Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.
A major whisper campaign is underway, led by neoconservatives in Washington panicked at President Donald Trump’s elevation of a string of foreign policy advisers who have spoken out against war with Iran. The first whack to the wounded war-hawk wing came when Mike Pompeo was blocked from a position in the White House, followed yesterday by the stripping of his security detail. That followed similar snubs to John Bolton and Iran hawk Brian Hook, both of which lost their security and have been kept out of the administration.
Hook’s firing was a comical display of Trumpian humiliation. Trump, on Truth Social, said that his
Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.
Jose Andres from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars, and Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council—YOU’RE FIRED!
What’s so amusing about Trump’s description of Hook as a member of the “previous Administration,” and his being lumped in with Democrats and a hated figure like Milley, is that Hook was named by Trump in November to chair the State Department transition. Anti-war Republicans vowed at the time to make sure he never got a job himself in the second Trump administration and sources tell me that Trump fired him after learning about his long record of criticizing Trump and his bellicose war rhetoric. Now he’s out, and is privately leading the rearguard fight against Trump’s nominees.
President Donald Trump has signaled an unexpected shift in the conventional US policy regarding Iran, revealing that the only issue his administration would face with the Islamic Republic is its development of a nuclear weapon.
Speaking on Fox News’ Hannity show on January 23, Trump did not address Iran’s regional policies, its defiance of the Israeli occupation, or the possibility of enforcing a regime change. Rather, his only focus was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In this regard, a Responsible Statecraft report, written by Eldar Mamedov, recalled previous statements by Iranian officials, confirming that the nation does not seek nuclear weapons, adding that this could facilitate a political agreement between Washington and Tehran.
Tehran has also gestured its willingness to re-engage with the West, particularly following the election of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his government coming to power. However, despite the mutual political willingness, the path to a deal remains highly complex and is vastly different from 2015, when the JCPOA curtailed Iran’s nuclear program.
The historical section of this episode traces how the 1979 revolution in Iran led to the Islamization of the of the Palestinian resistance and the founding of Hezbollah in 1982.
The filmmakers also trace the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which unlike the Wahabi movement in Saudi Arabia sought unity between Suni and Sha Islamic factions. Founded in Egypt in 1928,* the Muslim Brotherhood was first banned by Egyptian prime minister Nasser in 1954 after they tried to assassinate him. The filmmakers are highly critical of Nasser, who they claim mocked the hijab. From the film clip below it’s clear that Nasser was not demeaning the hijab itself but the call for his government to make it mandatory. Some Muslim extremists also view Egyptian prime minister Anwawr Sadat as a traitor to Islam for making concessions (in the 1993 Oslo Accord) to Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood was also instrumental in the formation of Hezbollah and the Amal movement** during Lebanon’s civil war an Iraqi Islamic movement (in opposition to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’aath Party in Iraq in 1959. There’s also an Islamic movement in Yemen known as the Zaydi. While all these group are autonomous and independently run, they get scientific and technical support from Iran (mainly rockets, drones and cyber hacking).
Part V then continues the timeline of the October 7 2023 war:
October 16 – Israeli cabinet minister Didio Assad announce Gaza must be eliminated by the end of the current war to enable Israel to expand into the Gaza strip.
October 18 – Biden visits Israel Israel to facilitate a meeting between Jordan, Egypt and Fatah (which runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank). However all three Arab countries withdraw from the meeting after Israel bombs a Gaza City hospital run by the Catholic Church of Akus. his war crime also triggers a wave of global protests in both Islamic and non-Muslim countries.
October 19 – UK prime minister Rishi Sunak visits Israel and calls Hamas the “new Nazis” while US warships repel two Yemeni rockets.
October 21 – Hamas releases two hostages captured on October 7 with dual Israeli-US nationality.
October 24 – drones launched by the Palestinian resistance in Syria and Iraq target US military bases in both countries.
October 29 – Israel allows 20 humanitarian aid trucks to enter via Rafah crossing but block the entrance of fuel.
