I wrote this in Nov 2017. Days after FBI revealed multiple strands of Trump-Russia investigation ran through London & I pulled them apart further. It was also when the attacks against me began in earnest. From Cambridge Analytica, LeaveEU & Russian govt 1/ theguardian.com/politics/2017/…
Nov 17 is when it all suddenly got real. That first FBI indictment revealed it was unpicking a whole web of relationships between the Trump campaign & Kremlin. To people who not only had contacts in the UK. But with actual ministers in the govt. 2/
The govt refused to answer any questions about its own ministers connections to figures FBI was investigating. One week previously, Johnson was asked if he'd seen any sign of foreign interference. "Nyet," he said. There are multiple reasons that we know this can't be true. 3/
This all happened in summer of 2016. We know these contacts with Trump campaign & Kremlin proxies were taking place in London. We know Wikileaks received material from Russian Intelligence & threw bomb into US election. And who was foreign secretary at the time? Boris Johnson
4/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This is what should be on every front page right now. What's happening in the US right now is an illegal power grab by a private citizen.
IT'S A COUP.
It's a digital coup. It's Musk who's leading it. The consequences are terrifying. And it's coming for us next. 1/
Please read this. I'm far from alone in saying it. The great
@TimothyDSnyder, @RBReich, @ruthbenghiat have all been shouting it.
There's superb reporting happening into every aspect of what's happening. But there's no framing. It's all facts, no story. broligarchy.substack.com/p/it-is-a-coup
This is a digital coup. A data coup. What Musk's cyber troops - mercenaries - have done is take control of the federal government's operating systems. They've downloaded or scraped vast quantities of data. It's a hack on an unprecedented scale. 3/
Britain: we have to understand wtf we’ve done. We’ve allowed one of Trump’s closest allies have access to our entire NHS data systems. This is the CEO of Palantir telling shareholders that ‘when it’s necessary to scare enemies & on occasion kill them’
There is much more I want to say on this but if you’re in the US right now, you need to understand that Silicon Valley is your creepy ex boyfriend. Who’s now conspiring with Donald Trump. They have your data & it can & will be weaponized against you.
Understand: the first use case of all technology is always against woman. A predator(s) used technology to surveille, harass & intimidate Hannah. And this is now what’s coming for journalists, activists, civil servants, lawyers & many more in the USA now.
The technology we use in every day life is powered by what @shoshanazuboff christened ‘surveillance capitalism’. But now we are heading into‘surveillance authoritarianism’. We are already in a coercively controlling relationship with these platforms
NEW: Hannah is my ex-step daughter. And when I was in middle of my Cambridge Analytica investigation, she had a stalker. Stalkers. A whole cast of characters making her life hell. In 2021, I approached the BBC: could we try & nail the perpetrator(s)? 1/
This was Han during those years. You would never know how much she was hiding from the world. Every day brought a new wave of abuse & threats that she dealt with alone. She finally opened up & told me the whole story in the dark winter lockdown of 2021. 2/
It was wildly confusing. But it was also clear where this could end. A young woman from Hannah’s school, with whom she shared a group of friends, was murdered by her stalker. And there was a common thread: the police hadn’t taken the action required 3/
This is president of @Google - a company accused of illegally harvesting copyrighted work - saying journalists need to learn to use AI or ‘risk missing out’.
He’s just been appointed to the board of @guardian. I hope every journalist in the org watches this & asks: why?
This is a headline in @pressgazette today. This is a rapacious company whose business practices have done more to undermine journalism than almost any other yet he has been appointed to Guardian board while *still actually working for Google*. The conflict of interest is off the charts
NEW: Why not calling a Nazi salute a Nazi salute puts us in a whole new place of danger. We have to call spades spades or what else is there? 1/ open.substack.com/pub/broligarch…
I've been a Sunday journalist for 20 years and what I'm trying to do in my newsletter is the slower take. Including what's missing from the news. And this week, that's Peter Thiel. *Where was he*??
He literally made JD Vance so was he missing from the tech bro line-up? 2/
And then there's these guys. If you want bad 2016 vibes, please come & read my dive into the straight-up weirdness of Nigel Farage & Arron Banks's inauguration party.
This is Bad Boys of Brexit #2. Only this time, the special geopolitical friends are Chinese. 3/