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Israel finally welcomed its first sustained friendly winter rains, marking Tu b’Shevat – the Jewish New Year for Trees. Recent positive news was full of examples of support for Israel from its friends both local and international.
IDF soldiers in restaurants get their meals paid for by friendly owners or other customers. They are given flowers before going home from Gaza to present to their spouses. And two soldiers serving together in Gaza became even better friends when they met in the hospital maternity ward where their wives were about to give birth. Israel’s dairy farms on the Gaza border are being maintained by foreign students studying at Israeli universities who showed their friendship by remaining in Israel after Oct 7. And Israel’s overseas friends have donated everything from money, to essentials, ambulances, and even the boots on soldiers’ feet.
Home news included child-friendly bomb shelters; volunteer Israeli telephone translators to give friendly advice to non-Hebrew speakers; and Israel once again proves to be the most Christian-friendly and female-friendly country in the Middle East. Many of Israel’s international friends showed support for the Jewish State, including the Czech President, Oracle’s CEO, Finland, and tens of thousands of cyclists.
In technology, an elder-friendly Israeli robot had an AI upgrade, Animal-friendly cultivated meat was approved for sale. Surgeons will enjoy using innovative Israeli user-friendly medical technology that displays the progress of cancer therapy, prevents damage to internal organs and saves the lives of wounded soldiers. And the tech-friendly IDF gave reservist entrepreneurs army leave to promote their technology innovations in the USA.
Finally secular Jews are making friends with religious Israeli soldiers by observing the Sabbath on behalf of those who cannot.
In the 28th Jan 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
- Many heartwarming stories about IDF soldiers.
- Israeli technology has reduced mortality in the IDF by 50%.
- Israel is the best Middle East country for Christians and Muslims.
- Israel leads the world in non-animal meat technology.
- Much evidence of Israel’s strong economy.
- A huge donation of Yemenite Jewish literary history.
- Archeologists unearth 2,500-year-old Jewish links to the Land of Israel.
- Click here to see the 14th Jan newsletter on IsraelSeen and Ruthfully Yours. Also (TY Sandra) for translating it into German here. Also (TY Barbara Davis) into Spanish here, (TY Mireille Goodisman) into French here and (TY Lital) into Hebrew here. Please forward this newsletter to German-speaking, Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, and Hebrew-speaking contacts. Also please visit the https://www.facebook.com/
verygoodnewsIL Facebook page.
- Please click here, to donate (a small or large amount) to help me publicize VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
- Click here to keyword SEARCH almost any topic in the IsraelActive archives (now over 23,800 articles).
- If someone wishes to be added to the free email subscription list, they should either click here or send a request (with their name) to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.
com
POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
Druze woman saved Jewish town. On Oct 7, Druze IDF Sgt Maj Iyyad Yousef captured two Hamas terrorists who invaded the Jewish town of Yated where he lived. His wife Nasreen then interrogated them in Arabic and extracted vital information that helped IDF forces to eliminate the threat to their town.
https://worldisraelnews.com/
Foreign students maintain Gaza border dairies. (TY Hazel) Dairy farms near Israel’s Gaza border have been supplying milk uninterruptedly since the outbreak of the Oct 7 war thanks to a few staff that remained behind while most residents were evacuated. Among those who stayed are university students from Africa and Asia.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Good news from Bet Shemesh. (TY Yanky) Journalist Hanoch Daum offered to pay a Tel Aviv restaurant owner for the meals of the IDF soldiers sitting at a table. The owner replied, “you'll have to get in line, six other people have offered to do the same thing before you!" (more articles below)
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/
Read all about it. Don’t miss these: A wallet lost in Gaza 10 years ago returned to its owner. A record 39,000 ADI organ donor cards were issued in 2023. 31,000 Jewish Israeli babies were born since Oct 7. Volunteers present soldiers with gift packages for them to give to their wives on returning from Gaza. And more…
https://www.shemesh.co.il/en/
In Gaza together, re-united in maternity ward. IDF reservists Eliya Rosen and Daniel Novogrotzky fought together for six weeks in Gaza. They were drafted on Oct 7, to join the same IDF unit. They were astonished to meet up again when they discovered that their wives were sharing a maternity room at the same hospital.
https://www.
IFCJ donates $19 million in 100 days. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) provided $19 million in aid and assistance to thousands of Israelis in the first 100 days of the war with Hamas. IFCJ will continue to support evacuees and displaced war victims with basic needs and other essentials throughout 2024.
https://www.jns.org/wire/ifcj-
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
14 ambulances donated. North Carolina based Samaritan’s Purse has donated 14 new MDA ambulances to replace those destroyed by Hamas on Oct 7. In addition, the organization is donating seven armored ambulances to MDA, which are still in production and will be dedicated this spring.
https://www.jns.org/
Something is afoot. There are a great many happy feet in the IDF due to the thousands of pairs of US-certified military-grade boots being delivered each week. 10,000 pairs of boots have been distributed to Israeli soldiers, thanks to some $850,000 of donations, raised mainly from individuals in the US at private funding events.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Asylum seekers cook for IDF soldiers. Dozens of Eritrean migrant workers hosted hundreds of IDF soldiers serving on the border with Gaza to a festive barbecue dinner. The Christian Orthodox Eritreans self-funded the cost of all the steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, kebabs, and salads.
https://www.jns.org/eritrean-
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Finland gives $1 million to MDA. (TY Hazel) The Finnish government is to donate $1 million to Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service. Finland’s ambassador to Israel Dr. Nina Nordström signed the agreement after she toured the MDA 101 Emergency Call Center in Kiryat Ono.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
US approval for ultrasound software. Israel’s Techsomed Medical Technologies (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its BioTraceIO groundbreaking ultrasound-based liver ablation software. It helps surgeons to see the real-time status of liver tumors while they use thermal ablation therapy to destroy them.
https://www.prnewswire.com/
A sensor to guide the endoscope. Israel’s SwiftDuct has developed a smart endoscope for navigating the complex and dangerous route needed to check the condition of the bile duct. 20% of the 2 million annual ERCP procedures cause damage to the nearby pancreatic duct. SwiftDuct’s sensor and guidewire solve this problem.
https://nocamels.com/2024/01/
https://swiftduct.com/
Boosting survival rates for wounded IDF soldiers. The current 6.7% mortality rate for wounded IDF personnel is half of that during the 2006 2nd Lebanon war. This can be attributed to faster evacuations, better protective equipment, and medical tech from Israeli founded companies such as Mazor Robots and Aidoc.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
DNA sequencing to combat pathogens. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Sequentify (see here previously) was awarded a grant by the Israel Innovation Authority to help develop a targeted DNA sequencing panel for infectious disease research, focusing on pathogen diagnosis and antibiotic resistance surveillance.
https://www.prnewswire.com/
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
Child-friendly bomb shelters. The central Israel city of Holon is often called the children’s city as it hosts a huge children’s museum complex, a children’s library, and kid-friendly story parks. The municipality has now employed artist Rinat Luk Elhaik to paint each of the city’s 23 public shelters in the style of a children’s book.
https://www.israel21c.org/
More emergency interpreting services. (TY Yanky) A previous article (see here) mentioned the services provided by volunteers at Bar-Ilan University for non-Hebrew speakers. It links to the Bar-Ilan professional hotline for mental support 03 531 8811. BIU’s emergency interpretation service is *9392 extension 4.
