I want to call out this particular point in my larger tweetstorm, because it sorta maps onto a dumb talking point from the left: "The government can borrow and spend any amount we want. American *can't* have a Greek-style debt crisis, because we borrow in our own currency!"

1. SolarWinds - an IT monitoring company with the NSA, all five military branches of the Pentagon, and several major civilian agencies, had their software hacked by the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear yesterday, the same group responsible for the 2016 DNC hack.

2. SolarWinds uses a protocol called Orion Improvement Protocol (I believe this is a wrapper for RMON and SNMP calls), and this protocol was hacked at Treasury and NTIA, the National Telecommunication advisor agency.

3. As a veteran of hacking forensics, I always look at modus operandi by malicious groups and at human factor compromises as the first investigative avenues to pursue. My research partner Jen Moore discovered Pavel Yershov lead the 2016 attack for GRU also worked for Microsoft.

4. Interesting that Warren Flood also works for Microsoft Pro Services, and he was intimately involved in the 2016 DNC Microsoft GRU "Hack". Flood and his wife were instrumental in the Dominion Voting Machine purchases in Wayne County, Michigan and the State of Georgia,

5. Even more interesting that Warren Flood has worked for a long time for Joe Biden as has his wife.

1) This pic published in the Daily Mail showing debris left after terrorist attack on US Capitol seems relatively unremarkable. But a man in Sweden noticed something: the red scarf at the top with the name of the northern Swedish city of Skellefteå. Then it got interesting.

2) The man contacted his local paper, pointing out the fact that there was a scarf from a northern Swedish city of just 70,000 in the debris of the attack. The paper published the story, with the headline: "What's a Skellefteå scarf doing inside of Congress?"

3) It turns out that, in 2017, the scarf had been offered as a Christmas gift from the city of Skellefteå to people who had moved away from the area. They were told go to a website and order one. A total of 934 people did so, and had received the scarf.

4) Now, natl Swedish media picked up story, wondering if a Swede had participated in the terrorist attack in Washington. Doing a search, the paper Dagens Nyheter found pictures of the man who was wearing the scarf. The first showed him trying to force his way into the Capitol.

5) After breaking through the barriers, the scarf man was later seen toward the front of the mob, waiving an American flag, and no longer wearing his baseball hat...but an official police helmet and visor. Skellefteå scarf still on.

Most recent T&T data now out, covers 4th - 10th Feb

LFD use continues to rise but more slowly than last week and T&T performance remains consistent.

And as ever we don't know about who isn't tested and who struggles to isolate.

🧵

https://t.co/lffa72M9YJ

The number of people being tested each week remains high at around 3m, but this is due to increasing use of rapid lateral flow devices as PCR test use falls.

The number of LFDs used has increased five-fold since the start of Jan, and 35% in the past two weeks (although noticeable slowdown this most recent week).

By contrast, PCR test use for people with symptoms fallen week on week for the past month (PHE positivity data due later).

LFDs are generally used by people without symptoms to find cases that might otherwise unknowingly transmit disease. Current use focuses in places like schools, health and care, some workplaces, and community testing sites run by local gov for people who can't work from home.

There's definite variation in their use across the country (but note chart isn't pop adjusted) and as mentioned last week, will need to keep close eye on how use varies, particularly among more vulnerable and deprived groups.

Need to mitigate any unintended harm, esp around jobs

The U.S. national security and intelligence apparatus has said for years that climate change is the single greatest threat to the nation and world. While systems intrusion and hacking by foreign actors could potentially have replicated some of what happened in Texas, it didn't.

Climate change and failure to plan did that, along with incompetence, ineptitude, and sheer greed.

Not only was what happened in Texas the failure of governance and malfeasance, it was a complete failure of imagination, vision, and insight.

While some folks want to call it a "black swan event," the fact is what happened in Texas was not. Not only was it anticipated, it was predicted. The people in charge were told what the problems were, how to fix them and why. They were told what to expect if they didn't.

Not only was it a cyclical occurrence (the third time in just over 30 years), both the periodicity and severity are increasing and intensifying. Therefore, the choices for inaction paved the way for the occurrence. It was inevitable.

In this regard, conservative ideology, philosophy and fiscal beliefs are their own worse enemy. That's because conservatism's most natural response is at best to do nothing, at worst to resist. Therefore, the disaster was a multi-layered, time induced, mountain of self-sabotage.