John Schindler (@20committee) header
John Schindler (@20committee) profile picture

Counterintelligencer and KuKservative. I know stuff.

UBIQUE
Joined July 2012
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Havana Syndrome is Back Vladimir Putin turns out to not be much of a “humanitarian” after all
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How do you think we know about the affair?
The Nvidia CEO was having an extramarital affair with a Chinese spy and the Trump Administration knew for nearly a year. Example A of the Trump Administration’s political and commercial corruption. Where was the CIA? FBI? NSA? Director of National Intelligence? How about the Department of Commerce? All lap dogs for the Trump Administration’s crony capitalism. Yet, activists in Washington want to focus on Democratic leadership when the blatant corruption in the Trump Administration is staring them in the face. We just had an election about Trump’s corruption. It’s time to show the public you heard them and start acting on it. Stop with the circular firing squad and focus on the safety and security of the American people. Don’t act and sound like Captain Renault in Casablanca: "I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.” nytimes.com/2026/11/10/us/po…
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Great look, guys, great look
New: The contents of a hacked computer belonging to John Mark Dougin, an American ex-cop living in Russia, offer documentary evidence that he worked with the FSB and GRU to peddle disinformation. He liaised with GRU Unit 29155 the originator of the Ukraine biolabs hoax, and his "moment of triumph came in June 2026, when information from his investigation was endorsed by @TulsiGabbard, who was serving as director of national intelligence in the Trump administration." theins.press/en/inv/299417?_…
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Or Chinese spies themselves.
The guys defending the tech guy for his affair with the spy are mostly hustlers looking to get jobs/investment from either his company or his business partners.
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Of course. All talk of "eradicating drug cartels" is 100% bullshit because the demand side of the equation is simply too large and too lucrative. When politicos talk about "fighting cartels" what they really mean is picking winners and losers.
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You're actually low-balling it. Hamawy participated in the Bosnian jihad not just with an "AQ front group" -- BIF was banned by pretty much everybody, including the USG and UNSC, as a terrorist finance organization, actual AQ.
We have an incoming United States Congressman who volunteered for an Al Qaeda front group and testified as a defense witness for a jihadist convicted in the plots tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This man is a fifth columnist. His holding office in the United States government is exceptionally dangerous.
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Here’s today’s INTEL you need topsecretumbra.substack.com/…
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You want me to explain the structural difference between the US IC and PRCIS in ... a tweet? Is that it? Why not just go for the whole difference between the PRC and USA, throw in a side of Quantum Gravity?
Replying to @20committee
“If it isn’t needed” and the CCP is actively doing it. And The CCP wants to win. Why are they wasting time/effort/resources towards something that isn’t helping them achieve their aims? Is there a structural difference between us and them?
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The TOPSECRET//NF//HCS//SAP plan you requested is below
Replying to @20committee
"CIA's dirty little secret is that the the majority of its valuable assets are walk-ins" What happens when US is no more beacon of freedom, and not beacon of fabulous riches either (compared to the competitors), what is the plan for the case when pool of volunteers dries out?
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Which is why walk-ins, particularly from high-threat CI countries, are always initially treated with caution until bona fides are established.
Replying to @20committee
This seems to be a very good way for the US to accidentally be working with double agents.
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That's NOT why. US Intelligence generally avoids coercive methods of recruiting foreigners to spy for us, and has for a long time. They're not needed. CIA's dirty little secret is that the the majority of its valuable assets are walk-ins, what Russians call "volunteers": foreigners who show up at a US diplomatic facility or similar seeking to pass/sell secrets. They come to us.
The CIA went woke and stopped doing honey traps. That’s why
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That's not what Mark Levin said! Actually, he screamed it, but you get the point.
51% of **Republicans** want Congress to pass legislation ending the Iran war
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"Nobody"
Nobody can explain why Jensen Huang sleeping with a Chinese woman endangers U.S. national security because it doesn't. It's a lurid story meant as a personal attack on an influential person who does not share the "RSI to AGI to ASI in 36 months" view of AI development.
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Huang + Huang may sink Nvidia, while Trump says it’s no big deal…that and more INTEL you need in today’s SITREP topsecretumbra.substack.com/…
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Example: KGB's DC rezidentura in the early '70s ran multiple agents inside the Nixon WH. So the KGB learned about Watergate long before the public did. They reported this to Moscow, including that Nixon was likely going down, but the Kremlin refused to listen. Wrong message.
False. Soviet intelligence during the Cold War had no great difficulty stealing a wide array of US/Western secrets. But making Party bigwigs listen to unwanted news was another matter. The Soviet system failed at political-economic effectiveness, not espionage.
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Oh yes. Hence the craptastic FSB "intel assessments" in early 2022 that Kyiv would fall in days. But DC isn't much better these days, let's not kid ourselves. US IC leadership knows that Trump doesn't listen, so just tell him what he wants to hear (with lots of pictures).
Replying to @20committee
The same unwillingness to tell bad news up the chain is a big part of the Russia's current problem too.
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False. Soviet intelligence during the Cold War had no great difficulty stealing a wide array of US/Western secrets. But making Party bigwigs listen to unwanted news was another matter. The Soviet system failed at political-economic effectiveness, not espionage.
America won the Cold War mostly because the Russkie spies were, if only barely, more incompetent than our own.
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Ho-hum....
Replying to @theoldworldshow
The Proud Tower is a fantastic book. I also very much enjoyed The Guns of August for which Tuchman is criticized mercilessly by historians, but try as I might I can only find differences of opinion rather than outright inaccuracies. Her portrayal of Kaiser Wilhelm is brilliant.
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It’s Monday again — don’t miss your INTEL! topsecretumbra.substack.com/…
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Wisdom is realizing that US intelligence agencies on their many bad days resemble a highly secretive and ruinously expensive Department of Motor Vehicles. Real wisdom is understanding that everybody else's spy agencies are no different.
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