Robert Mueller addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco today. He repeated a familiar theme: the biggest threats to the United States are terrorists (even aspirational ones), spies, and cyber attacks.
Terrorism, espionage, and cyber attacks are the FBI’s top priorities. Terrorists, spies, and hackers are always thinking of new ways to harm us.
As he tends to do when spreading this propaganda, Mueller once again focused on Anna Chapman and her band of suburban spies.
Consider the arrest last year of 10 agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Many of you may have seen TV news stories and videos covering the techniques we used in our investigation, code-named Ghost Stories. It featured the stuff of a John Le Carré novel—dead-drops in train tunnels, brush passes at night, and clandestine meetings in cafés.
Though he did add the example of Kexue Huang, who sent information on organic pesticides and food to Germany and China, to his list of scary spies who threaten our country.
Last month, Kexue Huang, a former scientist for two of America’s largest agricultural companies, pled guilty to charges that he sent trade secrets to his native China.
While working at Dow AgriSciences and later at Cargill, Huang became a research leader in biotechnology and the development of organic pesticides. Although he had signed non-disclosure agreements, he transferred stolen trade secrets from both companies to persons in Germany and China. His criminal conduct cost Dow and Cargill millions of dollars.
Finally, Mueller added a neat new twist to his list of people who pose a big threat to this country. The hackers who hacked into the BART website after BART cops killed the unarmed Oscar Grant and later Charles Blair Hill, and after BART shut down cell service to interrupt free speech will bring anarchy!
And “hacktivist” groups are pioneering their own forms of digital anarchy. Here in the Bay Area, you witnessed their work firsthand when individuals hacked the BART website and released personal data of BART customers.
Because it’s not anarchy when cops shoot unarmed or drunk men. It’s not anarchy when transit companies unilaterally shut down your phone. It’s only anarchy when the hackers get involved.
You’ll note what’s missing, as it always is, from Mueller’s list of scary threats to the country? Not a peep about the banksters whose systematic fraud has done–and continues to do–far more financial damage than 9/11.
It’s anarchy, apparently, when bunch of kids break into a website. But it’s not anarchy when banksters rewrite property law to steal the homes of millions of Americans.