stand against Russia as a result of the war.
Valve’s Steam platform was involved in that effort, though that may have had as much to do with payment processing sanctions as any kind of moral stand. Today, Valve is back to operating in Russia, and it appears to have no issues with some of the country’s more notoriously bigoted laws and postures when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. Recently, the maker and seller of several visual novel style games found her games delisted and a message from Valve chastising her for not following Russia’s bigoted laws.
Ebi-hime, the developer behind yuri visual novels like Her Love, Like Poison and Rituals in the Dark, posted on X that Valve notified her that some of her games had been banned from the storefront in Russia after Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency in charge of censorship in the country, determined those projects to be in violation of the country’s rules for distribution. That in and of itself isn’t surprising considering Russia has woven anti-queer legislation into its laws and even designated queer activism as an “extremist” movement. What is surprising is that Valve’s copy-pasted message on the situation is condescending and victim-blamey. It reads in part:
We also want to remind you that you promised Valve under the Steam Distribution Agreement that your games comply with all applicable laws. Therefore, it is your responsibility to do your due diligence regarding where your games are allowed to be distributed, and to inform us of any territory where they cannot be.
Now, if you want to make the herculean effort it requires to take Valve’s side on this, you could argue that operating within a country like Russia necessarily requires an adherence to its local laws. And perhaps you want to argue that that’s all that Valve is doing here.
Except operating within Russia is a choice. Platforms are only neutral to a point. And if you make the use cases more extreme, it betrays just how much of a choice this all is.
Imagine if a country required all video games sold within its borders to prohibit any female characters within the game from speaking. Or one which prohibited any person of color from appearing in a game at all. Or one which required all characters to both be of a certain religion and to profess their faith in that religion. Would Valve still operate within any of those countries? If they did, you would imagine the backlash to be rather extreme.
But, for some reason, Russia essentially outlawing the appearance of any LGBTQ+ characters in games doesn’t quite get Valve’s fur up. Is the morality around my examples and this real occurrence all that different? Are they any different?
And, frankly, couldn’t Valve have done this better than sending what is likely a boilerplate message to someone who is actively being discriminated against that sure sounds like its blaming the victim?
Not that I would expect Valve to take a proper stance against something like the Russian government. I just think that if you’re going to take the stance of compliance that it is taking, you can at least be mindful of how you talk to people using your platform about it. If you don’t want to buy Ebi-hime’s games on Steam, they are also available on itch.io.
Obviously, we don’t look to the monied interests of large corporations for moral clarity. But we can certainly hold them accountable for failing to take even the easiest of moral stances with our dollars, if we want to.
It is widely accepted that drones have changed the conduct of modern war dramatically. The war in Ukraine, in particular, is driving the rapid evolution of drone technology. Evidence of how far things have come was provided recently by the following claim from Ukraine, reported here on The Next Web (TNW):
In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his forces had, for the first time in the history of warfare, seized an enemy position using only unmanned systems. No infantry. No human soldiers entering the contested ground. Drones and ground robots identified the target, suppressed defensive fire, and captured the position without a single Ukrainian casualty. The claim has not been independently verified in detail, and Ukraine’s military has declined to provide specifics.
The TNW article goes on to give some details about the company that apparently played a major role in that unmanned assault:
a Ukrainian-British defence technology startup called UFORCE, has conducted more than 150,000 combat missions since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, achieved unicorn status with a valuation exceeding one billion dollars, and is now scaling production from a discreet London headquarters designed, the company says, to protect it from Russian sabotage. The age of unmanned warfare is no longer a conference-circuit prediction. It is a line item on a defence contractor’s balance sheet.
Politico interviewed the Ukrainian commander in charge of the Third Assault Brigade’s ground robotic systems unit, the one which carried out the attack. Mykola Zinkevych provided some interesting indications of what robotic systems were already doing today, and what Ukraine’s future plans were for unmanned warfare systems. For example, Zinkevych said:
Delivery of important cargo, evacuation of the wounded, conducting surveillance in open areas, destruction of enemy fortifications, sabotage operations behind enemy lines, laying minefields — all this is now performed by ground robotic systems
In the short term:
Infantrymen can and should be taken out of direct fire. Our goal for 2026 is to replace up to 30 percent of personnel in the most difficult areas of the front with technology
In a post on Facebook (in Ukrainian), Zinkevych gave details of the ambitious longer-term goals (via Google Translate), which will involve the wider deployment of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV):
In March alone, 9,000+ missions were completed by the military. Our goal is for 100% of front-line logistics to be performed by robotic systems.