https://www.biu.ac.il/en/
Israel’s educated Christians. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has just reported that 55.1% of Israel’s Arab Christians studied for a bachelor’s degree within eight years of graduating high school, compared to 34.6% of Arabs and 48.1% of all Israelis.
https://www.algemeiner.com/
My Life in Israel as an Arab Muslim. Sophia Khalifa tells her story. Please watch and forward this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Winning Arab hearts and minds. Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee is head of the Arab Media Branch in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, tasked with refuting the lies of Al Jazeera and other Hamas supporters. His deputy is Major Ella Waweya (see here previously) – a Muslim woman, known as “Captain Ella”, even after promotion.
https://www.jns.org/how-the-
Indian journalists, including Muslims from Kashmir, tour Israel. (TY WIN) Israeli NGO Sharaka (Partnership) brought a delegation of Indian journalists and social-media influencers, to tour Israel in the wake of Oct. 7 and the current war. It included three Muslim writers and an Afghan journalist living in Germany.
https://www.jns.org/indian-
We know who our friends are. (TY Hazel) Czech President Petr Pavel assured his Israel’s President Herzog that his country stands shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish state in its battle to defeat Hamas. “You can always rely on the Czech Republic,” Pavel told Herzog when they met at the President’s residence in Jerusalem.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-
A good time to be in Israel. Superb support messages from Oracle’a CEO Safra Catz. “America in particular loves a winner. And Israel is a winner”. Oracle put ‘We stand with Israel’ on global websites in the local language to publicize how important Israel is and what the difference is between good and evil.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Ride for Freedom. Tens of thousands of cyclists around the world responded to Israel-Premier Tech cycling team owner Sylvan Adams’s call to join the ride in over 40 cities across the globe to mark 100 days in captivity for the hostages of Hamas. https://www.jns.org/ride-for-
UAE opens Israeli AI/IR R&D center. (TY Yanky) Despite the war, the United Arab Emirates is to open a Haifa center for research into Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval. It will be the Israeli arm of the UAE’s the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) that invented the Falcon Open Source Large Language Model.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Securing friendly Gulf states. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Perception Point (see here previously) has partnered Dubai-based Securenet FZC to protect Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from online attacks.
https://www.ec-mea.com/
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Returning to space. Israel Space Week (see here previously) is making its return from Jan 28 to Feb 2, with special events held for Israeli evacuees and for IDF reservists. Conferences will feature leading Israel's space professionals, such as Israel's 2nd astronaut Eytan Stibbe, plus space agencies of Italy, France, and Azerbaijan.
https://www.jpost.com/science/
Cleantech 100 companies. International research and consulting company Cleantech Group has issued its 15th annual Global Cleantech 100 list. It included Israel’s BeeHero (see here previously) in the Agriculture & Food category. Israel’s Copprint (see here previously) was cited in the Materials & Chemicals category.
https://www.israel21c.org/
From the Battleground to the Showground. The IDF gave permission to the founders of several Israeli tech startups to fly on a specially chartered El Al plane to CES 2024 in Nevada to demonstrate their innovative products to the world. Visionary.ai CEO Oren Debbi will return to IDF helicopter rescues in Gaza next week.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Eldercare robot gets AI upgrade. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Intuition Robotics (see here previously) has just launched ElliQ 3 – the generative AI version of its ElliQ companion robot desk lamp. The company notes, “Now users can discuss a virtually infinite number of topics in a more natural and detailed manner with ElliQ.”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/
Israel’s cultured meat is a “Game” changer”. (TY UWI) In a landmark event, Israel has approved Israel’s Aleph Foods to sell its cultured (kosher / parve) beef to the public. (The USA and Singapore previously only approved cultivated chicken.) Aleph Farms hopes to roll out its Black Angus Petit Steak later this year.
https://www.jns.org/israel-
https://www.calcalistech.com/
https://www.jpost.com/
Boosting cultivated meat production. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s ProFuse Technology has launched ProFuse -S1 - a supplement that accelerates muscle cell development in the cultivated meat industry. In the future it could also benefit the rehabilitation of human muscle cells.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
NIS 1.2 billion to support hi-tech. Israel’s latest aid for startups includes a huge fund to invest in deep tech breakthrough scientific developments. It ranges from 50% of a pre-seed round to NIS 50 million for series A rounds. Startups with women, Haredi, or Arab entrepreneurs, or from the periphery will receive 10% more.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Not a bad year. The IVC-LeumiTech Israeli Tech Review 2023 has just been published. In summary, considering that Israel is at war, the Israeli tech ecosystem kept going well. High-tech capital raising was stable; foreign investors were not scared by the war and increased their share of funding over local investment.
https://www.ivc-online.com/
Vote of confidence in Israel’s economy in the face of war. Very positive assessment by Ambassador Yoram Ettinger. A low debt to GDP ratio; high foreign exchange reserves; He even quotes a positive article in the New York Times. And that according to Intel’s CEO: “The Israeli people are the most resilient people on earth”.
https://theettingerreport.com/
$250 million for early growth. Israel’s Red Dot Capital Partners (see here previously) has completed the funding of its third Israeli fund. It has over $200 million to invest in early-growth startups working across the Israeli tech industry sectors, including enterprise software, fintech and cybersecurity.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
$120 million fund for deep tech. Israeli-European venture capital firm Cardumen Capital has raised $120 million for its second deep tech fund to invest in early-stage Israeli startups. The Israeli-European VC will select companies in fields such as AI, cybersecurity, big data, and information technologies.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
J.P Morgan expands its Israeli tech center. Global financial services firm J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is reaffirming its commitment to Israel with the expansion of its Israel Tech Center in Herzliya, home to its risk and trade management platform Athena.
https://www.calcalistech.com/
Indian workers seek jobs in Israel. (TY Ted) Thousands queued in India’s northern state of Harayana during a recruitment drive to send workers to Israel, where there is a shortage of labor. Masons, painters, electricians, plumbers and some farmers can earn five times more than in India where 17% of under 29s are unemployed.
https://www.reuters.com/world/
https://www.calcalistech.com/
An island desalination plant. (TY Dr Salem) Israel is helping India establish a desalination plant in Lakshadweep – a group of islands off the Southwest tip of India.
https://www.business-standard.
Be the President of your field. (TY OurCrowd). Very clever new marketing video from Israel’s CropX (see here previously). https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Exits, takeovers, and mergers – to 28/1/24: Israel’s Snyk is acquiring Israel’s Helios.dev for several tens of millions of dollars.
Startup investment – to 28/1/24. Silverfort raised $116 million; Bluewhite Robotics raised $39 million; Vicarius raised $30 million; Xyte raised $20 million; SeeTree raised $17.5 million; Cyabra raised $5.7 million; Sequence raised $5.5 million; Prompt Security raised $5 million;
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT
45,000 Yemenite manuscripts. The family of the late Yemenite Jew Yehuda Levi Nahum (1915-1998) has donated his entire collection to Israel’s National Library. Over 60 years, Nahum assembled some 45,000 Yemenite-Jewish manuscripts plus 15,000 Hebrew fragments including renditions of works by Maimonides.
https://www.jns.org/jerusalem-
Israeli wins Indian Open. (TY Hazel) Israeli tennis player Orel Kimhi won the PET ITF Mandya Open in India. The third-seeded Israeli beat Jelle Sels of The Netherlands 6-2, 6-4 to win his third ITF title in front of a packed crowd at the PET Stadium.
https://timesofindia.
