Global Guerrillas

The US is Officially a Banana Republic: the CIA is trying to topple the Government

There's an electoral coup underway.

The number of potentially faithless Republican electors is now up to 50, more than enough to deny Trump the votes he needs for an EC win and/or give Hillary Clinton the votes she needs to win.

The stealth effort, led by liberals who believe Trump is a danger to the US, has been underway since the election.  

That effort only gained traction with Republican electors when the CIA leaked that Russia had intervened in the US election to help Trump win.  

Of course, the timing of the CIA's leak wasn't random.  

It was something much more sinister.  It was an opening salvo by the CIA to actively influence the Electoral College and stop Donald Trump from becoming President.  

In other words, the CIA is trying to topple Trump.

Why?  Self preservation. 

The real reason is that Trump was working with Peter Thiel to corporatize the intelligence gathering of the United States around companies, like Palantir, that can adopt and employ technology much faster and with more efficacy.  In other words, Trump is planning to turn the CIA and the NSA into peripheral collection systems.  

That was unacceptable to the CIA, an agency with a strong sense of self-importance.  

They acted again today when the head of the CIA refused to brief the House Intelligence Committee on the their claims because the chairman of the committee, Devin Nunes, was part of Trump's transition team.    

Instead, the CIA leaked more information this afternoon to influence electors:

"new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material.. was leaked"

However, due to tight legal restrictions on the use of the information the CIA gathers and who it gather it on (i.e. US citizens), I anticipated that any new leak would be from allied sources not covered by these restrictions.  

That proved to be correct:

"The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies."

What's next?

We can expect to see more leaks this weekend, before the EC votes on Monday.  

What kind of info?  A shred of evidence (a taped conversation would be best), gathered by US allies and not the CIA, that shows that Trump knew about the hack or came to an agreement with Putin.  

At that point, the EC will definitely flip and Trump will be denied an electoral college win on Monday.

After that we head to the courts and start down the road to street level violence.  

To avoid the chaos of merely unseating Trump, the electors may award Hillary Clinton the win since she is best able to gather the establishment around her to fight off Trump's bid.

Regardless, we have moved another step towards what looks more and more like another US civil war.  

It's not a long trip, now that we are a Banana Republic.  

Sincerely,

John Robb

WARNING: An Electoral Coup is Underway

On December 19, 2016 the electoral college will vote.  

Based on the vote, Trump should receive 306 votes and Clinton will have 232.  

However, it is possible for many electors to change their vote.  They aren't bound by it.  

There's currently a very well funded attempt to influence electors to flip their votes on December 19th to change the outcome of the election.

Despite expectations that it is far fetched, it has a high chance of success.  As of today, there are enough electoral votes in play to flip the outcome.  

The three outcomes in discussion right now: 

1. Trump falls short of the electoral count (270) to become President and the election is sent to Congress for a decision.
2. Clinton gets more than 270 electoral votes and becomes the President.
3. A dark horse candidate (Kaisitch, etc.) would get the votes to become President.

In my view:  all of these outcomes would end in a disaster.

Why?  Most of the country sees this election as already decided.  

The voters have spoken.  Any change the outcome of the election at this juncture would be widely seen as illegitimate.

What would happen next would be worse.

Trump would claim this is a coup d'etat and gather widespread support.  Most of the states (which are Republican dominated) would support him on this.

Until January 20th, chaos would ensue.  Violent conflict would be widespread as groups (pro or against Trump) form and take action.

I haven't fully gamed this out but I suspect Trump would be able to gather enough support to become President regardless of the electoral college result (anything less would result in a messy street level civil war).  Fear of continued chaos would force this.

The moment he is sworn in, he would invoke a state of emergency and quickly move to arrest anyone connected with the plot to nullify the election and anyone calling for violence.

By the end of March, thousands of people could even find themselves in Guantanamo.  -labelled as terrorists/traitors they would be denied access to legal representation or any outside contact until the emergency is over.  

Trump, strengthened by emergency powers and without an effective opposition (fear of being put on a list), would now be able to rule as a semi-dictator.   

Why Clinton Lost: An exercise in victimology

For those of you not watching the aftermath of the election carefully (or you live outside of the US), here's a list of "popular" reasons for why Clinton unexpectedly lost the election to Trump according to the establishment. 

Notice how all of them blame the "other"   This is the language of betrayal. The type of language that feeds civil war.

Reason #1: The media built up Trump. They gave him billions of $ in free coverage.

Reason #2: The media didn't do its job. It didn't hold Trump accountable for his lies and fabrications.

