Into the distance disappear the mounds of human heads

Mandlestam, of course. But it isn't quite working out like that. My graph shows a puzzle: in orange, right axis, the USA new cases. In blue, right axis, new stiffs. Both with Excel's finest 7-point smoothing applied, without which you see a distinct weekly cycle.

When the case numbers started going up - quite a while ago now - you could fairly hear the slavering in some quarters. But the deaths - whilst higher than we'd like - are resolutely refusing to skyrocket¹. And even the new cases seems to be slowing somewhat. Before you splutter with outrage into your cornflakes, I'm not claiming this is a glorious success.

Explanations for the odd failure of deaths to increase vary. If you're Trump, you'll laud the increase in testing. There was some weak evidence I saw suggesting more Yoof were getting it, and they don't tend to die. And maybe the sawbones have worked out how to keep it from killing people.

The Russia Report

Meanwhile in the UK the Russia Report turned out to be rather dull. In other news, the US maintains a chain of radio stations intended to influence behaviour. The best they could do was The British government and intelligence agencies failed to conduct any proper assessment of Kremlin attempts to interfere with the 2016 Brexit referendum, which does seem rather careless. OTOH, comparisons with the Dem leaks seems foolish: we didn't find out about those due to the spooks, we found out because they were published. And all this is the product of 18 months’ work involving evidence taken from the UK’s spy agencies and independent experts - how you can take that long to draw such negligible conclusions is hard to understand, unless you're on per diem. Disclaimer: I haven't read the actual report. Has anyone else bothered to, and if so, does it say anything interesting? James has his own conclusions.

Jem Bendell is an idiot

ATTP has belatedly discovered that Jem Bendell is an idiot.

Notes

1. I do hope this post doesn't jinx them.

Reading the report

I found the report (thx Graun) and am obliged to say that they get the Commies spot-on in their intro:

The security threat posed by Russia is difficult for the West to manage as, in our view and that of many others, it appears fundamentally nihilistic. Russia seems to see foreign policy as a zero-sum game: any actions it can take which damage the West are fundamentally good for Russia. It is also seemingly fed by paranoia, believing that Western institutions such as NATO and the EU have a far more aggressive posture towards it than they do in reality. There is also a sense that Russia believes that an undemocratic ‘might is right’ world order plays to its strengths, which leads it to seek to undermine the Rules Based International Order – whilst nonetheless benefitting from its membership of international political and economic institutions. Russia’s substantive aims, however, are relatively limited: it wishes to be seen as a resurgent ‘great power’ – in particular, dominating the countries of the former USSR – and to ensure that the privileged position of its leadership clique is not damaged.

I don't care for The clearest requirement for immediate action is for new legislation, because yet more bloody legislation is always the answer any of the cttees always produce, and the govt happily jumps on it. And in this case they are vague as to what it might be; the usual "throw some more words at the problem" approach.

Although the reports asserts that GCHQ assesses that Russia is a highly capable cyber actor with a proven capabilityto carry out operations, all the examples it then gives are either abroad, or mere attempts. There's nothing about actual success in the UK. This seems rather a large gap. Are we forced to assume that Ivan's successes against the UK are so brilliant (and well hidden?) that we'd better not mention them? There is a link to Reckless campaign of cyber attacks by Russian military intelligence service exposed which do appear to be reckless and rather badly targetted, unless they really intended to damage their own central bank.

Continuing, Russia’s promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas have been widely reported, which is nice, but this is all publicly available stuff and so also rather dull. They do have the grace to say We note that Russia’s disinformation efforts against the West are dwarfed by those which the Russian statec onducts against its own population.

By para 31 we're onto The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts. Unfortunately, being the sort of people they are, their ideas for doing this are all fun sekrit stuff, rather than the dull but necessary business of building civil society. For example, we could have a govt that people trust to provide statistics on Covid deaths, thereby helping to remove FUD. And then predictably enough they go in for another round of fb bashing; clowns.

I think that's enough great analysis for now. Oops no just one little extra gem: The impact of any such attempts [Russia sought to influence the2016 referendum] would be difficult – if not impossible – to assess, and we have not sought to do so looks like a cop-out.

Refs

* BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: Back to the future; ATTP: Climate sensitivity – narrowing the range (and links therein);