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Marc Ambinder Profile picture
@marcambinder
Feb 12, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
I think I convinced my students that there was no JFK assassination conspiracy, but I might equally have convinced them I retain too much useless trivia. NB: also , we watched how Lee Harvey Oswald was killed on live TV. And Cam Ne. A bracing national reporting class! #ascj
And we began with Eisenhower’s farewell address, which I still think is the best (and most honest) presidential speech of the past 70 years for the way it soberly predicted the future and acknowledged hard truths. #ascj
I will say: as wary of military intervention and a standing army as he was, Eisenhower became the first of (every) President to fetishize the use of the CIA (tiny footprint, secret agency) to deal with enormously complex foreign policy challenges.
Even after the Bay of Pigs, JFK used the CIA judiciously to effect foreign policy, not just to gather intelligence. He outsourced covert ops to RFK, who ran wild with them.

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More from @marcambinder

Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Aug 14, 2022
So, nuclear classification issues. For the @NNSAHruby equities - National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the @ENERGY department, @CherylRofer has a great explainer. As @wellerstein and others have explained exhaustively, a lot of information about nuclear weapons is.
Born classified. That is, by statute, not by executive order, it is protected national defense information. NNSA and DOE declassify various bits ... like, "the yield from this test was x" or "ablative laser refraction is used to help develop more precisely implosion technologies.
These documents don't usually make their way to the White House. They have to do with the technical specifications of nukes, their vulnerabilities, the science of the Super, etc. The most sensitive category of Restricted Data is probably Sigma 14.
Read 19 tweets
Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Nov 4, 2021
Thread: this isn't a pattern from the noise. During the last few months, the Biden administration has aggressively ramped up its cyber defense and cyber offense efforts, throwing attack groups for a loop.
(1) There was a still-secret national security decision directive ordering a whole-of-government offensive counter cyber intrusion campaign. # (2) Acknowledged offensive Cybercom operations targeting major ransomware firms (reuters.com/technology/exc…)
(3) Aggressive moves to curtail the use of spyware. (See the NSO story today.
Read 9 tweets
Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Nov 3, 2021
If voters "just knew the truth" is seductive and reductive and gives the media omnipotence (also, weirdly, does the same for the anti-media (the GOP machine)..while giving voters zero agency and treating them like dolts.
The right wing anti-media machine exists. It's powerful. It's asymmetrically powerful. It hurts Dems sometimes. Grieving about it makes a lot of consultants rich. The account that it's *dispositive* fails to plausibly explain so many counter-examples and is unpersuasive.
How much coverage did the VA media give to Youngkin's ties to Trump relative to the GOP gaslighting on schools? I'd be interested in a qualitative and quantitative breakdown. A few selective online headlines from @WashPost don't count. Also, the polls were right this time.
Read 5 tweets
Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Nov 3, 2021
Others are thinking: If Dems in Congress had passed really the popular stuff that helps eveything, and could point to it, rather than having to rely on/mess up their anti-Trump /cultural messaging - and Dems mess this up regardless of what side you're on ....
Of course there is no single reductive answer as to why... but only the absolute fact that Dems lost to a candidate they had every reason to think they could beat...
The limits of Trump's stench. Macker's campaign. Frustration with Dems in Congress. Gaslighting from the right. Fairly good campaign by Youngkin. Dems lost the salience wars.
Read 4 tweets
Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Mar 25, 2021
The #AspenInfoCommission on the infodemic will be extraordinarily valuable and the commissioners are first-rate. I wish I was had been selected, but seeing the caliber of the scholars and thinkers who were, I don’t feel put out. I feel obliged to help, where I can.
My focus continues to be on pragmatic intervention: what the ordinary person can do to model good information processing habits, mindful social communication, and effective claim reviews and fact-checking. For a subset: information operations, response matrices, org dynamics.
I see criticism of the commission for adding a few high-profile public figures with deep intuitive knowledge of the press and communication. I know that Aspen is Aspen and is going to Aspen, but I see value in the perspectives.
Read 4 tweets
Marc Ambinder Profile picture
Jan 18, 2021
A Threat About the Nuclear Transfer of Power: When President Trump departs Joint Base Andrews at 8:00 am on 1/20, he will be accompanied by a military aide and an emergency actions team, never more than 2 doors or 2 minutes away... for the last time.
Simultaneously, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris begin their day and prepare to depart for the U.S. Capitol, two teams of military aides -- with two other satchels -- will shadow them.
As VP Pence departs in a motorcade from the Naval Observatory, a FOURTH team from the White House Military Office will ride a few cars behind him.
Read 26 tweets

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