"EMPTY" ASSERTION- ANY STATEMENT, (WRITTEN OR ORAL), THAT CLAIMS TO BE FACTUAL, BUT HAS LITTLE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE OR DATA THAT CAN WITHSTAND PROPER SCRUTINY. In many cases, the act of criticizing the Assertion is discouraged, AND IT MUST BE ACCEPTED WITHOUT QUALIFICATION.
THE EMPTY ASSERTION works best when it feeds into preconceived ideas and conclusions. It allows those with little Intellectual Evidence to support their opinions on certain issues, to make "FACTUAL CLAIMS" that are not based on the Rules of Logic.
It gives the Opportunist the chance to prey on the Prejudice and Irrationality of those who don't want Reality and Truth to keep them from forcing their own brand of "TRUTH" on everyone else.
Some examples might include;
- Inventing a causal relationship between certain groups, that their place of Birth or National Origin automatically indicates the Increased Chance that they are likely to carry a communicable disease. This is done without actually researching the statistics to back up this conclusion with
factual data.
- That the belief in the Existence of a Right according to Constitutional Law is found not to be Valid by Judicial Decision, will lead to an immediate Government crackdown to eliminate any trace of the Subject Matter ruled on before the Court.
- That an Accusation of MORAL or CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT, automatically means there is Sufficient Grounds or Evidence to make such a Statement. In fact, there may be nothing at all. The Accusation is just a Tool to mislead and place an undeserved Tag on an Opponent or Rival Organization.
Remember, the "EMPTY ASSERTION" does not need to provide any Reasonable Explanation for anything that is said, or claimed to be true.
The American Philosophical Association invites applications and nominations for the position of Editor(s)-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association (J-APA), its flagship research journal. Launched in 2015, in cooperation with Cambridge University Press, J-APA is now a leading international journal publishing scholarship in all topics, areas, styles, and traditions of philosophy.
Professor John Heil, the journal’s inaugural editor, completes his second and final term on December 31, 2022. An Editor-in-Chief or Co-editors-in-Chief will be appointed in the fall of 2021, in time for a transition period beginning March 2022. The initial term of appointment is January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2027; this term may be renewed once, for a second five years.
To apply, please submit a cover letter (maximum 2 pages) and CV using the online form. If applying to be co-editors, each applicant must complete and submit the form separately, naming the co-applicant.
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To nominate a potential candidate, please email the chair of the search committee at chair@apaonline.org.
This is an important appointment for the APA: we value your interest and your advice.
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University of Delaware
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WASHINGTON — The discovery this weekend that Russian hackers used sophisticated techniques to infiltrate a broad swath of government and corporate networks to steal sensitive information sent cybersecurity experts into a panic, leaving open the question of how the U.S. will respond.
The attribution was made on Sunday, according to one source familiar with the matter, who said the spy group responsible for the breach is known to the military and intelligence community. U.S. Cyber Command, the military combatant command charged with pursuing U.S. enemies in cyberspace, is closely involved in investigating the infiltration, as it may be asked “to respond” to the Russian espionage campaign at a future date, the source said.
The government has reportedly fingered APT29, or Advanced Persistent Threat 29, sometimes called Cozy Bear, a Russian hacking group associated with the Kremlin’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, as the culprit. Cozy Bear has also been tied to spying on COVID-19 vaccine data as well as U.S. and foreign government agencies and think tanks.
“They are going to have to respond,” said another national security official, who noted that the U.S. government might try and keep SVR offline or shut off their network connectivity, as retaliation.
One national security official described the atmosphere within the government as “chaos,” forcing cybersecurity workers to scramble to pick up the pieces over the weekend.
“We’re honestly just trying to get a handle on what it all means and what or how much was stolen or made vulnerable,” said one congressional aide.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to members of the country’s foreign intelligence service in Moscow in 2007. (Ria Novosti/Kremlin/Reuters)
The intrusions into government systems, which were first reported by Reuters, included the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, and may be “only the tip of the iceberg,” according to one national security official. By Monday night, the Washington Post reported that the State Department and the National Institutes of Health were also among the victims.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from SolarWinds, the company whose software was used as a foothold to get into sensitive networks, “fewer than 18,000” customers were using the vulnerable product. The company says hackers “inserted a vulnerability” into its Orion monitoring products, malicious code that was included in new product downloads as well as security updates between March and June 2020.
Any customer who purchased or updated software during that period, including “more than 425 of the U.S. Fortune 500” and “all five branches of the U.S. military,” according to a recently removed list of the company’s customers, may have been compromised.
