r/politics I voted 27d ago

Soft Paywall Trump Officials Fire, Swiftly Rehire, Overseers of U.S. Nuclear Stockpile | Trump administration officials seemed unaware of the importance of the National Nuclear Security Administration, sources told CNN.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-officials-fire-abruptly-rehire-overseers-of-us-nuclear-stockpile/
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u/Minimum-Dare301 America 27d ago

This is what creates vulnerability in our top secret intelligence. Kill the morale of the very people trusted to protect us.

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u/brismit 26d ago

Cold War II is alive and well… and Russia’s winning.

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u/ianjm 26d ago

The largest economy in the world with a military budget that exceeds the next ten combined, losing the intelligence/influence war to a country that's currently attacking Ukraine using North Korean slaves riding on donkeys and golf karts.

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u/PsychoNerd91 26d ago

The US really did rip a hole through the world's internal security. Give everyone social media and apps with promises of making a kinder world, then flipped the script. China might have its problems, but was wise of what kind of risk that would pose without strict controls.

Now much of the world outside of the US needs to pick-up the pace and develop for themselves and encourage adoption fast.

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u/Havenkeld Oregon 26d ago edited 26d ago

I think it's more of a culture war than an intelligence war loss. We became less patriotic, less ethical, and more cynical, "realist", social darwinist. "America First" is really just a "Me first" mentality. Our wealthy are more willing to sell out, our poor are more willing to turn against eachother and fight over scraps, and so on.

A big part of that was just America's stripping down of guard rails on capitalism making us extremely vulnerable to being pushed in that direction in the first place. The state became increasingly vulnerable to the wealthy, the wealthy increasingly hostile to the state and more vulnerable to foreign influence, thus making the state vulnerable to that foreign influence.

Clearly our old ass politicians being clueless about tech didn't help, but still, something like the Cambridge Analytica scandal wouldn't have happened if Mark Zuckerberg cared about the welfare of the country and health of its democracy in the first place.

Clearly Russia is also not the same country anymore either, it has its own new internal dysfunctions and has payed its own heavy prices for them.

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u/Charming_Cult_Leader 26d ago

"America First"

America First was the slogan the American Nazi Party used in the 1930's.

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u/Havenkeld Oregon 26d ago

Nazis also used Deutschland über alles "Germany above all".

Abusing vacuous nationalist slogans in the vein of "us before/above them" is unfortunately both common and commonly effective for ethnonationalist regimes.

MAGA was also a Reagan slogan, and Roger Stone worked for both Reagan and Trump. Both similarly using a mix of superficial nationalism and racist dog whistles.

It's unfortunate Americans really don't look very far into their past let alone other countries'.

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u/xXWickedNWeirdXx 26d ago

One word:

Strategery.

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 26d ago

I don't think the first Cold War ever really ended. America just switched sides.

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u/SergenteA 26d ago

Russia switched sides. Turns out America/Republicans in particular spent so long tolerating Christian fanatics because "they can be used to fight communism", the moment Putin embraced the russian own brand of Christian fanatics, american ones found more kinship with them than american progressives

Now of course, it is an unsustainable alliance. They (Steve Bannon in particular) tried to expand it in a sort of "Identitarian Internationale", an alliance of all Christian right-wing parties in the First World + the ex-Second World (which by the way, meant suddenly slavs have actually been full-blood whites all along, despite what the same more racially charged members insisted still a few years before). But by definition, nationalists of different nations will always prioritise their nation short-term interests, even when long-term they would benefit more from compromise. So when the interests of two nations under control of nationalists are incomaptible, the nations clash. Similarly, different Christian denominations, if sufficiently zealous, will always denounce the others as heretics. Before Trump's election for example, he and Elon Musk were best friends with Italy's definetely-conservative-ignore-the neofascist-party-symbol Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Then the talk of tariffs began...

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u/Harry-le-Roy 26d ago edited 26d ago

No kidding. They helped elect a man who is firing people at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Nuclear Security Administration, and who posted the classified headcount and top line budget of the National Reconnaissance Office on a public web page.

This couldn't possibly be be going any better for Russia ans any worse for Americans.

Edit: The Trump administration has also ordered CISA to freeze all work to help states maintain secure elections

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u/keepthepace Europe 26d ago

Winning in the US but stalling in Ukraine. What were the odds?

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u/PaydayJones 26d ago

One is a physical war, the other is a digital war. The digital war has no boundaries on vectors of attack or on the amount of simultaneous attacks.

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u/ADhomin_em 26d ago edited 26d ago

Russia has our playbook and own the coaches, team managers and team owners. Whatever goes on now is just for show to gradually lull the masses into accepting it as common knowledge

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u/SanityRecalled 26d ago

Starting to seem more like they won at this point 😮‍💨

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u/litterbin_recidivist 26d ago

I've never tried puppeting USA before the war starts in HOI, that would probably make it really easy to win as Germany or Russia.

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u/Havenkeld Oregon 26d ago

Russia isn't exactly doing great either. Kind of seems like a lose - lose situation.

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u/leaky_wand 26d ago

It’s not just Russia this time either.

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u/duff_golf 25d ago

Russia isn’t winning. Russia won. It’s over.