*Surprisingly the filmmakers make no mention of the role of British intelligence in founding and supporting the Muslim brotherhood, in a strategy that has been surprisingly effective in undermining Arab unity. See Muslim Brotherhood: London’s Shock
**The Amal Movement is a Lebanese political party and militia affiliated mainly with the Shia community of Lebanon. It was founded by Musa al-Sadr and Hussein el-Husseini in 1974 as the “Movement of the Deprived.”
Well, the Donald surely did hit the ground thundering, and some right good noise it was—starting with the 1,500+ pardons of the J6 offenders. That promise kept was crucial because it was one big presidential middle finger rebuke to the Giant Lie that the Washington establishment and MSM have been egregiously peddling for the last four years.For crying out loud, it wasn’t an “insurrection” and did not threaten American democracy even a teensy tiny bit. Instead, the January 6th brouhaha was a case of piss-poor police work at the US Capitol Building. It could have been readily barricaded from the unruly crowd streaming off the Ellipse with a few locked steel doors and some water cannons and bear spray canisters unloosed for good measure.
Indeed, we spent 15 years around the place back in the day, and the truth is this: If they don’t want you to get in, you just plain can’t penetrate what is a fortress made of 400,000 sandstone blocks weighing upwards of 75 million pounds in the aggregate. The so-called rioters got in because they were let in, not because they broke in. They had no plan of action whatsoever and for an obvious reason: It was a disorganized, unarmed, leaderless mob of political yokels and yahoos, which like the car-chasing dog who unexpectedly caught its prey, had no idea of what to do once they got inside—except to meander around the building taking selfies and grabbing mementos such as the paperweights on Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
None of them were armed. There was also never a moment of material threat to the Secret Service-protected Vice-President or the Electoral College certification procedure.
[…]
Was there reason, therefore, to suspect the validity of this razor-thin outcome conducted under untested pandemic voting procedures—even apart from Donald Trump’s self-serving whining? As Sarah Palin would have said, you betcha!
In any event, the event was a non-event. The vast majority of the protesters/rioters should have been fined $100 for trespassing and defacing of government property and sent home.
[…]
Of course, as Trump jabbered away at the Resolute Desk—signing 48 executive orders, repealing 78 Biden executive actions and taking more unscripted, not-preapproved questions from the press in 50 minutes than Sleepy Joe did in 1,460 days—he was just getting warmed up with the pardons, including one for the website maker Ross Ulbricht who was sentenced to two lifetimes plus 40 years in prison for selling weed now available in retail shops in most big cities.
In fact, the far more sweeping and consequential “pardon” issued last night was that for fossil fuels and the lowly CO2 molecules that their combustion unleashes to fertilize and green the planet. Quitting the Paris Accord (again), canceling the EV mandates, opening up Alaska, and pausing Federal leases for offshore wind turbine carnage of sea life wasn’t really the half of it.
Far more crucial was the flat-out utterance from the Bully Pulpit of the White House itself that the whole Climate Crisis campaign is a hoax and a scam. Unlike the normal GOP BS about “balancing” so-called climate protection measures with economic needs or phasing in fossil fuel rollbacks more judiciously or putting taxpayer money into smart hideous boondoggles like CO2 capture and “burial,” the Donald pulled no punches. To wit, he flatly said that the predicate is utterly wrong. So be gone you climate fraudsters!
In the same “be gone” vein the 51 ex-intelligence community grifters who signed the petition saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plant got their security clearances yanked—led by those belonging to the five most odious dicks in the lot: Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, Morell, and Panetta. This action may well relieve the American people from their lies and propaganda as national security “experts” on the cable networks night after night, but also something even more crucial: Namely, it was a message from the Oval Office that contrary to Senator Chuckles Schumer’s warning the first time around that no one in their right mind would tangle with the intelligence community, the nation’s reelected sheriff just plain ain’t afraid of the Deep State. Period.
