Last Week Today Episode 159 Show Notes for Monday, July 23rd, 2024
CrowdStrike Breaks the Internet, Fallout From the First Trump/Biden Debate, Climate Change & the Economic Folly of the Carbon Tax, Canada’s Summer Silly Season & the Future of AI.
CrowdStrike Breaks the Internet
Our top story tonight is the IT outage heard around the world.
It’s being blamed on CrowdStrike, a large cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas which seems to have released a faulty security update for the Windows operating system last Thursday, July 18th, 2024.
The update, as outlined in the July 20th, 2024 Guardian post, “Slow recovery from IT outage begins as experts warn of future risks,” crashed airport, healthcare services and business IT functions in the “largest outage in history.”
As outlined in the July 21st, 2024 the Atlantic post, “The CrowdStrike Failure Was a Warning,” crucial systems across the world:
… collapsed on Friday, triggered by one mistake in a single company. The CrowdStrike outage hit banks, airlines, and health-care systems. It may end up being the worst information-technology disaster in history.
This was not, however, an unforeseeable freak accident, nor will it be the last of its kind. Instead, the devastation was the inevitable outcome of modern social systems that have been designed for hyperconnected optimization, not decentralized resilience.
Curiously enough, CrowdStrike has been the subject of various conspiracy theories and debates, particularly related to company involvement in investigating the Democratic National Committee (DNC) data breach during the 2016 US presidential election.
CrowdStrike was also involved in the creation and distribution of the mostly disproven Steel Dossier, a controversial political opposition research report compiled by ex-British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele published as an unfinished 35-page compilation of "unverified, and potentially unverifiable" raw intelligence reports with the intent to discredit then first term US president Donald Trump.
Despite these controversies, CrowdStrike remains a significant player in the cyber security industry.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the services CrowdStrike provides are their secretive and centralized nature. A more decentralized, more open-sourced software development model, with increased testing and independent validation would better serve the company, its customers and its investors.
At the very least, there’d be fewer instances of everything breaking.
Here’s an overview of the situation, courtesy of the July 19th, 2024 Java Brains on YouTube post, “Crowdstrike! This thing keeps happening.”
Also in the News this Week
Fallout From the First Trump/Biden Debate
In other news this week is the ongoing fallout of the first Trump/Biden debate on June 27th.
That debate, which highlighted current US President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, was almost immediately followed by:
Two weeks of media wide assessments highlighting President Biden’s cognitive decline and calling for his resignation.
The attempted assassination of Republican candidate Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13th.
A US judge dismissing a case accusing Donald Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents, dealing the former president another major legal victory in what some analysts believed was the most formidable case he was facing among his four criminal indictments.
Increasing calls for investigations into the failures of the Secret Service detail guarding Trump during the assassination attempt.
Trump’s well received return to campaigning at the Republican National Convention just two days later.
The decision by President Biden on July 21st not to run for a second term and his endorsement of current VP Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket.
We begin our coverage tonight with the July 22nd, 2024 Andrew Korybko's Newsletter post, “Kamala’s Coronation As The De Facto Democrat Nominee Dispelled Illusions About Democracy,” which notes that, “The swiftness with which all of this unfolded points to a preplanned (but partially improvised) plot.”
The post goes on to note:
Biden’s X account shared a letter that he supposedly signed on Sunday announcing that he’s dropping his re-election campaign in favor of endorsing Kamala, which led to everyone from the Soroses to Hillary throwing their support behind her, with the notable exception of (former president Barack) Obama.
According to the post:
For all intents and purposes, two complementary coups were attempted this month. The first one against Trump failed while the second against Biden succeeded. The goal was to replace both parties’ candidates with figureheads chosen by their elites at each’s respective conventions instead of going with the ones who won the primaries.
Not that there’s anything wrong with political machinations.
Entire seasons of popular TV series and books are written around the premises of “political machinations.”
It’s just that the suggestion that Trump’s campaign wasn’t affected by the attempted assassination might be premature given his VP choice, former venture capitalist JD Vance, a protégée of entrepreneur and conservative political activist Peter Thiel, well known for founding PayPal, defense contractor Palantir Technologies, and venture fund Founders Fund, as well as being the first outside investor in Facebook.
Vance, Thiel and Trump also connect to Elon Musk through Space-X which Thiel helped to fund as a start-up and through Paypal, where Thiel and Musk worked together decades ago.
Musk owns social media platform “X” which promotes media personalities Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Alex Jones who support Trump’s re-election campaign.
Essentially, its a small world and everyone knows everyone.
Climate Change & the Economic Folly of the Carbon Tax
In other news, the July 21st, 2024 Activist Post story, “The Economic Folly of a Carbon Tax,” is a reminder that a carbon taxes are a misguided, costly policy that sensible politicians mostly reject.
The post notes the massive implementation costs required to set up a carbon tax and the exceptional compliance costs burdening the people being taxed.
But in Canada, there are a lot of fires in northern BC and, at least according to the legacy media, new heat records are being made every day.
And its all being caused by climate change, which we need to fix using a carbon tax.
Here’s one of many such stories, the July 22nd, 2024 CBC News post, “Williams Lake, B.C., wildfire ‘out of control,' local state of emergency: officials.”
Canada’s Summer Silly Season
It’s worth noting that not much happens that’s newsworthy in Canada during the summer months
This so called “silly season,“ normally starts on the July 1st Canada Day long weekend and finishes up during the Labor Day long weekend, which occurs this year from August 31st to September 2nd.
It’s also known for “frivolous news stories” in the mass media, a focus on the coverage of sporting events. It traditionally occurred when Parliament and the Law Courts weren’t in session and legacy journalists didn’t know where their next story was coming from.
Canada is currently neck deep in the silly season. To get an idea on the topics the news outlets are currently focusing on, here’s a live overview from Google News.
There’s also the Nightime Podcast on YouTube.
The Future of AI
And finally tonight, here’s something you mostly don’t see every day, although it’s something that might become more common in the future.
It’s the July 20th, 2024 Mongo Minds on Bitchute post, “PHOENIX POLICE OFFICER PULLS OVER A DRIVERLESS CAR.”
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