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welome to Crossroads the Trump campaign says it’s been hacked now it’s alleged an Iranian hacker group Stolen internal memos including a 270 page dossier and his running mate JD Vance then the alleged you know Iranian hackers leaked these documents to a couple news OTS one of them being Politico the breach follows recent warnings notably that Iran and other countries were trying to tamper with us elections and you know as Global conflicts rise around the growing axis of Iran China and Russia this recent breach is actually a lot broader than just you know election interference now to start I should just mention look the recent breach of the Trump campaign is being pinned on Iran now I could see this being plausible but I’d also say you never know remember back in 2016 we were told that Russia was doing the exact same thing they were accused of breaching the Democrat campaign servers you know it’s possible but evidence later suggested that it also could have been an internal breach there were accusations that President Donald Trump had encouraged this although notably that claim was from comments he made that were taken out of context and then that was used to frame a larger Scandal and remember at that time you know later on when the whole Trump Russia dossier was leaked which was also heavily in response to investigations into whether Trump had colluded with Russia on the Democrat server breach we also later found out it was just opposition research it wasn’t real so now we have a very similar situation only this time it’s the Republican networks being breached not the Democrat networks and this time the stolen documents are being provided directly to a news Outlet so the situation with this server breach is you know flipped this time around and also this time there’s a very real growing Global AIS forming which again includes Iran the country this is being pinned on and this makes a situation a whole lot more complicated now first let’s have a look at what just happened Politico said this former president Donald Trump’s campaign said Saturday that some of its internal Communications had been hacked the acknowledgement came after Politico began receiving emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump’s operation it says the campaign blamed foreign sources hostile to the United States citing a Microsoft report on Friday that Iranian hackers quote sent a spear fishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign a spear fishing email notably would be someone sends you an email address and maybe there’s an infected Link in there you click it it infects your computer or sometimes it might even just opening the email might infect your computer with a script but they say that Microsoft did not identify the campaign targeted by the email and declined to comment on Saturday so it’s not fully confirmed yet now it notes that Politico has not independently verified the identity of the hacker or their motivation and a trump campaign spokesperson Steven Chung declined to say if they had further information substantiating the campaign’s suggestion that it was targeted by Iran now they note on July 22nd political began receiving emails from an anonymous account over the course of the past few weeks the person who used an AOL email account and identified them elves only as Robert relayed what appeared to be internal Communications from a senior Trump campaign official it says a research dossier of the campaign had apparently done on Trump’s running M Ohio Senator JD Vance which was dated February 23rd was included in the documents it says the documents are authentic according to two people familiar with them and granted anonymity to describe internal Communications one of the people described the dossier as a preliminary version of Vance’s vetting file right they want to check him out find out what he’s about it says the research dossier was a 271 page document based on publicly available information about Vance’s past record and statements with some such as his past criticisms of trump identified in the document as potential vulnerabilities it says the person also sent part of a research document about Florida Senator Marco Rubio who was also a finalist for the vice presidential nomination the person said they had a variety of documents from Trump’s legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions now on this note the story pointing to the Iranian breach came out just prior to this and so kind of the basis of how they say you know Iran breached the servers at least on the surface it was based on this let me show you the analysis on the campaign from the Microsoft threat analysis Center they said this on August 9th foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 us election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last 6 months due initially to Russian operations but more recently from Iranian activity it says this third election report from the Microsoft threat analysis Center or mtac provides an update on what we’ve observed from Russia Iran and China since our second report in April of 2024 over the past several months we have seen the emergence of significant influence activity by Iranian actors Iranian cyber enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three us election Cycles Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyber attacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters it says recent activity suggests the Iranian regime along with the Kremlin Russia may be equally engaged in election 2024 right now and know further in that Iranian actors have recently that the groundwork for influence operations aimed at us audiences and potentially seeking to impact the 2024 US presidential election this recent cyber enabled influence activity arises from a combination of actors which are conducting in initial cyber reconnaissance meaning they’re using cyber attacks to kind of like look at the landscape or maybe breach different systems just to gain access to them and see how they can use them and then it says they’re also seeding online personas and websites into the information space so personas being maybe fake influencers or actual influencers who they may be feeding information to and also websites they’re either creating new