First Israeli medal at European Track Championships. (TY Hazel) Michael Yakovlev is the first Israeli cyclist to win a medal at the European Championships. He won bronze in the sprint race and dedicated the medal (see here) “to the abductees who have been in captivity for 100 days. I am proud to raise the Israeli flag."
https://twitter.com/
THE JEWISH STATE
Kingdom of Judah coin unearthed. (TY WIN) An extremely rare silver coin was recently discovered during an excavation in Israel’s Judean Hills. It is around 2,500 years old (6th–5th centuries BCE) and was found whilst excavating a First Temple period building. Archeologists also discovered a shekel measuring weight.
https://www.jns.org/unearthed-
Help reveal the Jerusalem Stone. What is the secret that lies beneath the Jerusalem Stone underneath the Dome of the Rock? Help make this ground-shattering movie that explains what is currently happening in the world. Please watch the trailer and then consider becoming part of history as one of the movie’s sponsors.
https://www.indiegogo.com/
Internship opportunities. ISRAEL21c is cultivating the next generation of digital communication experts who want the world to know the truth about life in Israel. College students aged 18-25 can create innovative social media content that shares the positive stories of Israel. Non-political impactful storytelling to the world.
https://www.israel21c.org/
Keeping Shabbat for Israeli soldiers. The organization Shabbat 4 Soldiers asks US families that normally don’t observe Shabbat, to keep it on behalf of an IDF soldier on active duty who normally keeps it but currently cannot. In its first month, 85 families have kept Shabbat for the first time, and more are joining each week.
https://www.jns.org/those-who-
https://www.shabbat4soldiers.
A synagogue in Khan Yunis. https://www.youtube.com/
How to help Israel. Here are some sites where newsletter readers can donate to Israeli organizations that provide vital help to Israelis at this difficult time. Many thanks to those who have already contributed and to those who are helping by donating their own valuable time and resources.
Friends of the IDF (US donors): https://www.fidf.org/
or IDF Soldiers Fund in Israel: https://www.ufis.org.il/en/
American Friends of Magen David Adom (US donors): https://afmda.org/
or Magen David Adom (Israel): https://www.mdais.org/en/
Zaka (US donors): https://donate.zakatelaviv.
or (Canadian donors): https://www.canadahelps.org/
United Hatzalah: https://israelrescue.org/
Leket Food Israel: https://www.leket.org/en/
JNF USA - https://my.jnf.org/gaza-
Orthodox Union - https://www.charidy.com/
Schneider Children’s Hospital: https://www.fos.org.il/en/
https://system.smartgiving.
https://chaischneider.org/
Hadassah Hospital Israel: https://www.hadassah.org/
Laniado Hospital (Netanya) https://my.israelgives.org/en/
And many more charities here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Buy Israel Bonds to support the Jewish State. (TY Larry B)
https://www.
USA - https://www.israelbonds.com/
Europe - https://israelbondsintl.com/
Canada - https://www.israelbonds.ca/
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State doesn’t understand the technology’: Plaintiffs rest their case in trial over Georgia’s voting machines
After six years, a case over whether computer touchscreens used for voting in Georgia are vulnerable to hacking is finally getting a trial. Here’s what’s at stake, what’s been said so far in trial, and some of what’s happened during the case’s history.
by Timothy Pratt
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A low angle view of a long line of people waitng to vote in the elections.
A federal trial six years in the making reached its halfway point this week, after a series of computer experts expressed concerns in court about cyber vulnerabilities in Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines, while a series of state officials displayed the opposite.
The election case pits an election integrity nonprofit and a handful of Georgia voters against the Secretary of State’s office. They claim that the state’s computerized voting machines face an unacceptable risk of being hacked, which infringes on the constitutional rights of voters.
The Coalition for Good Governance has spearheaded the case since 2017–well before former President Donald Trump and allies launched multiple conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, distorting concepts such as election integrity and cybersecurity with claims of stolen votes.
The state’s position is that election equipment is kept secure by measures such as using tamper-evident zip ties with serial numbers to seal cases storing voting machines and procedures such as testing voting machines before elections.
U.S. Northern District of Georgia Judge Amy Totenberg has been conducting the bench trial, –meaning there’s no jury–since Jan. 9. After both sides have presented their case, she could decide to enjoin, or prohibit, the state from using its Dominion Voting Systems machines, which could lead to Georgia voters choosing candidates by pen and paper in this year’s presidential election in November.
Such a decision could also impact voters in other states using the same voting machines for years to come, through additional lawsuits or new policies.
Voting machines or paper ballots?
The case has already made history, after Totenberg ordered the state in 2019 to replace its previous voting machines from Diebold Election Systems. Her ruling came after plaintiffs highlighted the touchscreen machines’ vulnerability to being hacked. In response, Georgia bought the Dominion machines and began using them in the June 2020 presidential primary.
With the Dominion machines, voters use a touchscreen, also called a “ballot-marking device” (BMD), to make their choices. Then, they print out their ballots, which have a QR code that a scanner reads to record and tally the votes.
During the six-year case, computer scientists serving as experts for the plaintiffs have uncovered multiple, specific ways that both the current Dominion and the previous Diebold voting machines are vulnerable to hacking.
The solution, the plaintiffs argue, is to have voters mark paper ballots by hand–as nearly 70% of voters do in the rest of the country. The ballots themselves–not just a QR code–would then be scanned and a procedure known as a risk-limiting audit would be used to verify the results.
Georgia is one of a handful of states that uses the same election system for all of its registered voters statewide. That means any problem, whether due to hacking or human error, could affect nearly eight million votes. Many other states use a patchwork of systems.
The Trump angle
As the voting machine case has unfolded, one of the plaintiffs, the Coalition for Good Governance, uncovered efforts by Trump allies in early 2021–right after the hotly contested presidential election–to download the Georgia voting system’s software and other data from rural Coffee County’s elections office. The software and other information remains in the hands of an unknown number of persons, which elevates the risk of hacks to Georgia’s system, plaintiffs’ experts testified this week.
The Coffee County breach is mentioned more than 50 times in the indictments that the Fulton County District Attorney’s office has brought against Trump and 18 others in a separate, wide-ranging criminal RICO case over presidential election interference. So far, four defendants have pled guilty in that case after reaching deals with prosecutors.
“The state either doesn’t understand, or can’t control, the technology.”
By Richard DeMillo
Diebold machine problems
But the Coalition for Good Governance’s efforts have exposed a series of vulnerabilities in Georgia’s electronic voting systems since the touchscreen voting machine case’s beginning.
In August 2016, “friendly hacker” Logan Lamb, a former federal cybersecurity researcher, gained access to the state’s Diebold voting system. Seven months later, Lamb’s colleague Christoper Grayson did the same. They both tried unsuccessfully to get the Secretary of State’s office to remedy its cybersecurity problems. The Coalition for Good Governance’s executive director, Marilyn Marks, filed suit in June 2017.
A year later, Totenberg listened to a lawyer for the state, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, claim that the Diebold voting system’s security had been improved. Barnes discounted the concerns over hacking from the plaintiffs’ computer science witnesses and attorneys, calling them “outsiders” or “from the North.”
Barnes thundered to the plaintiffs’ expert witness J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist, “You don’t know anything about the state of Georgia! How many times have you been here? Do you even know where the Big Chicken is?”—the Marietta KFC store with a 56-foot-tall steel chicken perched on its roof.