That is, the folks pictured below and their legions of cohorts and confederates took a proverbial shot at the king and missed. So the Donald’s payback is just starting in these precincts, meaning that the future of constitutional government may be getting one big shot in the arm—including in the next few days when all of the remaining material in the classified archives about the assassination of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King is released.
This long overdue release amounts to both a defiance of the Deep State and evidence that lessons have been learned on the Donald’s side of the table. Last time, he got talked out of releasing the JFK files by the deplorable neocon troll, Mike Pompeo. But this time he knew enough to send Pompeo, John Bolton, Gina Haspel, and the rest of the neocon pack packing before they even packed for another job in his second administration.
The litmus test as to whether the national security Deep State is really on the run, however, will be if the Donald sticks it out with his brilliant choice of Tulsi Gabbard for DNI (Director of National Intelligence). Tulsi knows her brief cold—so give her a few months as DNI and the wailing sounds coming from the 17 intelligence agencies will turn into a roaring crescendo of disclosure and exposure of the evil deeds done by many of those pictured below.
Then there was the shit-canning of Washington’s horrid $1.3 billion per year contribution to the WHO (World Health Organization). Indeed, this tool of globalism and crony capitalists captured by the likes of Bill Gates and Big Pharma has received $16 billion from Washington over the last decade. After the WHO’s treachery on the Covid pandemic and vax front, however, the zero funding put in place last night needs to stay zero as far as the eye can see.
[…]
Likewise, the executive order forbidding any Federal agency from indirectly thwarting the absolute constitutional protection of free speech was a veritable clarion call. It unmistakably announced that the Biden-era outbreak of Federal-agency thought control is now over and done.
Yet to make sure this order will stand forevermore, the Trump people need to follow up with a deep and sweeping investigation of these unconstitutional misadventures and assaults on free speech. The purpose would be to identify, expose, and prosecute, if warranted, every single one of the Bidenite malefactors by name, rank, and serial number so as to discourage any future political appointee from even thinking about weaponizing an agency of the state against domestic political rivals or dissidents from the prevailing orthodoxy.
In this regard, the 75-day reprieve for TikTok is a big stride in the same direction—with the added feature that it calls out the “national security” ruse for state-driven thought control and censorship. The fact that the Chinese owners allegedly capture user information is a pitifully weak excuse for banning free speech. After all, the very modus operandi of free social media is that they capture and monetize your viewing habits, otherwise known as your “information.”
Besides that, even though the Donald’s eagerness to “make a deal” with the Chinese has its own problems, his delay of the TikTok ban at least clarified one thing. To wit, it gave occasion for the great Senator Rand Paul to school a typical Fox News China-basher about who owns the joint. And it turns out that the parent company, ByteDance, is owned 60% by global investors, 20% by the two founders, 20% by employees including thousands of Americans and zero percent by the Chicom government in Beijing.
As to the latter, the only thing the Chinese government actually owns is a 1% golden share in a China-only subsidiary of ByteDance because, well, TikTok itself is illegal in China!
You can’t make this stuff up. Both the House and Senate chambers are crawling with UniParty demagogues who based the ban on the hideous grounds that Beijing might find out, what? Whether 13-year-old American girls like videos of puppies or kittens better?
According to the Wall Street Journal, ByteDance agreed in 2021 to allow the Chinese government to take a 1% ownership stake known as a “golden share” at one of its China-based subsidiaries, Beijing Douyin Information Service Co., which runs Douyin, an app available in China that’s similar to TikTok. (TikTok is not available in mainland China.).
[…]
At the end of the night, of course, there was one real big, nay huuuge, thing missing. The Donald didn’t say a word about the fiscal time bomb that has been deposited on his doorstep by the UniParty. But the fact is, the $624 billion deficit posted during the two first two months of FY 2025 was a shocking 64% bigger than the prior year and even exceeded the 2020 Covid year deficit by a large measure.
Moreover, it’s just the tip of the iceberg coming down the pike. The built-in spending momentum will generate $85 trillion of outlays over the next decade versus barely $60 trillion of revenue, and that’s according to a CBO baseline forecast that assumes uninterrupted full employment for the next decade and a level of total GDP and employment by 2035 that even supply-side gurus like Art Laffer have barely projected.
