Christopher Krebs (not related to cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs) was the CISA Director from early 2018 until November 2020. He obtained a BA in Environmental Sciences in 1999, and earned a JD in 2007. His LinkedIn profile demonstrates absolutely no experience in cybersecurity, infrastructure security, or any other field in the CISA’s purview.
Krebs spent two years in DHS, probably as a lawyer, then worked for a PR company. He then joined Obsidian Analysis, where he worked under Matthew Travis. Obsidian, a murky DC consultancy firm, experienced a meteoric rise under the Obama administration due to federal contracts. Krebs later made Matthew Travis his Deputy Director in the CISA. Before being appointed to the CISA, Krebs joined Microsoft as Director of Cybersecurity Policy, 2014 – 2017:
“Chris Krebs is a member of Microsoft’s U.S. government affairs team in Washington, D.C. As director of cybersecurity policy, he leads Microsoft’s U.S. policy work on issues related to cybersecurity and lawful access.”
Krebs’ CISA Allowed Ransomware Attacks against Hospitals
Since late 2016, US hospitals have been hit with ransomware attacks. In a typical attack, cyber-gangsters penetrate the network, encrypt the data, and demand ransom to decrypt it. Usually, when a specific cybersecurity issue like this is identified, it is resolved pretty quickly.
But the ransomware attacks on hospitals have only been escalating. Here are some headlines from the last three years:
2018: The biggest healthcare data breaches of 2018 (so far)
2019: Ransomware Attacks on Healthcare Providers Rose 350% in Q4 2019
15 notable ransomware attacks on healthcare providers in 2019
The attacks escalated in 2020, especially as we approached the elections. Some headlines from October 29:
Several hospitals targeted in new wave of ransomware attacks
Ransomware Hits Dozens of Hospitals in an Unprecedented Wave
These attacks on hospitals continued and even escalated in late October 2020, while the US health system was dealing with a pandemic! These attacks also led to an increase in heart related deaths. CISA’s only reaction to these attacks was issuing a warning to health care providers. For three years, Krebs’ CISA did nothing to stop these attacks. The only reasonable explanation for such irresponsible inaction is malfeasance on behalf of the FBI and then CISA leadership (Directors Wray and Krebs, respectively).
EI-SCC
As CISA Director, Krebs created an Elections Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (EI-SCC), composed of 33 corporate members, most of whom are election computer systems vendors. Normally, the government is responsible for inspecting vendors’ products, from soap bars to jets, on behalf of the end users – US citizens. However, Director Krebs did the exact opposite. Under his leadership, the CISA failed to inspect electronic voting systems. In fact, it specifically allowed malicious voting systems from Dominion, which had an election results editor on the backend . At the same time, Krebs put voting system vendors on the Coordinating Council for election infrastructure. This allowed the vendors to observe the voting and the voters. Yes, that included physical observation. Dominion boasted that hundreds of its employees were in the voting places.
This Elections Coordinating Council (EI-SCC) included Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, and Spanish SCYTL (SCYTL might be innocent). Smartmatic is a Venezuelan company, headquartered in London and involved in election fraud scandals in more than a dozen places in the world. It is headed (through a holding company) by the former UN Deputy Secretary and head of Soros’ hedge fund British “Lord” Malloch-Brown, who was also just appointed by Soros as President of his Open Society Foundation. Allowing Smartmatic voting equipment in US elections, or inviting “Lord” Malloch-Brown’s men to participate in any elections related council is opening US elections to foreign interference of the most dangerous kind. Krebs did both. Since the CISA failed to inspect the electronic voting systems used in the elections, it should not claim that the elections were secure.
In addition to voting equipment vendors, the EI-SCC also included a pro-Democrat fake news outlet, two leftist groups, and Krebs’ former employer – Microsoft:
- Associated Press, a Fake News agency
- DemocracyWorks, funded by the billionaire Knight Foundation, is a far left electioneering nonprofit, specifically advocating for the deplatforming of conservatives and President Trump, during the pre-election period.
- VotingWorks (VW) is another far left nonprofit, providing some voting technology, funded by Y-Combinator. It has been incubated and spun off by the Center for Democracy (CDT) and Technology (see VW & CDT sites). CDT supported Obamanet, then a rabid enemy of the Restoring Internet Freedom (FCC order). CDT also vehemently opposes securing the national telecommunications and IT infrastructure (including facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin). According to CDT, the Silicon Valley corporations, which own and operate these critical internet communications (through Obamanet regulation), are entitled to do with them as they please.