The judge said at the 2018 hearing that she found the state’s explanation of improvements to the Diebold system “oblique.” Totenberg sternly advised the state that “further delay is not tolerable in … confronting and tackling the challenges before the state’s election balloting system”–but she also decided that it was too late for Georgia to change its machines due to fast-approaching midterm elections.
Then, in 2019, the judge issued an unprecedented order, telling the state to stop using its Diebold machines altogether, which led then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp to form a commission to choose a new system. The commission would go on to ignore its sole cybersecurity expert, Georgia Tech computer science professor Wenke Lee, who counseled against implementing a new touchscreen system except where needed for voters with disabilities. He advised using hand-marked paper ballots. His arguments mirrored the plaintiffs’ position.
Instead, the state spent close to $150 million on its current Dominion touchscreen system.
Dominion system risks
Meanwhile, the Coalition for Good Governance and fellow plaintiffs updated their complaint to allege cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the new Dominion voting machines. In July 2021, Halderman and another computer science professor, Drew Springall of Auburn University, completed a 96-page report for the plaintiffs that found “vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential attackers.” That could allow votes to be changed, potentially affecting election outcomes in Georgia, according to Halderman’s summary.
A year later, in June 2022, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), issued an advisory warning of potential vulnerabilities to the Dominion ImageCast X system that was based on Halderman and Springall’s findings. Computer scientists from Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Georgia Tech and other universities and organizations drew attention to his findings in a letter.
During the same two-year period after Georgia adopted the Dominion voting system, Trump allies entered rural Coffee County’s elections office with the help of local officials and gained access to the system, copying software and other data.
That incursion was likely “the largest elections systems breach in U.S. history,” said plaintiffs’ witness Kevin Skoglund, the president of Citizens for Better Elections, in court this week. Skoglund, who serves on a cybersecurity advisory group to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, testified that Georgia’s Dominion elections software was now “spread out around the country” in the hands of “close to a dozen people.”
The state’s main response has been to replace election equipment in the rural county.
In that situation, Skoglund said, “You can’t regain control [of the software and other data]–like you can with something physical.”
In response to a question from one of the state’s lawyers asking whether there is such a thing as a “perfectly secure voting system,” Skoglund replied, “That’s not how cybersecurity works.” Instead, the cybersecurity expert said, “You look at threats, the potential they could be realized, and their impact if they’re realized.”
The Coffee County breach has left the state’s electronic voting system “with very high risks–and Georgia should move expeditiously to mitigate them,” he added.
ELECTION BILLS TO WATCH
What to expect from Georgia Republicans’ election bills this session
It’s become something of an annual tradition for states with Republican-controlled legislatures to try and change election laws in their states. The floodgates opened in Georgia after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 dismantled a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, said Anne Gray Herring, a policy analyst for Common Cause…
by Ryan Zickgraf
How hackable?
The plaintiffs’ case included a demonstration by Halderman, the University of Michigan computer scientist, about ways to hack the state’s voting machines. One involved using a pen to hold the machine’s power switch for seven seconds.
At that point, Georgia Tech computer science professor Richard DeMillo told Atlanta Civic Circle, “you’ve taken over the machine … and can install software or crash the machine.”
Despite Halderman’s demonstration, the state treated the vulnerabilities as “theoretical,” DeMillo said. State election officials countered that such a hack has never happened in an actual Georgia election. Halderman acknowledged that there is no evidence that the vulnerabilities he demonstrated for the voting machine have actually been exploited.
“The state responded stupidly,” said DeMillo, who founded Georgia Tech’s cybersecurity program and has given testimony in support of the plaintiffs’ case. “In engineering, if there’s a bad bolt on a bridge, it’s going to collapse some day. The fact that it hasn’t doesn’t mean anything.”
“The state either doesn’t understand, or can’t control, the technology,” was how DeMillo evaluated the state’s assessment of its voting system’s vulnerabilities, particularly after the Coffee County breach.
The computer scientist added that the state’s presentation of its case, which should start this week, doesn’t appear to include any cybersecurity experts. The state “doesn’t have independent experts with credentials to back them up.”
DeMillo, who has attended almost every day of the trial so far, said some of the plaintiffs’ initial witnesses “were ordinary voters who were not as confident as they would have liked that their votes were being counted,” due to vulnerabilities in the computer voting system.
“Confidence is undermined when you see weaknesses that are unaccounted for,” he said.
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Trump wants to place America 1st, Biden has already placed America last. Now on to South Carolina.
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The battle of the White House heads to South Carolina next week in what could be the last consequential primary in the 2024 election cycle.
Ironically, it’s also the first official primary for Democrats, New Hampshire’s Tuesday contest having been declared “meaningless” by the Democratic National Committee.
Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump seem convinced that their party’s respective primaries in South Carolina will deliver the knockout punch that effectively seals their nominations. Both have begun to conduct their campaigns as if the nominating process is over, focusing on one another as candidates in the general election.
Biden Looks to Make a Statement
Let’s start with Biden, who won the unofficial New Hampshire Democratic primary this week with 64 percent of the vote in a write-in campaign. Challenger Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) gained 20 percent of the vote.
It’s hard to compare apples to apples with previous results because the 2024 presidential race is, well, odd. Democrats reshuffled their election calendar to make South Carolina the first official primary. New Hampshire Dems were not amused. They voted anyway.
So Biden’s result is a historic low for an incumbent Democrat in New Hampshire, but it doesn’t really count. Except in public opinion.
The president is putting up better numbers in South Carolina, leading Phillips by 69 percent to 5 percent in an Emerson College poll released earlier this month.
If the polling in South Carolina proves as accurate as that reported for Iowa and New Hampshire, the Palmetto State could deliver a convincing statement that Biden is the only viable Democratic candidate.
That brings us to Trump and his lone remaining challenger, Nikki Haley.
Haley Carries On
The South Carolina native finished third in Iowa, 32 percentage points behind Trump, as well as losing to Trump by 11 percentage points in New Hampshire and trailing by 38 points in an average of recent South Carolina polls of likely Republican primary voters.
Any number of pundits and not a few Trump supporters have declared the GOP race to be over. That hasn’t stopped Haley from campaigning. She’s stumping in her home state today and tomorrow.
Given that around 70 percent of Haley’s support in New Hampshire came from independent voters in New Hampshire, we’ll be looking to see whether independents sit out the Feb. 3 Democratic primary in South Carolina so they can vote for Haley in the GOP contest on Feb. 24.
South Carolina is an open primary state. That means anybody, including Democrats, can vote in the Republican primary (and vice versa). But they can’t vote in both primaries in the same year.
Trump has collected endorsements from an impressive array of South Carolina politicos, including former GOP candidate Sen. Tim Scott, whom Haley appointed when she was governor. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has also endorsed Trump, as has the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) is the lone Congressional representative to have endorsed Haley.
Haley is still raising cash too. Her campaign reported raising $2.6 million in the 48 hours after the New Hampshire primary.
It is notable that Ron DeSantis, who suspended his campaign six days ago, had raised some $31 million as of October. Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting the campaign, spent over $100 million.
With the GOP race narrowed to two candidates so early in the year, we’ll be looking at what happens to the sizable number of dollars that flowed to candidates other than Trump will go next—if anywhere.