Cybersecurity experts fear the ramifications of the attack could be “really, really bad,” said one national security official, referring to the scope of access the attackers had to entire networks for months and months before being detected.
Another former intelligence officer involved in cyber operations said the Russian actors appeared to have spent significant time planning the operation and did an excellent job to “conceal their presence” on networks. Those responsible for identifying breaches are so busy that finding the time to investigate “what by all appearances is a legitimate account” or software update doesn’t make sense, they explained.
However, given that the government has been the victim of massive breaches a number of times over recent years, including the theft of millions of sensitive employee personal records from the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, something needs to change. “We can’t be having these once-in-a-decade breaches happening every couple years like this,” they said.
Department of Homeland Security election security workers monitor screens in the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in Arlington, Va. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
There are still a number of unanswered questions about who has been breached, how deep the penetrations go and what the hackers’ motivations were — pure espionage or something more.
The National Security Council reportedly met on Saturday to address the breach, and has been coordinating the agencies to respond to the still unfolding crisis, according to a tweet, though a spokesperson for the NSC declined to comment further on how severe the government believes the breach to be or whether the Trump administration is sharing details about its investigation with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team.
One source familiar with the matter said determining a strategy to deter brazen foreign hacking campaigns is on the Biden team’s “to-do” list but did not elaborate. A spokesperson for Biden’s team declined to comment.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is “working closely with our agency partners regarding recently discovered activity on government networks,” as well as “providing technical assistance to affected entities as they work to identify and mitigate any potential compromises,” a spokesperson said in a statement. CISA issued an “emergency directive” on Sunday to instruct federal agencies on how to respond to the breach, requiring “disconnecting affected devices” from exploited SolarWinds products while waiting for a security patch.
CISA has been in upheaval in recent weeks. On Nov. 17, President Trump fired Chris Krebs, CISA’s director, for debunking conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 presidential election.
On Sunday, Microsoft also published a blog post advising its customers about the breach, including extensive technical details and indicators of compromise, some of which the company has now baked into its own security tools. Microsoft made the point that bad actors using the flaw in SolarWinds software ultimately gain “long term access” by moving through the networks, making it even more challenging to determine if they’ve been kicked out even after the SolarWinds vulnerability has been disclosed.
A view of the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. (Larry Downing/Reuters)
Additionally, last week, the National Security Agency published an announcement warning managers of national security networks of Russian hackers exploiting a vulnerability in virtual workspaces, software that can interact with SolarWinds’ network and performance monitoring tools. It’s unclear if the two announcements were in any way related.
Regardless of what else federal investigators uncover about the campaign involving SolarWinds software, it’s clear that adversaries will continue to take advantage of flaws in the supply chain — the companies that sell software, hardware and other products to sensitive government and corporate customers.
The intelligence community has highlighted the threat to the federal supply chain in recent years, warning that “foreign adversaries are attempting to access our nation’s key supply chains at multiple points — from concept to design, manufacture, integration, deployment, and maintenance — by inserting malware into important information technology networks and communications systems.”
Recent examples include a September DOJ indictment against Chinese nationals who penetrated software providers then modified their code to install “backdoors” in order to compromise those customers, as well as Chinese-government mandated tax software that included malware in its software upgrades that would launch a backdoor into victims’ networks.
“Supply chain attacks are a nightmare scenario for cyber-defenders and many organizations, as adversaries can gain access to internal networks by compromising devices or software prior to customer installation,” said Matt Ashburn, the former chief information security officer at the National Security Council, and now head of strategic initiatives at Authentic8, a company that sells cloud browsing tools. “Once installed, compromised items can activate malicious features to enable adversary actions, such as data theft and remote access.”
Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also emphasized the key role supply chains play in potential attacks, like NotPetya, a ransomware attack that cost large companies hundreds of millions of dollars. “As we learned in the NotPetya attacks, software supply chain attacks of this nature can have devastating and wide-ranging effects — whether it’s via niche Ukrainian tax software or, as here, network management tools relied upon by some of the world’s largest companies,” he wrote in statement.
Currently, it’s unclear how or whether the Trump administration will respond to the breach. Cybersecurity experts are split over whether to define it as an “attack” worthy of retaliation, given that there is no evidence yet that the hackers destroyed anything or plan to leak the information they stole, or as merely an impressive feat of espionage. Those definitions will likely evolve as more information becomes available about the campaign.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
One cybersecurity expert at a private firm noted they were particularly worried about Russian hackers leaking stolen government emails, potentially altering them or selectively disclosing them to try to paint a misleading narrative.