In the first half of 2026, due to increased demand, we will contract 25,000 UGVs, which will be gradually delivered to the front. This is twice as much as in the entire year 2025.
A new paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, written by the former defense minister of Ukraine, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, explores what he calls “The New Revolution in Military Affairs”, which is being brought about by “rapid innovation and adaptation, introducing new types of unmanned systems, countermeasures, and operating methods at unprecedented speed.” A key element of this is “affordable precise mass” — the highly effective deployment of cheap, long-range drones on a massive scale. He calls this transformation:
a structural shift in warfare in which new technologies drive the development of novel operational concepts and doctrines, fundamentally altering how military power is generated and employed, and forcing enduring changes in military organizations. These trends include the emergence of affordable precise mass, the fragmentation of the air domain, the growing difficulty of maneuver, the centrality of networked warfare, and the elevation of rapid adaptation as a core military capability. This transformation is still in its early stages, but countries that fail to recognize and adapt to it risk preparing for a form of war that has lost its decisiveness.
One important aspect of this shift touches on an area that will be familiar to Techdirt readers. As noted in the quotation above, Zagorodnyuk underlines the importance of rapid adaptation for this new kind of warfare:
The decisive advantage lies with those who can shorten the loop between combat experience, technical adaptation, and redeployment. As a result, ultra-fast adaptation becomes a paramount requirement for survival—and directly shapes force organization.
In Ukraine, this has led to drone operators being deeply involved in the technology’s evolution:
Units maintain their own repair facilities, component stocks, and small-scale production capabilities. Some operate informal research-and-development cells. Successful adaptations spread laterally through personal networks, messaging platforms, and volunteer communities rather than through centralized bureaucratic channels.
But Zagorodnyuk points out a key reason why the important lessons emerging from the wars in Ukraine and Iran are unlikely to be learned in many Western countries, including the US:
legal, contractual, and technical restrictions often prevent units from modifying or repairing their own equipment. In the United States, for example, defense contractors frequently retain control over maintenance data, software, and diagnostics, limiting what military personnel can do independently. The debate around the “right to repair” reflects this tension. While intended to protect intellectual property and safety standards, such restrictions can slow adaptation cycles and reduce operational flexibility—precisely the opposite of what high-intensity, technology-driven warfare now demands.
In other words, today’s obsession with protecting intellectual monopolies above all else could one day prove a major obstacle to fighting — and winning — future wars.
And when shitty, surveillance-happy governments try to block or degrade the use of VPNs, bad things can happen. As Russia found out recently when a ham-fisted effort to block VPN users from accessing Telegram resulted in a massive outage for online banking across the entire country.
Last February Russia tried to delete WhatsApp and Telegram from its version of the internet in the hopes of driving Russians to Max, the country’s approved “everything app.” Max has no encryption or privacy protections, making it easier for Vladimir Putin’s government to engage in mass surveillance of the public’s online activities.
VPN use makes that harder. An estimated 50 million Russians still use VPNs to access Telegram, according to CEO Pavel Durov (happily posting away over at Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website):
“But amid its effort to weaken VPNs on Friday, according to Bloomberg, accounts from “The Bell and other Russian media” banking apps were disrupted. This disruption might have been, “caused by an overload in the filtering systems run by Russia’s communications watchdog, according to the reports,” Bloomberg explained, “with experts warning that major restrictions risk undermining network stability.”
Something similar happened in 2018. Whoops. Apparently the Russian government was so eager to ban VPNs, they erroneously targeted IP addresses tied to banking infrastructure owned by Sberbank, VTB, and T-Bank, demonstrating the fragile nature of centralized financial infrastructure. The outage briefly made mobile payment apps unusable, making cash the only viable transaction option for part of a day.
Given that shitty autocratic governments (like our own) are incapable of learning anything useful from experience, you can expect the problem to repeat itself.
In the last Ctrl-Alt-Speech of the year, Mike and Ben round up the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation with the following stories:
Last year almost a dozen major U.S. ISPs were the victim of a massive, historic intrusion by Chinese hackers who managed to spy on public U.S. officials for more than a year. The “Salt Typhoon” hack was so severe, the intruders spent much of the last year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery.
AT&T and Verizon, two of the compromised companies, apparently didn’t think it was worth informing subscribers any of this happened. Many of the attack vectors were based on simple things like telecom administrators failing to change default passwords on sensitive hardware entry points.
“The Federal Communications Commission will vote in November to repeal a ruling that requires telecom providers to secure their networks, acting on a request from the biggest lobby groups representing Internet providers.”