Some of it may go to Trump in an attempt to beat Biden, some may go to No Labels, and some may be withheld, according to New Gingrich, commentator for The Epoch Times.
“Most of those [donors] will, in the end, be faced with a choice between the disaster of the Biden administration and the threat of Kamala Harris as president,” Gingrich said. “My hunch is that most of the money will just stay at home.”
Trump has said he will ostracize big-ticket donors if they continue to support Haley.
“When I ran for office and won, I noticed that the losing candidate’s ‘donors’ would immediately come to me, and want to ’help out.’ This is standard in politics, but no longer with me,” the former president wrote on social media on Thursday.
He said that anyone who donated to the Haley campaign would “be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
New Weaponry? I have reported on this in a previous memo.
+++
The US and Israel have co-developed the most advanced weapon in the world. |
The New York Times says it's "impossible to defend against." |
CNBC says that it's "gonna open up a massive market for the defense industry." |
And one tiny defense contractor won the contract to build these weapons. |
Get all the details here >>>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ More alleged Biden Administration Corruption by Fitton's Judicial Watch. +++ |
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Alleged Cover-Up of Biden Classified Materials Housed at ‘Penn Biden Center’
The Biden administration is dissembling regarding Biden’s handling of classified documents, and we’re unraveling the truth.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Defense for documents regarding a key Biden staffer allegedly involved in the handling of Joe Biden’s materials housed at Penn Biden Center (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:23-cv-03836)).
We sued over an October 18, 2023, request for:
Records and communications of Kathy Chung, Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, voice recordings, correspondence, letters, logs, calendar entries, calendar meetings, memoranda, reports, regarding:
- Communications with Dana Remus, email address: dremus@cov.com, Covington & Burling, LLP, Washington, DC, concerning the Penn Biden Center, Washington, DC, or any classified documents or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
- Communications with any person using the email domain @who.eop.gov regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
- Communications with any employee using the email domain @dod.mil regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
The Committee has obtained information that contradicts important details from the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s statements about the discovery of documents at the Penn Biden Center, including the location and security of the classified documents. The Committee has learned that you were a central figure in the early stages of coordinating the packing and moving of boxes that were later found to contain classified materials. Following a recent transcribed interview with Ms. Kathy Chung – the President’s former assistant from when he was Vice President and subsequent employee of then-former Vice President Biden’s company, Celtic Capri [now Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense] – the Committee has identified you as a witness with potentially unique knowledge about this matter and requests information from you.
In a subsequent, October 11, 2023, letter to Remus’ White House successor, Edward Siskel, Chairman Comer stated:Specifically, the Committee seeks clarification regarding the timeline of events prior to November 2, 022 (the day, according to the White House and the President Biden’s personal attorney, documents were discovered at Penn Biden Center), the security of the documents in the Penn Biden Center before and after Ms. Chung packed them, and President Biden’s history of potentially mishandling classified material.
While the Biden administration was scheming to jail former President Trump over a document dispute, Biden operatives were desperately trying to cover up Biden’s own and more significant document scandal. And the cover-up continues with yet another Biden agency hiding records in violation of law.In January 2023, President Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, released a statement that included a timeline of events that inexplicably began on November 2, 2022, with the “unexpected[] discover[y]” of Obama-Biden records at Penn Biden Center. President Biden’s timeline was incomplete and misleading. It omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, Ms. Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer. There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials.
Judicial Watch Files Lawsuit against Oakland Unified School District for Records on Elementary School’s Racially Segregated ‘Playdate’
We have been very active over the years in exposing the woke racial madness that has enveloped our nation’s schools. The latest abuse occurred in California.
We filed a California Public Records Act lawsuit against the Oakland Unified School District for records on a racially segregated “playdate” held on August 26, 2023, by one of the district’s elementary schools (Judicial Watch v. Oakland Unified School District) (No. 23CV055165)).
Our lawsuit seeks records on the planning and authorization of the “playdate” held by Chabot Elementary School titled “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API [Asian/Pacific Islander] Families.”
The invitation for the “playdate” states: “If your family identifies as Black, Brown, or API or are a parent/caregiver of a Black, Brown, or API student. Come hang out while we get a chance to know each other and build our community as we kick off this schoolyear.”
The “playdate” was hosted by the school’s Equity & Inclusion Committee.
OUSD Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel said in an August 29, 2023 press release:
We sued after the Oakland school’s agency failed to respond to a September 29, 2023, open records request for:Chabot is a diverse school community with more than half of the student population identifying as students of color. This playdate aimed to create an affinity space where Black, Brown, and API families can build and sustain connection and belonging at the school. It’s one of many examples of the important work we do for equity and inclusion across the District.
Any records about planning or preparation for the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Any records about approval or authorization for the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Communications between OUSD board directors and staff, OUSD senior leadership team, Chabot Elementary School staff, and/or members of the Chabot Elementary School Equity and Inclusion Committee regarding the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Any records concerning or relating to inviting students or families who do not identify as “Black,” “Brown,” or “API” to the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Any records concerning or regarding the presence or participation of students or families who do not identify as “Black,” “Brown,” or “API” at the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Any records concerning or regarding the exclusion of students or families who do not identify as “Black,” “Brown,” or “API” at the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families.”
Any rules, regulations, policies, or guidelines regarding the use of OUSD facilities or resources for race-specific or race-selective events, such as the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families."
Any records concerning, relating to, or addressing application of the following to race-specific or race-selective events, such as the August 26, 2023 “Playdate Social for Black, Brown & API Families”:
Cal Const., art. I, § 31 (Proposition 209);:
U.S. Const., amend. 14;
42 U.S.C. § 2000d (Title VI);
Cal. Educ. Code §§ 200 or 220;
Cal Gov’t Code § 11135;
Cal. Penal Code §422.55;
5 C.C.R. § 1460; or
OUSD Policy Nos. 0410, 1312.3, 4030, 5143.3, or 5145.7.
In July 2023, we exposed records from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), a component of the United States Department of Defense, which included instructional materials and emails that address topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter.
In March 2023, records from the U.S. Department of Defense showed the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) has made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.
In July 2022, we sued the Department of Defense for records related to the United States Naval Academy (USNA) implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the training of naval recruits.
In August 2022, our client David Flynn, who was removed from his position as head football coach after exercising his right as a parent-citizen to raise concerns about Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter propaganda in his daughter’s seventh-grade history class, settled his civil rights lawsuit against his former employers at Dedham Public Schools. As part of the settlement, the Superintendent of Dedham Public Schools, Michael Welch, acknowledged “the important and valid issues” raised by Flynn and specific changes in school policies because of Flynn’s complaint, including banning teachers from promoting Black Lives Matter to students online.
Also in August, we sued on behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer over a teachers’ contract that provides discriminatory job protections to certain racial minorities. The lawsuit was filed against the superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Minneapolis Public Schools, and the Minneapolis Board of Education for violating the Equal Protection Guarantee of the Minnesota Constitution.
In June, we received records revealing Critical Race Theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]
Records produced in April 2022 from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) show the government agency responsible for regulating credit unions required “inclusion and unconscious bias training” for the agency’s employees and contractors and offered advice on how to recognize and address alleged “microaggressions” in the workplace.
Records produced in February 2022 from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) included a PowerPoint presentation titled “Race and gender based microaggressions” that was used for training at the organization.