That is to say, the public debt is heading to $70 trillion by the mid-2030s and $150 trillion (yes, with a “T”) by the middle of the century—a level that would crush Main Street prosperity and constitutional liberty as we have known it.
And yet and yet. The Donald had absolutely nothing to say on the very topic that is at the heart of everything.
[…]
Finally, Trump was yapping yet again about Chicom control of the Panama Canal. To be sure, someone apparently told the Donald that the Panama Canal Authority is gouging American shippers and China may have something to do with it. Of course, neither is remotely true.
But there is a larger issue here. The matter of Panama is so utterly irrelevant that the Donald’s preoccupation with it is still another reminder that his good thunder on issues where he feels he has been personally wronged can readily give way to immense blunders on important matters on which he is wholly misinformed or completely misguided.
[…]
That is to say, why in the big wide world of national problems and crises is the Donald blundering around threatening to seize the Panama Canal—which is a 20th-century relic, at best?
The Trump administration has appointed a new Middle East policy chief in the Pentagon who believes the US should scale down its military presence in the region.
Michael DiMino, a former CIA analyst, was sworn in on Monday as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. Before taking the job, DiMino was a fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank that calls itself the “hub of realism and restraint” and advocates for a less interventionist foreign policy.
Jewish Insiderreported that DiMino’s appointment has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans due to his views on the region. The report cited comments DiMino made during a webinar last year where he said the Middle East does “not really matter” for US interests.
“Vital or existential US interests in the Middle East are best characterized as minimal to non-existent. And I think if you look at America’s experience as the primary security broker for the region … it has not rendered any lasting political, economic, or security benefits in service of US interests or the American people,” he said.
When President Biden launched a bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthis in January 2024, DiMino opposed it and suggested the US should consider putting pressure on Israel to improve conditions in Gaza since the Israeli onslaught was the reason for the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.
“Any multi-billion-dollar effort to fight a war in Yemen would render no political, economic, or security benefits to the United States. Strategies like ‘buck passing’ and diplomatic engagement are perfectly viable, would do the US no harm, and could resolve the crisis. Continued military action in Yemen, by contrast, presents dubious prospects for success,” DiMino wrote in Responsible Statecraft.
The US bombing campaign against the Houthis only escalated the situation in the Red Sea and did not deter the Yemeni group at all. Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have said they will stop their attacks as long as Israel abides by the truce.
President Donald Trump explains the decision to terminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s security detail during a press conference.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Friday that he has terminated the security detail provided to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the taxpayer’s expense.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) requested security for Fauci in 2020 to protect him from threats he received as the top health official and public spokesperson during the COVID-19 pandemic. But that detail was pulled on Thursday night, CNN first reported.
Trump was asked about the decision Friday while visiting Asheville, North Carolina, to tour areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.
“I think, you know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off and, you know, you can’t have them forever,” Trump said.
“We took some off other people, too, but you can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government,” he added.
Trump earlier revoked the security clearances of 51 intelligence officials who had wrongly claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” as well as the details provided to former national security advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Asked if he would feel partially responsible if something were to happen to Fauci or Bolton, Trump said he would not.
“No. You know, they all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security,” Trump said, adding that he knows several good security firms and “can give them some good numbers.”
“Certainly I would not take responsibility,” he said.
Former President Joe Biden offered a preemptive pardon to Fauci on his way out of office to shield him from Trump’s retribution. Though Trump had initially followed Fauci’s recommendations at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began to criticize Fauci as the government’s pandemic response and recommendations proved to be unpopular.
Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 and was the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022. Trump awarded presidential commendations to Fauci and other members of Operation Warp Speed in 2021 for their work to quickly develop coronavirus vaccines.
President Trump stepped on a land mine yesterday when talking with reporters on Air Force One about the situation in Gaza.
The comments come after Hamas humiliated female IDF hostages yesterday by putting them on stage in a public act of vengeance.
