June 5 2024
Israel lobby; melanoma vax; US economy; Great Firewall, Chinese cyberattacks
1 Israel orchestrates US influence campaign
2 Scientist test promising melanoma vaccine
3 Factory orders slow in US
4 Chinese internet being deleted
5 Chinese preposition cyberattacks for future war
6/5/1968 RFK assassinated
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 Israel orchestrates US influence campaign
Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation. The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel, four Israeli officials said. The ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out, according to the officials and the documents. The campaign began in October and remains active on the platform X. At its peak, it used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments. The accounts focused on U.S. lawmakers, particularly ones who are Black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel’s military. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles.
Ed note: The news here is that’s it’s in the NYT, Israel has long influenced US foreign policy https://a.co/d/ffhklSC
Article Source: NYT
2 Scientist test promising melanoma vaccine
The world’s first personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma halves the risk of patients dying or the disease returning, according to trial results that doctors described as “extremely impressive”. Melanoma affects more than 150,000 people a year globally, according to 2020 figures from World Cancer Research Fund International. Patients who received the vaccine after having a stage 3 or 4 melanoma removed had a 49% lower risk of dying or the disease recurring after three years, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The NHS in the UK is among the organisations testing the jab. A primary investigator on the study, oncologist Prof Georgina Long, said the average risk of recurrence after surgery for the cohort of advanced cancer patients was 50%.
Article Source: Guardian
3 Factory orders slow in US
US factory activity shrank in May at a faster pace as output came close to stagnating and a measure of orders fell by the most in nearly two years. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing gauge fell 0.5 point to 48.7, the weakest in three months, data out Monday showed. Readings less than 50 indicate contraction. The figure was softer than the 49.5 median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The purchasing managers group’s measure of new orders slid 3.7 points, the biggest drop since June 2022, to 45.4 in May. The bookings index now stands at the lowest level in a year, suggesting demand across the economy is weakening. As a result, ISM’s production index slipped to 50.2.
Article Source: Bloomberg
4 Chinese internet being deleted
Chinese people know their country’s internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation. They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it. Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet — and collective online memory — is disappearing in chunks. A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available., “The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace,” the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored.
Article Source: NYT
5 Chinese preposition cyberattacks for future war
As the U.S. military’s new cyber chief and the head of the nation’s main electronic spy agency, it is Gen. Timothy Haugh’s job to be concerned about China’s clandestine efforts to steal sensitive American data and weapons know-how. But he is also contending with an unusual Chinese threat, one that is designed not to extract military secrets or data of any kind but to lurk in the infrastructure that undergirds civilian life, as if lying in wait for the right moment to unleash chaos.
The U.S. believes the Chinese hacking network—known as Volt Typhoon among cybersecurity experts and U.S. officials—aims to “preposition” in critical infrastructure networks for future attacks
U.S. officials worry that in a conflict over Taiwan, for instance, China could use its latent access to launch damaging cyberattacks against key pieces of infrastructure in America or allied countries—ranging from water supplies and power grids to transportation services—disrupting lives and potentially injuring civilian populations.
Article Source: WSJ
6/5/1968 Robert F. Kennedy is fatally shot
Sources
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/technology/israel-campaign-gaza-social-media.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
2. https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/03/extremely-impressive-melanoma-jab-trial-results-excite-doctors
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-03/us-factory-activity-contracts-as-orders-slide-output-weakens?srnd=economics-v2&sref=nXmOg68r
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/business/china-internet-censorship.html
5. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-is-prepositioning-for-future-cyberattacksand-thenew-nsa-chief-is-worried-5ede04ef?mod=hp_lead_pos11
Thanks for reading!