The attack appears not to be just about spying but should also be defined as “industrial espionage” against U.S. companies, according to Rosa Smothers, a former CIA cyberthreat analyst. “I think the first question is going to be, how many companies are going to be willing to state that they’ve fallen victim to this malicious attack?” she asked. “They might be keeping the remediation private,” she noted.
Smothers, who is now a senior vice president of cyber operations at security company KnowBe4, said the Justice Department might consider pursuing action against the Russian actors “given the breadth and scope” of the breach.
“I think the issue of vendor software integrity is something that needs to be better and more fully addressed in government writ large,” she said.
Jamil Jaffer, the vice president for strategy and partnerships at cybersecurity firm IronNet Cybersecurity and former senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, argued that the Russian penetration is merely “intelligence collection” and “not the kind of attack” that would prompt anything other than spying in return, he said. “Unless there’s data destruction or data manipulation. Then we talk about red lines,” he concluded.
Likely, it will be left to the incoming Biden administration to determine how to respond.
“It clearly will be a continuing issue in a Biden administration,” said former top U.S. cyber diplomat Chris Painter, who has served in government with many of Biden’s incoming national security officials.
“If anything, [this breach] is a clarion call that cybersecurity is a major issue,” he concluded, “and it needs to be treated as a major national security and economic issue.”`
( Here are a few articles, on this subject, I have published in the past. BETWEEN 2016-2018 The Federal Government, which includes the U.S. SENATE, FOLLOWED TRUMPS POLICIES OF DOING NOTHING TO INVESTIGATE A SERIOUS BREACH OF ELECTION SECURITY. LUCKILY, IN 2020, STATES LIKE PENN., WISC., AND MICH. REALIZED THAT THEY WERE TARGETS FOR FURTHER ELECTION FRAUD, AND TOOK STEPS TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM, REALIZING A TRUMP LED GOVERNMENT COULD NOT BE TRUSTED TO DO ANYTHING THAT MIGHT INTERFERE WITH HIS REELECTION. THE TRUMP TEMPER TANTRUM ABOUT LOSING GEORGIA AND ARIZONA TO JOE BIDEN, ACCUSING HIS OWN PARTY OF FRAUD, (WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE OF COURSE.), SHOWS A "I CAN'T LOSE, THE FIX IS IN." MENTALITY.
THE MUELLER REPORT AND TESTIMONY, ARTICLES AND POSTS, START TO FINISH: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT. THE BARR LETTER. PARTS 1-4.
THE MUELLER REPORT AND TESTIMONY, ARTICLES AND POSTS, START TO FINISH: BREAKING DOWN THE MUELLER REPORT... SERIES OF ARTICLES
THE MUELLER REPORT AND TESTIMONY, ARTICLES AND POSTS, START TO FINISH: QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE ANSWERED: ROBERT MUELLERS TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE OF REP. PARTS 1-4.
THE MUELLER REPORT AND TESTIMONY, ARTICLES AND POSTS, START TO FINISH: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.
THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION- SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG. PARTS 1-4. UPDATE.
THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION- SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG. PARTS 5-8.
HOW DOES A POLITICAL PARTY WIN 64.7% (22-12) OF THE SEATS UP FOR RE-ELECTION, WITH 42.4% OF THE POPULAR VOTE?
How far do you recommend taking students in a semester of formal logic (say, for non-majors)? And what order do you each topics in?
The book I use (Gensler) recommended teaching modal logic before quantificational (I try to get to both in an intro semester, though I've been rethinking this as we're all pretty exhausted by the end!). Although I was hesitant at first, I've come to really like that approach, for two reasons: it lends itself to interesting philosophical arguments, and it's symbolically easy to learn.
#1 is obvious: there's always a handful of students that are interested in phil religion questions like the problem of evil and free will / omniscience and enjoy using modal logic to deal with those.
#2- I realized in the middle of class one day that the modal operators are syntactically just like the negation sign: anywhere it's legal to put ~, it's legal to put a box or diamond (and vice versa), and anywhere it's illegal to put ~, it's illegal to put a box or diamond (and vice versa). So there's no new syntax to learn, just new meaning and new inference rules. I always have students who really struggle figuring out where to put the modal operators and they tend to find this tip very helpful.
------------------------------ Jacob Joseph Andrews Upper School Latin Teacher and IT Administrator – Covenant Classical School PhD Candidate, Philosophy – Loyola University Chicago https://jacobjandrews.wordpress.com/ ------------------------------