(VotingWorks software was used by Georgia to audit the elections results. Apparently, this software (ARLO) was adopted by CISA and used in other states as well. Too bad – it is open sourced. Everybody can download the code and easily modify it for any purpose. “VotingWorks founder Ben Adida is a Trump hater who explicitly posted on social media ‘F*** Trump'” – TESTIMONY ON POTENTIAL GEORGIA ELECTION FRAUD By VOTERGA CO-FOUNDER GARLAND FAVORITO, DECEMER 4, 2020)
- Microsoft is Krebs’ former employee. Its policies are far to the left. Surprisingly, Microsoft’s President Brad Smith wrote a book where he admitted to acting under the control of the Russian Government in respect to cybersecurity in the US, for more than two years. Clearly Microsoft is a very poor choice to help secure US elections against Russian interference.
The word ‘Democracy’, which frequently appears in the names of the far-left organizations mentioned in this article, is misleading. These organizations use the word “Democracy/Democratic” for the same reason North Korea uses it as part of its official name – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The word is used to cover up what is missing in reality. Many hyper-partisan Democrat organizations describe themselves as nonpartisan or bipartisan. Hopefully, no one is buying that anymore.
Christopher Krebs corrupted the CISA not just in election security but in many other facets. Ignoring ransomware attacks on hospitals sabotaged the US health care response during the pandemic. Putting election vendors and other clearly partisan actors in charge of securing US elections is not just a dereliction of duties but a downright undermining of US democracy. Krebs must be held accountable for his actions.
CISA’s Contradicting Statements on 2020 Election security
On October 22, the CISA published the advisory Russian State-Sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat Actor Compromises U.S. Government Targets. The advisory warns of
“Russian state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor activity targeting various U.S. state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) government networks”.
It specifically refers to election systems, and claims that:
“As this recent malicious activity has been directed at U.S. state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) government networks, there may be some risk to elections information housed on SLTT government networks. … The FBI and CISA will continue to monitor this activity and its proximity to elections infrastructure.”
However, on November 12, the CISA issued a contradicting statement, saying that
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. … There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. … While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”
This statement of course led to scandal, as it was co-signed by EI-CSS, which included Dominion Voting & Smartmatic, the very vendors the statement is defending.
The CISA’s shocking U-turn in its statements completely destroys its credibility. In less than 20 days, it went from publishing allegations of election systems being compromised to claiming that this was the most secure election in history, without retracting or narrowing any previous statements.
Both the October 22 and the November 12 statements were intentionally false.
It is reasonable to think that before election day, the Democratic party rightly expected defeat, and prepared the ground to claim Russian interference. The CISA’s statement was part of those preparations. Then it learnt of the temporary success of its frauds, and quickly declared victory. This declaration was supported by its allies, including Krebs’ CISA. Of course, they did not care how this zig-zag looks to others.
Propaganda instead of Security
Instead of protecting national infrastructure and cyber security, Krebs’ CISA joined the propaganda rants of the far left. The CISA website states:
“Disinformation is an existential threat to the United States, our democratic way of life, and the critical infrastructure and functions on which it relies.”
Are they out of their minds? Has Krebs heard of the First Amendment? Was he appointed a Minister of Propaganda? But they did not stop there. Director Krebs commissioned a graphic novel about the dangers of “Russian disinformation” on the so-called social media. The CISA selected the professional Russia hoax promoter Clint Watts to author this novel, and a British firm to create it. Hyper-partisan Clint Watts repeated the Russia hoax in the New York Times in August 2020, additionally claiming that Russia was helping Trump in the 2020 elections. This graphic novel was posted on the CISA website on October 23.
CISA website repeats talking points of various foreign and supra-national anti-Trump organizations, such as GMFUS’ Alliance for Securing Democracy almost verbatim. “Securing Democracy” should be understood as “securing Democrats”.