Reason #3: Fake (right wing) news on social media influenced low information voters (anyone who votes Republican).

Reason #4: The FBI sabotaged Clinton with the Comey letter (particularly its timing).

Reason #5: A deeply racist, sexist (worse: misogynist), and homophobic country influenced by Trump "dog whistles" voted for him.  

Reason #6: The Alt Right (the online face of NeoNazis, the KKK, etc.) is large, growing (fast), and influential enough to swing the election.

Reason #7: The Russians hacked the election (via Wikileaks and fake news).

Reason #8: Jill Stein and the people who voted for her.  Gary Johnson and the people who voted for him.  

Reason #9: Hillary didn't lose. She won (the popular vote) by a landslide, but our system is rigged by an antiquated electoral system.

Reason #10: Betrayal. The youth vote didn't show up. The black vote didn't show up.  White women (53%) and Hispanics (29%) didn't vote the way they were supposed to.

Reason #11: Republican voter suppression in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (via @davewiner )

Reason #12:  The voting process in MI, WI, and PA was hacked (Jill Stein et. al.).

Reason #13: The country was not ready for a woman president.

Reason #14: Polsters and big data geeks working for the media misled voters by claiming Trump couldn't win.  As a result, enthusiasm waned and voters didn't show up.

Not a reason:  A poorly run campaign that made poor decisions based on faulty data driven analysis (a result which largely discredits the new book by Michael Lewis).   

Trump's Insurgency creates our Tahrir Square Moment

This year, an open source insurgency formed in the US and it took control of the White House.  I didn't write much about it this fall because it hit too close to home.  I knew what would happen.  

What is an open source insurgency?  An open source insurgency is how a very large and very diverse group of people empowered by modern technology and without any formal organization, can defeat a very powerful opponent.

I first started writing about open source insurgencies during the war in Iraq over a decade ago.  During that war, over 100 insurgent groups with different motivations for fighting (tribal interests, pro-Baathist, pro-nationalist, pro-Saddam, and lots of jihadi flavors) used the dynamics of open source warfare to fight a global superpower to a standstill.  We saw it again a few years later in the political world, when during the Arab Spring an open source fueled protest toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria.  

Open source insurgencies and protests can arise spontaneously and they are very hard to stop once they get going since they are impervious to most forms of repressive counter-attack and political subversion.  For example, the open source movement propelling Trump forward made him impervious to attacks on his character.  It also eliminated any need for "ground game" or standard political organization and obviated any need for information disclosure and detailed policy papers.  

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't defeat an open source insurgency.  You can, but it requires a different approach.  For example, here's a simple idea for how to defeat Trump's insurgency back in July:

IF Trump is running an open source insurgency, you don't go after the man to defeat him. Attacking him directly won't work. He's impervious to attack. One reason is that a good 60% of America has been lied to so much by the establishment, they don't believe anything they say anymore.  The way you beat him is to cleave off part of his movement. In this case, given the dynamics of the movement and this election, the best group to bring back are working class families in the midwest swing states.  To bring them back you need to do something real. Not promises (seen as lies). You need to actually do it. In this case, the best approach is to put the President, the Congress, and most big US companies together in a room and over the course of two weeks and nail down a deal to bring back 1 million real jobs to MI, OH, and PA. -- with real timelines for implementation, good incomes and real benefits. If they do that, this election is over.

If you have been reading me for a decade (or more), you might notice that this thinking is similar to what I wrote as an op-ed in the New York Times in 2005, as a way to win the war in Iraq.  

Two years later, this approach became the strategy that let the US extricate itself from Iraq.  Regardless, Trump is in the White House and the success of open source insurgency guarantees we will see more of them in the future...  

Perhaps sooner rather than later.  

My worry is that the next one we see won't operate within the confines of a political campaign.  This uptick in insults directed at minorities blamed on Trump, may be the tinder for setting off this next insurgency.  Social media amplifies every incident, spreading the anger it evokes like contagion across the country.  Just watch.  This suggests that the next open source protest we are likely to see will form to force Donald Trump from the Presidency before the next election -- a Tahrir square moment in cities all across the US.  A massive and diverse open source protest that has one simple goal: the immediate removal of Donald Trump from office.  

Unfortunately, an open source insurgency that forces a sitting President from office without the benefit of an election could result in the same outcome as Egypt (or worse Syria).  

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  For more: here's some more thinking on how to start one.  The IEEE Spectrum has a primer on open source warfare.  My book is probably the definitive source for it.