websites or feeding information to websites they can influence so they’re using surface you know people can watch online and they’re also looking at you know what they can breach and steal using cyber operations two- tiered right now the Microsoft document details you know more how Iranian hackers are working closely with both Russian and Chinese Communist party groups on their cyber operations so it appears this is not just limited to Iran it’s also Russia to an extent and China and the combination of their networks launching these types of attacks and you know influence operations targeted at you know influencing the American elections in 2024 a heavy focus of the campaign is influence operations you know using huge networks of controlled accounts propaganda news websites propaganda video channels and also similar things like this the idea of an influence campaign is of course you want to influence certain individuals to carry your message or to change their opinions it’s a type of you know world view Warfare when it comes to elections part of that may be trying to change the opinions of influencers or politicians making it so that they become voices of a particular narrative the other side is you want to influence the voters themselves change their world view change what they think about a certain individual in order to change the outcome this time of the election now they could also detail several hacker groups involved in this operation four out of the six it identifies are backed by Iran and it’s partially this part that really details the Cyber breaches I’ll be talking more about this after we come back from a quick break experts agree one of the best ways to protect against Financial uncertainty is to diversify your portfolio learn how physical gold and silver can secure your retirement funds from today’s economic challenges with a gold Ira from American Harford goal you can Safeguard your wealth with no penalties or taxes when you transfer your current qualifying retirement accounts call now and our precious metals Specialists will send you a free information kit no cost or obligation American Harford gold a trusted industry leader with an A+ from the Better Business Bureau has a five-star rating from thousands of happy clients whether you are getting physical precious metals in a gold Ira or delivered to your doorstep we offer only the highest quality gold and silver for your peace of mind we also offer a no fee buyback commitment a low price guarantee along with free shipping and free insurance so don’t wait call the number on your screen today and secure your financial [Music] future welcome back the Trump campaign says that some of its internal documents on the election have now been hacked now it’s alleged that an Iranian hacker group stole internal memos including a dossier on JD Vance you know the Republican Vice Presidential nominee the breach follows recent warnings that Iran was trying to tamper with us elections including from a Microsoft threat analysis Center report and also the office of the Director of National Intelligence now on the Microsoft document it actually details how Iranian hackers are working closely with Russian and Chinese Communist party groups on these cyber operations it also details several hacker groups involved in this operation notably four out of the six that it identifies as you know running these things are in fact backed by Iran at least according to Microsoft and it’s this part that really details the Cyber breaches because remember we talked about influence operations this is the actual cyber part these are some of the Keynotes in the Microsoft document again August 9th one of the groups that identifies is lemon Sandstorm Fox kitten and look bear with me they tend to make these kind of weird names to identify different hacker groups um they’re kind of like military terminology they use just as designators right unit designators so they call this one lemon Sandstorm Fox kitten which could identify both the specific breach and the you know pseudonym they’ve given to the group running it then at this one on it they say Iranian threat actor known for ransomware hack and leak operations meaning you take over someone’s computer you lock them out and then you hold it Ransom and so you don’t let somebody get access to the computer unless they pay you know a bribe or something like that and then they also hack it and then leak it meaning they breach you and then leak something online probably to destroy your reputation they say this group reportedly gained access to a local US election results website back in 2020 and the attack was reportedly thwarted by us cyber command but officials predicted that the group may have sought a tamper with the displayed results to undermine trust in the election out outcome another group they say they’ve designated as mint Sandstorm Charming kitten it says ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections they unsuccessfully attempted to log into accounts of trump Administration officials and Donald J Trump for president campaign staff so this group notably based on known attempted breaches actually was trying to gain access to accounts of the Trump campaign Trump himself and also Administration officials now another group they say they’ve designated is peach Stan storm a33 uh a means advanced persistent threat and typically those are you know big state-run hacker groups they’ve designated this one apt33 meaning that this is just the 33rd one they’re tracking and notes this one targeted US state government agencies in late September of 2022 possibly to gain access ahead of close US Senate election while that attempt appeared unsuccessful it suggests that peach Sandstorm may be positioned to support election related influence operations so this one again was actually trying to breach it seems some of the election systems now also remember this back in July of this year the office of the Director of National Intelligence released a statement saying that various foreign actors had specifically targeted presidential camp campaigns in order to influence the upcoming elections now on Russia it said this these actors are seeking to back a presidential candidate in addition to influencing congre Congressional electoral outcomes undermine