CISA’s Cybersecurity Summit
In September – October 2020, CISA hosted a virtual Cybersecurity Summit, where Chris Krebs and the FBI Director Christopher Wray delivered keynotes. The last day of the Summit (Oct 7) had a slogan “Defending our Democracy”. A more accurate name would have been “Defending our Democrats”. Take a look at the sessions, speakers, and moderators of on this day:
COMBATTING DISINFORMATION AND MISINFORMATION IN ELECTIONS
- Clint Watts, Russia hoax promoter
- Alex Stamos, formerly Facebook’s Chief Security Officer and unofficial chief Russia hoax promoter; now pushing some variant of Russia hoax in Stanford Internet Observatory
- Laura Rosenberger, GMFUS’ Alliance for Securing Democracy
- Olivia Gazis, CBS fake news
- Jorhena Thomas, affiliated with two DC universities, formerly Chief of Staff to the DC Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice
- Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico Secretary of State (D), President of National Association of Secretaries of State
MEDIA PANEL, CYBER AND ELECTIONS BEAT
- Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post; infamous for being the conduit for the perpetrators of Spygate and Russian hoax
- Pam Fessler, NPR fake news
- Alexa Corse, an anti-Trump shill in WSJ
- Susan Spaulding (LinkedIn profile), DHS Under Secretary for cyber and infrastructure, 2011-2017, Defending Digital Campaigns
- Debora Plunkett, Defending Digital Campaigns
- Michael Kaiser, Defending Digital Campaigns
- Ginny Badanes, Microsoft, a Director at Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program, propagating Russia hoax
- Andrea Holtermann (LinkedIn profile), Google, Organizer in Hillary for America (2016)
One session, delivered by government employees, is omitted here. Also, Director Krebs delivered the final note.
Defending Digital Campaigns is a shadowy Democrat entity, headed by 2016 Hillary’s Campaign Manager Robby Mook. No, this is not a joke. The organization declared itself non-partisan and received permission to provide cybersecurity services, which are not counted as campaign contributions.
This Summit was held on the peak of the electoral campaign. There was nobody with even remote links to any Trump campaign or representing the GOP. Director Krebs selected speakers and moderators exclusively from Democrat partisans, mostly without any cybersecurity expertise, and presented them as nonpartisan cybersecurity experts.
CISA’s “Rumor Control”
CISA created and has been updating a web page called Rumor Control. This page has been changing over the time to reflect the Democrat party line. Currently, it denies and purports to “refute” well known facts about 2020 elections:
[CISA] Rumor: Votes are being cast on behalf of dead people and these votes are being counted.
Reminds me of a joke “My granddaddy voted Republican all his life. After his death, he started voting Democrat!”
[CISA] Rumor: Voting system software is not reviewed or tested and can be easily manipulated.
They might be reviewed and tested, fail those reviews or tests, and be still accepted. Also, a reviewed version can easily be replaced by another one, as took place with Dominion Voting Systems in Georgia.
[CISA] Rumor: A bad actor could change election results without detection.
This is sadly true in these elections. A more accurate version would read “without easy detection”, as these bad actors can and should be found.
Conclusions
Krebs has not only failed to prevent, but actively aided his former employer Microsoft and other Big Tech behemoths to damage and exploit US national critical communications infrastructure. He also abetted foreign elections interference in favor of Dem Joe against Donald Trump.
The only way to secure elections from cyber threats is to do them the old-fashioned way, with paper ballots and manual counting. Surprisingly, this would also decrease costs. Adding additional layers of bureaucracy does exactly the opposite – it further complicates the system. It seems that in early 2018, Democrats used the Russia hoax and the Mueller witch hunt to achieve exactly this. They sidelined Republicans from the process, and got elections as they wanted. The communication infrastructure companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft) allowed their supporters to run false flag operations, while restricting Trump supporters as “Russian trolls.” In 2020, they went much further.
Chris Krebs has been acting as a marionette of the Democrat party and “supra-national” Big Tech, to allow them to undermine national security, de-platform conservatives and POTUS, and rig elections in their favor. Even disregarding Krebs’ collusion with the Democratic party, Big Tech, and foreign governments to rig elections for the Democrats, he deserves to be indicted for sabotaging the US health care response during the pandemic. The same applies to the former BARDA Director Rick Bright.
Details
Clint Watts
Clint Watts is a national security contributor for MSNBC, a frequent writer in other fake news and “resistance” outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Politico, and Lawfare. Watts has first hand experience in disinformation campaigns, because he has been waging one against President Trump for at least four years. Not surprisingly, Clint Watts is a Fellow at the GMFUS’ Alliance for Securing Democracy.
Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman is a typical Silicon Valley billionaire socialist. He is a co-founder of LinkedIn, now a Microsoft company. In 2017, he funded a false flag operation against the Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Democrat operatives created thousands of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts with Russian-looking names, following Roy Moore. Then they claimed that those accounts were proof of Putin’s support for Roy Moore. The most visible operatives – Mikey Dickerson, Sara Hudson, and Renee DiResta – were former high level employees in the Obama administration. Renee DiResta then co-founded New Knowledge, a cybersecurity fraud, which gave false testimony about “Russian interference” in front of Congress. Now she is a colleague of Alex Stamos in the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Reid Hoffman said he had not known about the false flag operation and even apologized. He did not mention providing his private jet to fly Christine Blasey Ford to Washington DC to falsely accuse Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Reid Hoffman is a CEO of LinkedIn and a Board member of Microsoft.
Defending Digital Campaigns
ROBBY MOOK
President of the House Majority PAC, CBS Contributor, Former Campaign Manager Hillary Clinton, Current President of the House Majority PAC “which is dedicated to protecting and expanding the Democratic House Majority.” “Mook served as Campaign Manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, where he built a $1 billion, 50-state, 4,500-person organization.”
ALLEN BLUE
Co-founder (together with Reid Hoffman) of and current executive at LinkedIn, a Microsoft company. Executive Chairman of DigiDems (“We elect Democrats!”), where Robby Mook is an advisor.
MATT RHOADES
Former Campaign Manager of Mitt Romney, added into the mix to claim bipartisanship.
“In 2017, Mr. Rhoades teamed up with Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, and Eric Rosenbach, former Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s Chief of Staff, to launch the Defending Digital Democracy Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “
The top donors include: Reid Hoffman, Democracy Fund, Allen Blue of Microsoft’s LinkedIn, and Microsoft. Google made in-kind contributions. By the way, Mitt Romney had some unusual connections with the Dominion Voting.
Democracy Works & others
https://www.democracy.works/blog/insolidarity (Oct 27)
“Many deeply respected groups working on civil rights, voting rights, and racial justice – including ones we are proud to work with – have focused especially this year on Facebook’s role in spreading disinformation, misinformation, and hate, advocating for 10 recommended steps that Facebook can take. Democracy Works stands in solidarity with this call for change, while also supporting actions Facebook has taken in response: promoting high quality voting information through their Voting Information Center, working to disrupt the ability of QAnon and militarized movements to operate and organize on their platform, and a policy to ban militarized calls for poll watching during election as well as stem misinformation originating from a candidate’s false victory declaration.”
“We also want to specifically address one of the recommendations that is both most aligned with our program work, and where there is still time to take action:
‘Ensure accuracy in political and voting matters by eliminating the politician exemption; removing misinformation related to voting; and prohibiting calls to violence by politicians in any format.’“
https://www.protocol.com/ballotpedia-ballotready-voting-data
“Democracy Works, which has Facebook’s Chris Hughes and Katie Harbath on its board along with several other tech execs, is unsurprisingly also a powerful partner for tech companies. The organization then offers its Voting Information Project data, or a white-label version of its TurboVote app, to organizations that can help get the word out. In 2020, Democracy Works partnered with companies including Google, Snapchat, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, Reddit, WordPress, Tumblr and others. “We basically reach every single consumer in the United States,” Ward said.”
SCYTL, Nov 10: 78 million registered voters across the U.S. benefit from Scytl secure election technology during the 2020 General Election
“78 million voters from more than 800 U.S. counties in states including Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey, California, and Texas benefited from Scytl secure election solutions.”
GMFUS
Many talking points on the CISA website follow the talking points of the falsely labeled Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the US (sic!). From the GMFUS website:
“Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a tribute to the Marshall Plan, GMF is headquartered in Washington, DC, with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Ankara, Belgrade, Bucharest, Paris, and Warsaw.”
The list of GMFUS funders includes governments of Germany, Sweden, and Norway, the European Commission, and “the usual suspects,” including Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Democracy Fund, a far left foundation launched by the billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder.
The organization’s justification for interfering in the US Elections is that Securing Democracy is a Global Necessity.
Alexa Corse
Alexa Corse started calling Biden and Harris President and VP elect on November 7, as soon as computer-related votes switching has been revealed, and Fake News declared them winners (example). On Nov 17, she wrote an article dismissing this information:
“Dominion Voting Systems Corp., a little-known voting-machine supplier that has come under criticism from President Trump, was a linchpin in the 2020 election that federal and state officials praise as being free from tampering.”
“As he contests the outcome of the election, Mr. Trump has lashed out at Dominion … Dominion is now battling to assure Americans that the election was secure and without major problems.”