In a folksy Halloween blog post, Carr tries to pretend this somehow improves cybersecurity. According to Carr, ISPs pinky swore that everything is fine now, and frames obvious regulatory capture as the agency being more “agile”:
“Following extensive FCC engagement with carriers, the item announces the substantial steps that providers have taken to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses. In doing so, we will also reverse an eleventh hour CALEA declaratory ruling reached by the prior FCC—a decision that both exceeded the agency’s authority and did not present an effective or agile response to the relevant cybersecurity threats. So, we’re correcting course.”
Let me be clear about something: the Biden rules were the absolute baseline for oversight of telecom, basically requiring that ISPs do the absolute bare minimum when it comes to securing their networks, while being transparent with the public about when there’s been a major hack. This stuff was the bare minimum, and the U.S. is too corrupt to even do that.
This is part of Carr’s effort to destroy whatever was left of flimsy U.S. corporate oversight of regional telecom monopolies so he can ensure he has a cushy post-government job at a telecom-funded think tank or lobbying org. To that end, he’s been taking a hatchet to the very shaky FCC oversight standards that already helped result in the worst hack in U.S. telecom history.
It’s yet another example of how Trump policy is indistinguishable from a foreign attack. In many ways it’s worse, given that at least with Russia, Iran, and China, you’re spared the kind of phony piety and sanctimony coming from inside your own house.
The US attended the UN Cybercrime Treaty signing ceremony in Hanoi this weekend, where 72 countries signed on to a Russia-backed framework for global surveillance cooperation. Whether the US actually puts pen to paper (and all the reporting on this is kind of cagey) is almost beside the point—by showing up and legitimizing the proceeding, what the Biden administration last year blessed with “we’ll fix it from within” is now in the hands of the Trump administration. You know, the one that views criticism as crime and governmental power as something to maximize, not constrain. What could go wrong?
The Russian-initiated treaty, which we’ve warned aboutmultiple times over the past few years, creates a framework for cross-border law enforcement “cooperation” on “cybercrime” that’s defined so broadly it could cover basically any activity a government doesn’t like that happens to involve a computer.
As The Record notes, despite widespread concerns raised by plenty of people, the Biden administration felt it made more sense to sign onto this agreement in order to be able to fix it from within later:
The White House later told reporters they felt theyhad to back the treaty now in order to make changes to it later and shape how it was implementedglobally. They also said it would likely expand the number of countries that will respond to warrants issued by the U.S. related to cybercrime.
That’s… optimistic. And also completely backwards.
That reasoning might work for a trade agreement where you’re negotiating tariff rates or dispute resolution procedures. But when the treaty is about creating a legal framework that explicitly empowers any government to demand data on anyone accused of a “serious crime” under their domestic law, you can’t shape your way out of that. The mechanism itself is the problem.
You don’t fix a fundamentally broken treaty by signing it and hoping to shape implementation later. That’s not how it works. Once you’ve given your stamp of approval to a Russia-backed surveillance framework, you’ve already lost the game. The “we’ll fix it later” approach might have made some sense when there was at least a theoretical chance the US would push back against abuse. But now we’re handing these powers to an administration that has made clear it views any criticism as an attack, any dissent as a threat, and any check on its power as illegitimate.
We, the undersigned organizations, remain deeply concerned that the UN Convention Against Cybercrime (UNCC) will facilitate human rights abuses across borders. As some states head to Hanoi for the UNCC signing ceremony from October 25-26, we urge them to refrain from signing and ratifying the treaty and to use the occasion to highlight the importance of safeguarding human rights when implementing this Convention.
The problems with this treaty are extensive and we’ve covered them before, but they’re worth repeating given that they’re now officially going into effect. As Human Rights Watch details:
The Convention will obligate governments to collect electronic evidence and share it with foreign authorities for any “serious crime,” defined as an offense punishable by at least four years of imprisonment under domestic law. Many governments criminalize activities protected by international human rights law and impose sentences that would make them “serious offenses” under this framework, such as criticism of the government,peaceful protest,same-sex relationships,investigative journalism, andwhistleblowing.
Think about that for a second (or more, because the more you think about it, the worse it seems). In Thailand, criticizing the king can get you fifteen years. In Russia, criticizing the invasion of Ukraine is considered “violence against police” or “incitement of hatred.” Under this treaty, those become legitimate grounds for demanding data from US companies about US users. And the safeguards against this? Basically non-existent.
The treaty does include some language about respecting human rights in Article 6, but as we’ve noted before, it’s incredibly weak. It essentially says states should implement the treaty “consistent with their obligations under international human rights law” and that nothing in the treaty should be interpreted as “permitting suppression of human rights.”