public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbate sociopolitical divisions meaning they want to again maybe try to back the campaigns of certain public officials they may think are more in favor of what they want to accomplish in the world a lot of that would probably be around maybe the you know Russian proposed side for the peace deal in Ukraine they want to get what they want out of it and they want us officials who would back what they want or at least open the door for it they also says want to undermine public confidence in the election process maybe make Americans no longer believe their vote counts or something like that and they also want to exacerbate sociopolitical divisions notably this is important because for a lot of other count countes hostile to the United States they don’t necessarily view Republicans Or democrats they view both of these as being just part of the American system and for them if they can drive a wedge within American society and maybe sharpen the divisions make people more at odds with each other that for them is causing divisions within America not just within our normal political debates and so by exacerbating sociopolitical divisions they’re turning Americans against each other suggesting they might actually back both sides and then try to manipulate it to cause both sides to fight more the Director of National Intelligence also says the Chinese Communist Party probably does not plan to influence the outcome of the elections again Xi Jinping himself actually said publicly he was not going to do it this time take that at fa take that for what it is because they might not be telling the truth frankly but it says however quote the intelligence Community is also whereare that PRC People’s Republic of China influence actors are using social media to sew division in the United States and portray democracies as chaotic and so influence actors again fake YouTubers fake social media accounts fake influencers or even just journalists they can control they’re using these individuals to try to sew the image that democracy itself that free societies are chaotic and so they want to paint a America is being unstable you know one of the big narratives the CCP uses to justify its totalitarian rule is it says that you know basically we can’t have peace unless you have totalitarianism or you know you can’t have peace without an you know absolute dictatorship of a Communist party and so they try to portray free societies as being chaotic as a way of justifying their own type of rule now on Iran it says this the IC intelligence Community has observed Teran Iran working to influence the presidential election probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States now look this could be a test for the Democrats on their stance on foreign meddling in an election because look if you’re a political campaign and someone just suddenly hands you all the information you could ever dream of to launch political attacks or frame narratives based on internal convers ations memos documents and even research that your opposition has done on itself noting all their vulnerabilities all their policies that might be problematic all the possible attacks that might be launched against them I mean that’s a road map to you know really strong propaganda or really strong you know election campaigns to you know note the vulnerabilities of your adversary the Temptation would be very high on that and frankly I think a lot of people probably use it but for Democrats of course this is going to be complicated because again since they’re the incumbent party Joe Biden is President uh they of course have to look at this both as a type of you know foreign meddling in the election and also again is stolen documents being used to alter the outcome of the election and given the fact that you know they were some of the bigger voices for years talking about foreign meddling and election interference and so on this could be kind of a test for them on whether they choose to use that information and how they kind of balance that now to mention the fact that you know actually they’ve taken a pretty strong stance against China Russia and Iran right now and so allowing these countries to actually successfully launch information campaigns would be damaging to their overall goals of you know trying to oppose these groups and the effect they’re trying to have within the United States on the other side if news outlets publish information from the leaked documents it will look like and possibly Russia and maybe the CCP as well are being permitted to interfere in our elections and that’s going to be complicated because in America you know for the most part we have freedom of the press there are some limits to it depending on you know foreign interference and foreign agents and things like that but for the most part if a news Outlet gets gets information they’re free to publish it and so for the news zeets that have received this some of it’s probably going to be on their own discretion of whether they actually publish it and whether they actually use it uh we’ll see how far they go with it given again many of these same newss that may be receiving it were also some of the louder voices talking about the threats of you know foreign meddling in our elections and if you’re dealing with something that could undermine the Integrity of the elections from a known foreign actor then of course it’s going to be controversial if you publish anything on it but look there’s also a key difference right now between the analysis of the breach this time and the analysis of the breach back in the 2016 elections because remember that was pinned on Russia the 2016 case notably they had digital forensics done by a private security company and you know when the FBI tried investigating the foreign breach of the elections they were not actually given access to the actual machines they had to go by the word of the company that had been hired to investigate it and so with the whole you know Russian breach of the elections back in 2016 there was never really a problem ER investigation at least not at the time the current breach was warned about by Microsoft right and so it’s another company doing it technically but there are also stronger government resources in place to prevent foreign interference in our