Hamas has also refused to provide an accurate list of the remaining hostages in violation of the terms of the ceasefire. The agreement to end the conflict is now in jeopardy.
The President mentioned he has a plan to ask neighboring countries to take in the million and a half residents remaining in the bombed-out territory.
This is a shift from his previous pressure to allow Gazans to return to the northern sector since the ceasefire.
“I’d like Egypt to take people…You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.”
“I spoke with the King of Jordan about the possibility of transferring Gazans to neighboring countries.”
“I told him to take more people because the Gaza Strip is in a real mess. I want Egypt to take in people too, and I will talk to Al-Sisi tomorrow.”
These comments provided fuel to progressive voices in the media.
The President has promised billions in aid if neighboring nations take in Gazans.
Egypt has already publicly refused.
The Gaza territory is essentially uninhabitable after massive Israeli bombing.
Trump also removed any restrictions the Biden administration had enacted against The Jewish State regarding weapons deliveries.
Newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised alarms about the actual number of American hostages held by the Taliban—figures far greater than previously reported.
This disclosure, coming just days after the Secretary’s appointment, points to a disturbing possibility: Biden’s administration knew about the higher hostage counts but chose to hide this critical information from the public.
Marco Rubio, voicing his concerns on X, highlighted the dire situation: “Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported. If this is true, we need to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on Bin Laden.”
Rubio’s did not specify the exact number of Americans still captive.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Anna Corbett, whose husband Ryan was held hostage by the Taliban, spoke to ‘Fox and Friends’ after her call with Joe Biden.
Corbett was upset after Joe Biden only gave her a few minutes. Anna said current U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz spoke with her for an hour outside at Mar-a-Lago.
She was hopeful Trump would be able to bring her husband home. Her husband has been held by the Taliban since 2022, after the Biden regime surrendered the country to the Taliban.
Joe Biden wanted to trade Ryan and two other Americans in exchange for Muhammad Rahim, an aide to Osama bin Laden, and one of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Just before Joe Biden ended his term in office, the U.S. freed an Afghan convicted of drug smuggling and extremism, Muhammad Rahim, for two American citizens.
Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty were the two Americans who were freed.
In 2021, The Gateway Pundit reported that the Biden regime and its woke generals abandoned thousands of Americans in Afghanistan, including up to 14,000 U.S. legal permanent residents (LPRs), during their quick escape from the terrorist-controlled country.
However, the exact number was difficult to determine due to challenges in tracking and the fluid nature of the situation.
“Isn’t the operating assumption about 14,000?” Republican Rep. Chris Smith asked Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Brian McKeon, during a hearing in 2021.
“We don’t track [legal permanent residents],” McKeon responded. “It’s a good question why we don’t,” he added
As many as 14,000 Americans were left to fend for themselves when Biden and the woke generals quickly fled the country due to their artificial timeline. This was an atrocity that was completely ignored by the legacy media, who worked overtime to prop up their friends at the Biden White House.
Meanwhile, approximately 124,000 Afghans were able to flee the country in August during ‘Operation Allies Refuge,’ one of the largest air evacuations of civilians in American history—most of them were unvetted.
This left approximately 9,000 Americans to fend for themselves under Taliban rule—a catastrophic failure largely ignored by mainstream media, which continued to shield the Biden administration.
According to the report at the time:
“On August 17, 2021, and at the height of evacuation efforts, senior State Department officials leading the evacuation task force indicated there were 10,000 to 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan, according to the F-77 report.
By August 31, when the president ordered an end to evacuation operations, State and DoD had evacuated approximately 6,000 American citizens. Even taking the most conservative estimates from the F-77 report, this meant the United States left at least a few thousand people behind.
However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in September, asserted that only a “small number” of American citizens, “approximately 100-150 remained in Afghanistan who still wished to depart.”
If Marco Rubio’s report is correct, Antony Blinken committed perjury in Congress. This story was ignored and quickly forgotten by the fake news legacy media. Like the Biden regime, they really didn’t care.
” . . . yesterday Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico.”