Great. Except every authoritarian government on earth claims their repressive laws are consistent with human rights. They just have a different interpretation of what those rights mean and when they can be restricted. Thailand says its lèse-majesté law protects “public security.” Russia says its laws against criticizing the military are necessary to protect national defense. Saudi Arabia’s laws against “defaming” the government are framed as protecting social stability.
The treaty’s language does nothing to stop any of this. It’s a permission slip, not a constraint.
And the Biden administration knew this last year. As The Record notes, the current State Department said it is “still reviewing the treaty” when asked whether the US will be among the first to ratify it. Which raises the obvious question: if you’re still reviewing whether it’s safe to ratify, why the hell did you join the signing ceremony?
Now add a treaty that allows foreign governments to request surveillance data on anyone accused of a “serious crime” under their domestic law. And remember: the US appears to be supporting this framework. We’re telling the world that this is legitimate international cooperation.
So when Viktor Orban’s Hungary decides that criticizing the government is a serious crime worthy of five years imprisonment, or when India decides that reporting on government corruption qualifies as sedition, or when any of dozens of increasingly authoritarian governments decide they want to track down dissidents who happen to use American tech platforms—they now have a treaty-backed framework to request that data.
And what’s the Trump administration going to do? Push back on behalf of journalists and activists? Defend the principle that criticism of government shouldn’t be treated as a crime? Please.
The Human Rights Watch statement is particularly pointed about the location of the signing ceremony:
The signing ceremony in Hanoi is taking place against the backdrop of an intensified crackdown by the Vietnamese government on dissent to punish people simply for raising concerns or complaints about government policies or local officials, including online.
So countries are literally signing a surveillance treaty in a country that’s actively cracking down on online dissent.
The organizations opposing the treaty also make clear what should have been obvious from the start: you can’t fix this by signing it and hoping for the best. They urge states that are considering signing to withhold support unless they can guarantee meaningful safeguards will prevent abuse in practice.
States should refuse to sign or ratify the Convention. States that have already committed to signing should adopt concrete human rights safeguards and demonstrate how these enable them to implement the Convention’s terms in a manner that fully respects human rights.
Rights-respecting states that are considering signing the UNCC despite the significant threat it poses to human rights should withhold their support unless and until they can guarantee that certain conditions are in place, namely that they and other signatories will implement the treaty with meaningful safeguards and other legal protections that will prevent human rights abuses in practice.
And they lay out what those safeguards would need to include: extensive stakeholder consultation, national frameworks that meet international human rights standards, formal reservations to ensure dual criminality requirements, transparency into implementation, and making human rights compliance a prerequisite for any funding or capacity building.
None of that is in place. None of it is even being seriously discussed. Having the Biden administration bless this approach last year, and now the Trump admin show up to the signing ceremony basically takes away any and all leverage.
There is no “later” for shaping implementation when you’ve already legitimized the framework. And there’s definitely no hope of the Trump administration using this treaty responsibly when they’ve made clear they view governmental power as something to be maximized, not constrained.
The treaty required only 40 ratifications to enter into force, and it received 72, which sets off a 90-day clock until the treaty is official. In a better world, the US would make clear it will not be among those to sign or ratify the treaty. In theory, it still could. As various reports note, many of the big American tech companies also opposed this treaty.
Now would be a good time for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Marc Andreessen to use some of their connections with Trump to suggest he goes in another direction. But that seems unlikely.
The Biden administration fucked this up big time last year by coming out in support of this treaty with a “we’ll help fix it from within later” approach. That we’re now having to hope someone convinces Trump to push back on it is less than ideal.
This treaty is damaging and dangerous. The Biden administration gave it its initial blessing, and now the Trump administration is poised to help the world’s worst authoritarians abuse it.
While this latest bit of low-key embarrassment may not be a black eye for the administration, it certainly isn’t putting any more lipstick on this pig. Whatever you may think about the recent summit meeting between these two international besties, you can be assured that some of the attendees thought even less of it than you did.
Is this how we’re leaking things to the press now? Seems careless, since there are multiple ways of identifying who left these documents behind. That being said, no one is named in the NPR reporting, which covers what was uncovered by hotel guests who happened to find these documents just sitting in a tray of one of the hotel’s public printers.
Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.
Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.
The documents [PDF] are embedded below. What’s exposed in them is indeed sensitive information, but the sensitivity is directly proportionate to a specific time frame, which means a discovery that happened after the summit was over isn’t nearly as problematic as anything discovered before or during. The dates, times, and specific rooms used for meetings don’t mean nearly as much as they might have while this summit was still ongoing.
