US Hackers Reportedly Caused a Blackout in Venezuela

The New York Times cited unnamed US officials confirming that the outage was in fact caused by a cyberattack, the first time the US government has been publicly reported to have carried out such a hacking operation. U.S. forces also used their hacking capabilities to disable Venezuelan air defense radar before the incursion, the Times reported, citing officials. US Cyber ​​Command also added in a somewhat ambiguous statement to the Times that it “was proud to support Operation Absolute Resolve,” as the US government has dubbed the Venezuelan operation.

According to the Times, power was restored “quickly” – perhaps deliberately by Cyber ​​Command – and did not cause any deaths at hospitals, thanks to the use of backup generators.

Previously, only the Russian hacker group known as Sandworm had caused power outages through cyberattacks, knocking out electricity in various regions of Ukraine in at least three confirmed cases starting in 2015. When asked by a WIRED reporter why the United States had not publicly condemned such a blackout attack that hit the Ukrainian capital of kyiv in 2016, former top Trump cyber official Tom Bossert responded that the United States itself needed the freedom to carry out such attacks if it deemed it necessary. “If you and I sat down in Captain America’s chair and decided to go to war with someone, we could cut off power and communications to give us a strategic and tactical advantage,” Bossert said.

Of course, it remains unclear whether the United States was technically at war with Venezuela at the time of the operation. Regardless, the cyberattack represents yet another unprecedented step by an administration that seems to care little about precedents.

Reporter Laura Jedeed didn’t expect to hear back after applying to become a deportation officer while covering an ICE recruiting fair. She ignored emails, skipped a drug test, avoided paperwork, and her negative views on ICE and the Trump administration as a whole are easily viewable online. And yet, she still received a “Welcome to ICE!” email with a start date.

The Trump administration has gone to great lengths to hire large numbers of officers in a short period of time — in December, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had received more than 220,000 applications for more than 10,000 ICE officer positions — and Jedeed’s account raises questions about how much vetting is actually done for candidates going through the application process.

An AI tool that was supposed to review the resumes of potential ICE agent candidates and rank them based on whether they had prior law enforcement experience was actually broken, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke with NBC News. Applicants without law enforcement experience were supposed to complete eight weeks of in-person training, including classes on immigration law. Instead, applicants whose resumes included the word “officer” — including those who simply said, for example, that they aspired to become an ICE officer — were placed in a shorter online course. A DHS spokesperson said it affected about 200 hires, who ultimately reported to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for comprehensive training.

Palantir’s for-profit partnership with DHS amid the wave of mass deportations is no secret. But now, news outlet 404 Media has revealed the exact app Palantir created for ICE that helps it pick targets and decide which neighborhoods to focus its raids on. The tool, called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, or ELITE, provides a map of human targets and confidence scores of their likelihood of residing at a certain address, based on data sources ingested from official and surveillance sources. “This app allows ICE to find the closest person to arrest and disappear, using government and commercial data, with help from Trump’s Palantir and Big Brother databases,” Sen. Ron Wyden told 404 Media. “It makes a mockery of the idea that ICE is trying to make our country safer. Rather, agents would select people to deport from our country the same way you would choose a nearby coffee shop.”

Iran’s internet shutdown, amid protests rocking the country, is one of the longest and most comprehensive in history. But some activists are managing to stay online thanks to an attempt to smuggle Starlink satellite internet devices into the country. According to activists who spoke to the New York Times, some 50,000 satellite modems are in Iran, providing a window of internet access despite government efforts and helping to share information about the government crackdown on protests that has killed thousands of Iranians. Several activists who spoke to the Times expressed fear that Starlink owner Elon Musk would change his mind and make the service unavailable, as he did in China, a country that censors the Internet and where Musk has business interests.