elections in ways like this you know of course the dni Director of National Intelligence they have now also made their assessment that there was at least attempted breaches and there are campaigns being designed to influence our elections from the same threat actors they’re identifying Russia Iran and China so look right now we’re going to have to wait and see what analysis is done on the government side to actually prove whether or not this was Iran because remember the Trump campaign right now is saying Iran hacked their systems Iran leaked it it’s not totally proven just yet we have circumstantial evidence at least on the surface maybe it’s possible they were told things behind the scenes if again the Director of National Intelligence was tracking these groups or other you know government organizations were tracking these groups or maybe Microsoft had information we only know for now what is shown publicly publicly what we see is evidence of attempts to breach the networks intent to breach the networks groups trying to do it and failing and then a breach taking place and then a leak taking place and so the connecting dots between those is not 100% filled in yet we’ll probably get more answers as it goes forward as of this moment it does look like it’s pretty plausible that some someone did in fact steal the documents and leak them the big question now is whether it was a foreign government that did it but like it’s also possible news outlets could use information in the breach is fodder for stories without actually having to site the alleged stolen documents and this could actually go both ways right it could be that a newel let okay they’re not going to quote this document but they might use the analysis of the vulnerabilities of JD Vance for example in the dossier that was leaked as you know notes for further investigation and then use that as the basis of maybe future pieces they might want to do that could impact the outcome of the election now again that could go both ways again on one side newsl and political groups they can use it for opposition research and they don’t necessarily have to site you know according to this leaked doc document they can just use it for leads in other words they don’t have to necessarily cite the document they do articles based on the direction that it would guide them towards but look on the other side this also creates a lot of complications as well because the Trump team they can write off any kind of reporting or internal information being made public as being tied to this cyber breach now and so now they have a plausible form of deniability hey you got that from stolen documents maybe it was maybe it wasn’t we don’t know now uh Hey that opposition research sounds a whole lot like what we warned about in this dossier that was leaked to you by suspected foreign you know hackers who are trying to influence our elections and thereby uh therefore by you know publishing this opposition research you’re working with this foreign threat actor right remember back in 2016 that was the big narrative against Trump he’s a Russian agent right because again Russia was accused of the bre and anytime he did something related to information that might have come out from that breach he was called a Russian agent The Narrative could be flipped Now using that same narrative now the problem is if you’re a political organization you’re probably doing opposition research regardless during a major election and if you’re a journalist you’re probably doing some research as well and so they’re probably researching some of these Avenues in general it’s not necessarily tied to the breach but now what happens is on both sides they have a road map of where to look and they also have a way of denying any kind of allegation accusing them maybe of using foreign research or even colluding with a foreign government with the intent of altering the outcome of our elections so in terms of sewing chaos in other words this actually goes a long way to do it frankly this will also bring attention to the other side of this breach you know which is fake news websites and influencers being used by Iran the Chinese Communist party in Russia for influence operations I’ll be talking more about these influence operations and what it means for the US elections you know that’ll be only though on Epic tv.com so if you’re watching on YouTube Facebook X Rumble there’s a link in the description below click on that you’ll get access to the rest of this episode and also our whole library of shows and our hard-hitting documentaries on issues that really matter like the Chinese Communist party’s 100-year plan to defeat the United States the CCP is one of the biggest threats to this country they’re using things like propaganda even video games entertainment movies culture to subvert and influence the Next Generation this unrestricted war against our country is one of the scariest but least understood issues of our time because you know it’s not tangible it’s all being done through soft power and ideological subversion I spent over a decade investigating the ccb’s subversion and it’s such an important issue that I made a documentary called the final war this exposes the 100-year plot of the CCP to take down America if You’ like to find out more about what the CCP is doing and plotting against the United States watch the final war you can find the link in the description below and I’ll show you all the trailer before we go exclusively to epct tv.com for the rest of this episode I’ll see you there the greatest threat facing the United States is the CCP The Epic Times investigation team had studied the CCP for years but what we uncovered was yielding evidence beyond our imagination with chairman ma with the Prime Minister our talks have been characterized by frankness the Clinton Administration said oh don’t worry about it this will be a poison pill for China China’s strategic goal is to make sure that the US has four enemies and one of them must be a terrorist group we are giving of our life’s blood so that the Chinese Communist Party can survive and thrive
Video Title: Trump Campaign Alleged Email Hack Tied to Growing Global Conflict
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Video Date: 2024-08-13 08:28:07
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