One of things that immediately stands out as having Trump’s tiny fingerprints all over it is the menu for the luncheon that never happened.
During the summit Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.
Not just any green salad, mind you, but one served with “champagne vinaigrette.” I’m sure it’s the word “champagne” that earned Trump’s approval, not that he probably cares one way or another what’s served on a salad he isn’t going to eat.
Here’s the menu as it was printed (and left on a public printer):
Between the font selection and the menu options, this looks like something being offered by Waldorf Astoria in 1925, rather than by the most powerful nation in the world in 2025. And one assumes the filet mignon would have been served a la Trump (charred into submission; walloped with ketchup). Fortunately for Putin, the lunch was cancelled, preventing him from a.) having to witness Trump “enjoy” a steak, and b.) having to experience a fish swimming in mayonnaise. (Your mileage may vary.)
Low-hanging mockery aside, it’s still a problem. And since it is actually a problem, the White House is, of course, pretending it’s not a problem, calling the eight pages of information nothing more than a “multi-page lunch menu.” Even if you ignore all the information specifying who will be in which rooms at what particular times, there’s plenty of other information that generally doesn’t appear in lunch menus, no matter how many pages they run.
Pages 2 through 5 of the documents listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”
Even if this (perhaps intentional!) leak didn’t threaten national security, it’s emblematic of an administration that tends to operate with all the finesse of a bludgeon wielded by a bull in the china shop that is the world we live in. To expect better than this is human. To expect to see better than this, from this administration, is self-delusion.
It’s funny just how often the actions of so-called “strong men” actually show just how scared and fragile they are. And if you want a more specific example of what I’m talking about, you can typically tell when a national government is feeling scared or weak, because that usually comes along with restrictions on a free and open internet. Worried that your horror-show of a government from a human rights standpoint might generate pushback and protests? Construct the Great Firewall of China. Concerned that social media sites might serve as rallying points against your election in Brazil? Have the actual police actually police the internet for anything you don’t like.
Launched a war of aggression against your neighbor because you thought you could annex an entire country in a few months, only to find out that you’re in a prolonged war of attrition that your own people might get severely tired of? Well, then you do what the Kremlin did, and iteratively crackdown on internet access and freedoms over several years. And Putin isn’t stopping.
Russia appears to be degrading performance or access to some targeted internet sites, such as YouTube, while also building out state-controlled alternatives to Western technology, which will inevitably be banned.
YouTube videos that won’t load. A visit to a popular independent media website that produces only a blank page. Cellphone internet connections that are down for hours or days. While it’s still possible to circumvent restrictions by using virtual private network apps, those are routinely blocked, too.
Authorities further restricted internet access this summer with widespread shutdowns of cellphone internet connections and adopting a law punishing users for searching for content they deem illicit.
They also are threatening to go after the popular WhatsApp platform while rolling out a new “national” messaging app that’s widely expected to be heavily monitored.
So it’s a three-pronged approach, designed purely to silence dissent and prevent the distribution of anti-government speech online as well as any coordination from opposition groups that could occur there. The banning or degradation of websites controls the information Russian citizens will see, the attacks on VPNs prevents them from getting around that control, and the mandated use of state-controlled messaging apps ensures that Russians won’t try to coordinate dissent activities online or, if they mistakenly do, provide the Russian government with a way to monitor that activity.
Starting next month, all new smartphones sold in Russia will come pre-installed with MAX, a government-developed messaging and services app. Officials describe MAX as Russia’s answer to China’s WeChat: an all-in-one platform for chatting, posting updates, making payments, and accessing government services.
The Kremlin has already begun testing MAX in schools, with authorities hinting it could soon become mandatory for teachers, parents, and even students. Experts warn that this level of integration will make MAX unavoidable in everyday Russian life.
Deputy head of Russia’s IT committee, Anton Gorelkin, recently warned WhatsApp to “prepare to leave the Russian market.” With nearly 100 million Russian users, losing WhatsApp would mark a massive shift in how people communicate.
Make no mistake, this is all a symptom of fear. Russia wouldn’t try to silence online information unless Russians were hungry for it and unless the Russian government didn’t want that information to get out. Ditto when it comes to the use of VPNs. And the Kremlin wouldn’t be trying to control how Russian citizens communicate online unless it feared it would be used to threaten government control. None of this represents strength, nor confidence. It’s fear.
Maybe this will work, though I doubt it, if given a long enough timeline for all of this to play out. The internet tends to route around censorship, as the saying goes, and I’m not sure the Russian people have been conditioned to accept the government’s word in the same way the Chinese people may have been.
But what I do know is that Putin and his government aren’t taking these actions because everything is going so well for them.