Two sets of records we obtained in November 2021 related to the teaching of Critical Race Theory in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), Maryland’s largest school system, included a training course with information about a book titled “Antiracist Baby” that introduces the youngest readers to “the concept and power of antiracism,” and says it’s the “perfect gift” for “ages baby to age 3.”
Records from Loudoun County, VA, obtained in October 2021 revealed a coordinated effort to advance Critical Race Theory initiatives in Loudoun County public schools despite widespread public opposition.
A training document provided to us in October 2021 by a whistleblower in the Westerly School District of Rhode Island, details how its schools are using teachers to push Critical Race Theory in classrooms. The training course was assembled by the left-leaning Highlander Institute and cites quotes from Bettina Love, from whom the Biden administration distanced itself publicly after her statements equating “whiteness” to oppression.
Records produced in June 2021 by Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts confirmed the use of “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan. The school district also admitted that between September 1, 2020, and May 17, 2021, it created “five distinct” segregated spaces.
Heavily redacted records we obtained in May 2021 from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland included documents related to their $454,000 “Anti-racist system audit” and Critical Race Theory classes. Students were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy.”
Illegal Immigrant with Notice to Appear Charged with Rape, Released by Sanctuary City
Sanctuary cities for illegal alien criminals are deadly and dangerous, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reveals:
A recent case out of Massachusetts illustrates how the Biden administration’s negligent open border policies and local sanctuary laws mingle to endanger the American public. It involves a Haitian national who entered the United States illegally at the end of 2022 through the port of entry in Brownsville, Texas. Instead of getting deported, the migrant was issued a notice to appear (NTA) before an immigration judge like hundreds of thousands of others in the last few years. Months later the 31-year-old man was arrested by Boston Police for rape and indecent assault and battery on a developmentally disabled person. Boston is a sanctuary city that protects illegal immigrants from deportation by, among other things, banning cooperation with federal authorities, even when it comes to violent criminals. Seven other cities in Massachusetts have implemented the same outrageous policy.
In this case the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division in Boston’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office tried to detain the illegal immigrant to deport him, but local authorities refused to turn him over. The Dorchester District Court did not honor ICE’s detainer request and instead set the accused Haitian rapist free with a monitoring device pending a trial for his sexual assault charges. “Disturbingly and despite our filing an immigration detainer, this individual was released back into the community by the criminal court,” said ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons in a statement. “The men and women of ERO Boston continue to protect the community from those who pose a real public safety threat to our communities. We remain strongly committed to protecting residents in communities by apprehending those who are not lawfully present in this country and pose a threat to public safety. This remains central piece of our mission.”
Federal authorities fulfilled their duty by launching an investigation when they became aware through various sources of the Haitian migrant’s criminal arrest and unlawful immigration status. When the county court refused to honor the immigration detainer, ERO tracked the alien suspect down and arrested him earlier this month in Dorchester, a neighborhood proudly identified by city officials as Boston’s most diverse. “Long-time residents mingle together with new immigrants from Vietnam, Cape Verde, Ireland, and many other countries,” according to the city’s website. “This wonderful mix of residents from all cultures and backgrounds makes it an incredibly vibrant place to live, work, and spend time.” Curious to know how the diverse residents feel about releasing a violent criminal into their quaint neighborhood. Thanks to ICE’s due diligence he will remain in federal custody pending an upcoming hearing before an immigration judge and the agency will seek his removal from the U.S. once the state criminal case is resolved.
It is important to note that this is hardly an isolated case. There is a national crisis generated by local governments around the country that protect even the most violent illegal immigrant offenders by refusing to honor ICE detainers under a partnership known as 287(g) that notifies the federal agency of inmates in the country illegally so that they can be deported. Under sanctuary measures, a growing number of city and county law enforcement agencies are instead releasing the illegal aliens—many with serious convictions such as child sex offenses, rape, and murder—rather than turn them over to federal authorities for removal. The problem is so bad that a few years ago ICE resorted to launching a billboard campaign seeking the public’s help in capturing alien felons released by various sanctuary law enforcement agencies in just one state.
Judicial Watch has reported on the crisis extensively over the years, documenting outrageous examples that include elected law enforcement officials freeing child sex offenders, major counties releasing numerous violent convicts and a state—North Carolina—that discharged nearly 500 illegal immigrant criminals from custody in less than a year. The dangerous trend has forced ICE to come up with creative ways—such as the billboard campaign—to apprehend the offenders and deport them. In one busy region the agency publicly disclosed the convicts, complete with mug shots, scheduled to be released before they were actually let go by police that proudly offer illegal aliens sanctuary. The initiative targeted six offenders incarcerated in two Maryland counties—Montgomery and Prince George’s—notorious for shielding illegal immigrants from the feds. Most were incarcerated for sexual crimes involving children, including rape and serious physical abuse that resulted in death. A couple of the convicts were in jail for murder and assault.
Shocking 7,300% Spike in Illegal Immigrants from South American Nation with Terrorist Ties
The communist-controlled Venezuela is a playground for terrorist groups. You won’t be surprised to learn that these bad guys are coming across our border. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details:
Until next week,Adding to the countless national security issues generated by the Biden administration’s egregious open border policies is an inconceivable spike in illegal immigrants from a country run by a dictator with close ties to terrorists. A new report published by the Washington D.C. nonprofit Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) reveals that under Biden there has been a mind-boggling 7,300% increase in migrants from Venezuela, which is quite disturbing considering the South American nation operates under a Marxist regime that encourages international terrorist groups to run free. In fiscal year 2020, the last before Biden became president, 4,520 Venezuelan nationals were encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to government figures embedded in the report. In 2021 the number grew to 50,499, an eleven-fold increase, and it surged again to 189,520 in 2022. By fiscal year 2023 the Venezuelan migrant population exploded to 334,914. “This makes Venezuelans the second most commonly encountered nationality at the border, second only to Mexican nationals,” FAIR writes in the report. Additionally, CBP figures show that there was a 102% increase in Venezuelans encountered in families between 2022 and 2023.
The crisis was ignited by the president’s open border policies and worsened when his administration announced a special parole program for Venezuelan nationals which allows them to enter the U.S. without a visa and even with expired passports. Once in the country, they are eligible under the plan to apply for work authorization. “Venezuelan illegal immigration to the U.S. is driven as much by policy as economic conditions,” FAIR researchers found. “When the Biden Administration announces tougher enforcement policies, the number of encounters drops. For example, there was a dramatic drop in encounters of Venezuelans in February 2022 when Mexico announced it would no longer allow Venezuelans to enter Mexico visa-free, a policy said to have been made after the Biden Administration requested it.” Another noticeable decrease occurred in October 2022 when the U.S. announced that Venezuelans caught entering the country illegally would be returned to Mexico. Then the Biden administration implemented a new parole program for Venezuelans along with nationals of Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. The administration said it was for those seeking safe haven within the United States due to the conditions in their country.
Now the U.S. has hundreds of thousands of migrants from a nation with documented terrorist ties. Venezuela’s government issues travel documents to individuals linked to terrorism and allows terrorists to operate with relative impunity. The country also has close ties with Iran and other notorious state sponsors of terrorism. A State Department report reveals that Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro and his associates “use criminal activities to help maintain their illegitimate hold on power, fostering a permissive environment for known terrorist groups.” That includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-D), the Colombian-origin National Liberation Army (ELN), and Hezbollah sympathizers. In a separate assessment the State Department writes that Maduro has defined himself through his opposition to the United States, regularly criticizing the U.S. government, its policies, and its relations with Latin America. The document also says Maduro’s policies are characterized by authoritarianism, intolerance for dissent, and irresponsible state intervention in the economy.