Mexico refused to allow a plane carrying illegal migrants to land in the country on Thursday after President Trump dramatically beefed up security at the border and ordered mass raids and deportations since reclaiming the White House, according to military officials.
The deportation flight was blocked from leaving the US after two Air Force C-17 flights, each carrying about 80 deportees to Guatemala, successfully took off Thursday night, NBC reported, citing two defense officials and a third person familiar with the situation.
It was not immediately clear why Mexico blocked the plane, but tensions have flared between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum since he threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican goods in response to migrants illegally crossing the border.
A White House official told the outlet via text message that “the flights thing was an administrative issue and was quickly rectified.”
The flight rejection appeared to be confusion over the Department of Defense flight manifest, according to Fox News’ Bill Melugin, who cited a senior State Department official.
“Per the official, Mexico was full steam ahead to accept the deportations – and would have if there hadn’t been a misunderstanding regarding the paperwork,” he tweeted.
About 2,000 illegal migrants were deported to the country Thursday, with the nation detaining around 5,000 within its own borders, Melugin added.
As of Friday night, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made 593 arrests, with 449 detainers lodged, the agency posted on X.
Trump on Monday declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border and restricted refugees and asylum, saying he wants to halt all illegal entry and border crime, designating cartels and organized migrant gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
Federal officials swept into sanctuary cities, including Boston, Denver, Philadelphia and Atlanta, on Trump’s first full day in office on Tuesday, nabbing about 308 illegal migrant criminals from more than a dozen nations.
The Trump administration has dramatically loosened restrictions on how ICE can conduct deportation raids – removing bans on operating in courthouses, churches and other places that illegal migrants had previously been shielded from immigration authorities.
The 47th president has also deployed 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border, with many given orders to fly helicopters to help Border Patrol agents and assist with constructing barriers, Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses said Wednesday.
The use of military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon’s plan to fulfill Trump’s emergency declaration – marking the first time military planes have been used to transport deportees since President Dwight Eisenhower was in office, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed US official.
“Thanks to President Trump, yesterday Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico. Mexico has also mobilized 30,000 National Guard,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post.
Ukraine’s reliance on its new digital identity systems has become a warning about the dangers of digital ID, as a recent cyberattack exposed critical vulnerabilities in the country’s digital infrastructure.
Last month, several key government databases were taken offline, disrupting essential services like legal filings and marriage registrations. Officials assured citizens that the controversial Diia, the government’s widely used e-governance app, would soon be restored, but the incident laid bare significant risks within the app’s centralized backend platform, Trembita.
This breach, the most serious since Trembita’s launch in 2020, raises urgent questions about the security of Ukraine’s growing dependence on digital IDs and is a clear warning to other countries that are rushing to embrace the controversial tech.
Trembita, the platform enabling Diia’s operations, functions as a digital network connecting government databases. While officials insisted it operated as designed during the breach, cybersecurity experts are sounding alarms. Mykyta Knysh, a former Ukrainian security official, described the platform’s centralized architecture as a dangerous “single point of failure.” Warnings about these risks had surfaced before — security analysts cautioned in 2021 that consolidating sensitive personal and administrative data under Diia would leave Ukraine exposed to large-scale attacks.
The Russian hacking group XakNet has claimed responsibility for the attack.
This highlights a broader danger inherent in Ukraine’s ambitious digitalization efforts, spearheaded by the Ministry of Digital Transformation under the Zelensky administration.
While consolidating government services into the smartphone-based Diia app has streamlined access for millions of citizens, the breakneck pace of implementation has left little time to address critical security gaps.
The compromised registries contained highly sensitive data, including personal addresses, family connections, and financial assets.
Beyond military implications, the breach exposes the inherent risks of digital ID systems. Security analysts have pointed out that a central repository of personal data, as seen in Ukraine’s system, creates lucrative targets for hackers. If exploited, such data could fuel identity theft, phishing campaigns, or even more devastating cyberattacks, undermining public trust in digital governance.
The Most Revolutionary Act 