A few years ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Maduro and more than a dozen current and former Venezuelan government officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other crimes for operating a sophisticated enterprise known as Cártel de Los Soles that has flooded the U.S. with tons of cocaine. Weeks later the DOJ indicted a Maduro ally and onetime member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, a Syrian-Venezuelan citizen named Adel El Zebayar, for distributing cocaine and weapons in coordination with terrorist organizations and recruiting terrorists to join the Cártel de Los Soles to plan and carry out attacks in the U.S. The feds say El Zebayar obtained a cargo plane load of military-grade weaponry from the Middle East. With these documented ties to terrorism, the FAIR report logically points out that Venezuelan mass illegal immigration raises the specter of terrorist infiltration.
In thinking about the 2020s, I often find myself looking back to the 1920s. That decade began with a deep recession/depression and ended with a stock market crash. While we now see the 1920s as a kind of “in between” period, people at the time didn’t know another depression and war were coming. They looked forward to good things and often embraced risk—hence the “Roaring Twenties” label.
Ernest Hemingway spent part of the 1920s as an American journalist in Europe. His novel The Sun Also Rises is based partly on that experience. The book has a line that’s now a familiar quote: “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways: Gradually and then suddenly.”
That quote’s context is even more illuminating. It involves two friends talking about their financial problems.
I think this passage captures how debt often goes wrong. Mike had a good life but he thought he had more friends than he really did. Their friendship proved false, or at least superficial. And Mike also had creditors to whom he owed money, and who eventually ended his good times.
Our US federal debt situation has a similar tension. We have friends and resources. We are clearly the wealthiest nation on earth. Some fabulous things are happening, even if you don’t hear about them. Yet because our friends and resources aren’t as deep as we may think, we are gradually slipping closer to a giant bankruptcy.
In these letters about debt, I’ve mentioned economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff several times. A quick search says that I've mentioned them 59 times in my letters, first about their 2008 paper on debt and then in their magisterial 2011 book This Time Is Different which shows how these situations aren’t historically unusual. I wrote about it extensively at the time and even interviewed them for my own book Endgame.
Among other things, Reinhart and Rogoff talk about how a country’s debt crisis usually hits suddenly, in what they call a “Bang!” moment that forces previously unthinkable changes. Today I want to explore this process a little deeper, and also look at why Japan’s seeming ability to avoid a Bang! moment shouldn’t give us much comfort.
“The Fickle Nature of Confidence”
In This Time Is Different, Reinhart and Rogoff systematically catalog more than 250 financial crises in 66 countries over 800 years, looking for differences and similarities. A common thread in all these times and places: People thought their situation was different. They truly believed the old rules no longer applied. This confidence is usually wrong and leads to disaster—the Bang! moment.
The following is a passage from a November 2011 letter in which I mostly talked about a then-unfolding European debt crisis. It’s worth reading again to see how it now fits our US situation. (Please note, Rogoff and Reinhart are not conservative Austrian economists. I find no politics in their writing, just facts. Which are ugly things.) Quoting:
One of the most important sections of Endgame is in a chapter where I review (and compare with other research) the book This Time Is Different by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, and include part of an interview I did with them. This chapter was one of real economic epiphanies for me. Their data confirms other research about how things seemingly bounce along, and then the end comes seemingly all at once. Which we’ll term the Bang! moment. Let’s review a few paragraphs from the book, starting with quotes from the interview I did:
“KENNETH ROGOFF: It’s external debt that you owe to foreigners that is particularly an issue. Where the private debt so often, especially for emerging markets, but it could well happen in Europe today, where a lot of the private debt ends up getting assumed by the government and you say, but the government doesn’t guarantee private debts, well no they don’t. We didn’t guarantee all the financial debt either before it happened, yet we do see that. I remember when I was first working on the 1980s Latin Debt Crisis and piecing together the data there on what was happening to public debt and what was happening to private debt, and I said, gosh the private debt is just shrinking and shrinking, isn’t that interesting. Then I found out that it was being “guaranteed” by the public sector, who were in fact assuming the debts to make it easier to default on.”
Now from Endgame:
“If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises we consider in this book, it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom. Infusions of cash can make a government look like it is providing greater growth to its economy than it really is.
“Private sector borrowing binges can inflate housing and stock prices far beyond their long-run sustainable levels, and make banks seem more stable and profitable than they really are. Such large-scale debt buildups pose risks because they make an economy vulnerable to crises of confidence, particularly when debt is short-term and needs to be constantly refinanced. Debt-fueled booms all too often provide false affirmation of a government’s policies, a financial institution’s ability to make outsized profits, or a country’s standard of living. Most of these booms end badly. Of course, debt instruments are crucial to all economies, ancient and modern, but balancing the risk and opportunities of debt is always a challenge, a challenge policy makers, investors, and ordinary citizens must never forget.”
And the following is key. Read it twice (at least!):
“Perhaps more than anything else, failure to recognize the precariousness and fickleness of confidence—especially in cases in which large short-term debts need to be rolled over continuously—is the key factor that gives rise to the this-time-is-different syndrome. Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when Bang!—confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.
“Economic theory tells us that it is precisely the fickle nature of confidence, including its dependence on the public’s expectation of future events, which makes it so difficult to predict the timing of debt crises. High debt levels lead, in many mathematical economics models, to “multiple equilibria” in which the debt level might be sustained—or might not be. Economists do not have a terribly good idea of what kinds of events shift confidence and of how to concretely assess confidence vulnerability. What one does see, again and again, in the history of financial crises is that when an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does. When countries become too deeply indebted, they are headed for trouble. When debt-fueled asset price explosions seem too good to be true, they probably are. But the exact timing can be very difficult to guess, and a crisis that seems imminent can sometimes take years to ignite.”
(End 2011 quote)
Think about that last part along with my oft cited sandpile analogy. The nicely growing sandpile looks perfectly stable even as fingers of instability form. But as Reinhart and Rogoff say, “When an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does.” These situations can go from stability to collapse in an instant.
Why do people not see this? The merrily growing sandpiles induce false confidence. In the current era, Japan is the seemingly solid sandpile others are misreading.
Stratospheric Heights
Back in the 1980s, Japan was an economic juggernaut. You remember the stories. The Imperial Gardens were theoretically worth more than California. Tokyo real estate was worth more than all of the US? That era ended quite badly, as they usually do, but what followed was even more interesting.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, successive Japanese governments and central bankers tried everything imaginable to kickstart growth. Nothing worked. Government debt grew to astonishing proportions. Even before the 2008 recession, Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio was already approaching 200%. A decade later it was over 250%. This is more than twice the equivalent US measure.
Source: Trading Economics
Then in 2012 the Bank of Japan tried what every textbook (and Rogoff and Reinhart) says is foolish: monetizing the government’s debt. This always causes inflation, but Japan actually wanted inflation. Constantly falling prices had produced economic stagnation.
The Bank of Japan bought every bond it could see and stocks, too, all while keeping interest rates at zero or below. Not just temporarily but for years. And for years, it seemed not to be working in terms of creating inflation. But it did allow massive government deficits which the BOJ bought. The main effect was to send the BOJ balance sheet to stratospheric heights.
Source: Trading Economics
Notice something in those two charts, though. Both the debt load and the BOJ balance sheet seem to be stabilizing in the last few years. They’re still at mind-bogglingly high levels but aren’t growing as fast. What happened?
It now appears the combination of COVID supply chain snags and Ukraine war energy disruptions produced exactly what Japan wanted: inflation. Here is Japan’s CPI index for the last 30 years. This is the raw index, not annual change, so you can see exactly where the lift-off occurred.
Source: Trading Economics
To be clear, this is still less inflation than we’ve seen in the US since 2022. But relative to Japan’s recent experience, it’s almost unbelievable. And it’s having an effect. Rising input prices have forced Japanese businesses to raise prices, something many previously lacked the confidence to do. Those higher prices, combined with a serious labor shortage, are also beginning to raise wages and stimulate consumer confidence. It is still early, but this is starting to look like the much-fabled virtuous circle.
A policy victory? I don’t think so. To me it seems more like good luck. The pandemic and a faraway war set up exactly the conditions Japan needed. If Japan manages to avoid a Bang! moment (which is not yet certain as the yen approaches 150 to the dollar), it will have had a lot of help from external forces.
Patience Pays Off
One might be tempted to look at Japan and think that surely the US, with its vastly greater power and resources, can manage a similarly safe exit. One thing I’ve learned in this business is to never say never. But in this case, I’d say the odds are lower than we might think. Not impossible, but low. The US isn’t Japan. I hope their solution works, for the sake of my friends and readers there. But that doesn’t mean it would work here.
I ran across this interesting analysis describing some of the important differences. To begin, the US has a large, structural trade deficit and current account deficit. Japan has the opposite. That means Japan-like policies here would have a much bigger effect on the dollar than the BOJ has had on the yen.
Similarly, the US is a net debtor nation. That’s not an accident; it is the flip side of our trade deficit and the petrodollar system. Japan is a net creditor, sending much of its enormous domestic savings overseas.
Japan’s government spending also looks quite different. While defense spending has increased recently (understandable when your neighbors include China and North Korea), it is still much less than the US. Ditto for healthcare, despite Japan’s rapidly aging population.
As a fiscal matter, Japan’s crazy debt-to-GDP ratio is more a function of stagnant GDP than out of control spending (though they have that too). Over the last decade, annual deficits ranged from 3.4% of GDP up to 8.7% in 2020’s COVID emergency.
It may be Japan’s lost decades weren’t actually “lost.” Maybe the passage of time was part of the solution, letting excesses be absorbed gradually. Patience pays off. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have that kind of patience in the US. We demand instant results and get grumpy when they don’t happen.
In terms of the US situation, I think the Japanese experience has two implications, both bad.
Our debt can get a lot larger than it is now before a crisis hits, and
The one precedent for a non-disastrous outcome probably won’t work here.
Let's unpack that. I’ve shown in past letters how the US government debt will likely exceed $60 trillion early in the next decade. That will mean over $2 trillion a year in interest payments alone, devastating any semblance of a viable budget.
What will stop us from doing what Japan did? Monetizing the debt to enormous levels? Truly creating the situation where we owe it to ourselves (or better stated, the Federal Reserve owes it to the US Treasury)?
I think it comes back to that concept of ephemeral, fickle confidence. Humans seem to think “this time is different.” And it is, until it isn’t.
Japan had just one real crisis—too much private and government debt. Values collapsed, in real estate, stocks, and everything else. But what Japan didn’t have was a crisis of confidence in the value of their bonds. People trusted their bonds would eventually be repaid in terms real enough that there was no need to sell. In fact, they bought more! Just like we are doing in the US and Europe.
As we approach our own Bang! moment, which in my mind is somewhere towards the end of this decade or the beginning of the next, we will also face the four cyclical crisis I have been writing about over the last six months: Neil Howe’s Fourth Turning, Peter Turchin’s concept of elite overproduction, George Friedman’s geopolitical cycles which suggest war and rumors of wars, and Ray Dalio’s business cycle writings, all of which point to a crisis later this decade.
(Note: I did a summary last week (see here). It spurred the single largest reply volume in this letter’s 24-year history, mostly positive. I learn a lot from your comments and questions.)
These events, coupled with the dysfunctional political system, not to mention dysfunctional government, have a high probability of eroding the confidence that could produce a Japan-like solution for the US economy. Further, we have the real potential for another debt crisis to develop in Europe which would make US bond investors even more nervous.
I know I told you to read the following quote twice, but it really bears repeating one more time. This is critical to get into our minds as we approach what could be our Bang! moment.
“Economic theory tells us that it is precisely the fickle nature of confidence, including its dependence on the public’s expectation of future events, which makes it so difficult to predict the timing of debt crises. High debt levels lead, in many mathematical economics models, to “multiple equilibria” in which the debt level might be sustained—or might not be. Economists do not have a terribly good idea of what kinds of events shift confidence and of how to concretely assess confidence vulnerability. What one does see, again and again, in the history of financial crises is that when an accident is waiting to happen, it eventually does. When countries become too deeply indebted, they are headed for trouble. When debt-fueled asset price explosions seem too good to be true, they probably are. But the exact timing can be very difficult to guess, and a crisis that seems imminent can sometimes take years to ignite.”
That brings us right back to where I started this series. A debt crisis is coming to the world’s largest economy and issuer of the world’s reserve currency. The hundreds of examples Reinhart and Rogoff examined didn’t include anything approaching this global magnitude.
Maybe we’ll get through it with only mild disruption. The optimist in me hopes so. But the realist in me says any such hope is thin. Better to prepare for the Bang! moment.
New York, Somewhere in Florida, and…
I will be back in New York for one day this week, speaking at a private event for a friend. And then sometime in March I'm theoretically going to a follow-up meeting on the new biotech drug I mentioned last week.
This last week of travel was extraordinarily productive. I had dinner in Naples with my good friend Steve Cucchiaro and then lunch the next day with Pat Cox and Newt Gingrich. Then in DC had a dinner with libertarian writer and thinker John Tamny, a day-long, high-level meeting with Mike Roizen and a dozen doctors (most from Johns Hopkins) on a potential game changer in the healthcare space.
NYC had non-stop meetings. Sunday night was with uber-trader Michael Boyd and friends, the next day was lunch with major commercial real estate investor Yaniv Blumenfeld, then meetings with my publishing team and then we had dinner with David Bahnsen. Dalio Family Office CIO Mark Baumgartner was lunch amid other meetings and then a fabulous dinner with Peter Boockvar, Ben Hunt, Mauldin Economics partner Ed D’Agostino, Royalty Pharma founder (and Cibus chairman) Rory Riggs, and China Beige Book Managing Director Shehzad Qazi. China was a big discussion, as were lots of things, but AI dominated the conversation. (I do find interesting people for dinners!)
Then some of us went to Jared Dillian’s new book signing party. Jared's new book is No Worries: How to Live a Stress-Free Financial Life. The book shows readers how to become financially free without going to extremes. Just get a few big decisions right, and the rest will fall into place. A fun and easy read.
While the week of travel was very productive, it was also exhausting. My body doesn't travel as well as it used to. I need some of those new drugs available sooner.
With that, I will hit the send button. Have a great week! And don’t forget to follow me on X!
Your thinking about and needing new biotech analyst,
 | John Mauldin Co-Founder, Mauldin Economics |
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