(CNN) Heated exchange between State Dept official, veteran reporter. Quoting,

A heated exchange took place between AP reporter Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Ned Price regarding Russia’s alleged “crisis actors” propaganda plot.

My sympathies were torn between purpose and privilege.

• Purpose, to deter Russian aggression against a smaller, weaker country of people who simply want to live in their own polity.
• Privilege, the right of a reporter to ask any question that might winkle out the truth.

I am not personally skeptical, though intelligence always has a margin of error. Matt Lee’s job is to be skeptical. Both Price and Lee are responsible for a dialectic that terminates in prejudice instead of logical opposition. Even a disagreement should have clear logic. Since Lee’s line was monotonic, nuanced elaboration fell to  Price, who was either not prepared, or hobbled by the stilted language of “spokes-speak.”

The intelligence could have been obtained in three basic ways:

• SIGINT, signals intelligence, which includes bugging, wiretapping, and interception of radio signals. The Kremlin  is paranoid about this; all important orders go by typewritten letter. It  is impractical to organize hundreds of extras to lie in the snow sprayed with red ink, so phones must be used.
• HUMINT, human intelligence. It’s impossible to keep a movie production secret. Even bit players are excited.
• Brokered information, purchased by  CIA from third parties. CIA  is deliberately not terribly selective; there is always the possible diamond-in-the-rough, along with false intelligence manufactured for profit. Made notorious by the Steele dossier, there have nonetheless been plenty of diamonds.

If I were Price, unhobbled by the conventions of his office,  the dialog might have gone like this:

Price: Matt, do you want to get someone killed?

Lee: I just want to see some evidence.

Price: We’re taking a chance revealing this much. If we say more, it might get someone killed.

This could be mildly deceptive, if it’s SIGINT, but forgivable. The penalty varies between major asset loss, and death.

Lee: Then you don’t have anything.

Price: We do, but I don’t think it will help prevent a war to tell you.

Lee: Why (enumerating intel failures  of the past) should you be trusted?

Price: Like I said, it’s not like we have a piece of plane wreckage. It is, literally, a movie plot. We don’t have the script, only the synopsis. Do you expect used typewriter ribbons?

(Laughter)

Lee: I’ll repeat the question…

Price: I have nothing more on this, except a simple request: Let your readers decide.

Ned Price was unprepared, because he is a member of one of the most intentionally honest post WWII administrations. He simply did not anticipate that Matt Lee would turn his jaded, gimlet eye on him.

Ned, next time, loosen your tie and your wit.

I’ve written over 800 articles, so I’ve lost a personal relationship with the older ones. Every so  often, an anonymous reader draws my attention to the relevance of an old article, in this case Trump Putin Meeting Part 1.

The Kremlin’s incipient aggression against Ukraine has two underpinnings:

• To thwart their perceived threat of NATO to strategic balance.
• An expression of illiberal, ethnocentric nationalism, which is actually put to words by Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The second point is explored in Trump Putin Meeting Part 1, written in 2017. It has new relevance, explaining Putin’s possessive attitude towards Ukraine. Start your read with

In other words, we are afraid that our president may not have understood the lesson of the Yalta Conference, in which an ailing F.D.R. thought he could make Uncle Joe his friend. Vladimir Putin is in no way comparable to Uncle Joe. But Putin has expressed a desire for a new Yalta,…

Thank you, Anony Mouse, for your implied recommendation.

Intel9 is by itself incapable of focusing public interest. So from inception  it has often keyed off CNN, who are usually first, and keep their links in good order. As I studied the media world, I became aware that Zucker’s influence on the CNN voice  rivals, in many ways, the media moguls of legend. This is perhaps disguised  by a genial, persuasive style that contrasts with the capricious, dictatorial legends.

Under Jeff Zucker,  in a state of challenged democracy, CNN became the flag-bearer of modern liberalism. It is a cruel irony that his fall resulted from the application of a very high moral standard which has been rigorously enforced only in the past few years.

CNN has not done well lately. Zucker may have felt that saving democracy is more important. In Chris Wallace announces he is leaving Fox News, joining CNN+, a Great Match, I wrote,

Journalism has a history of frequent, though not inevitable political bias. CNN is these days self-consciously liberal. Liberalism is not by itself the foundation of U.S. political discourse, which is a perpetual state of teeter-totter. To best defend democracy, CNN should build  bridges to those moderate Republicans who believe  defense of democracy is of supreme importance. This can be done by providing a cross-party debate platform on a scheduled basis.

If lack of broad appeal  is the only flaw in Zucker’s approach, his is still a life well lived, to be reflected on with contentment.

Readers of old Intel9 articles are aware that I have occasionally been critical of particular CNN articles. Search sloppy journalism. See CNN and Yellow Journalism, “U.S. bomber flies over DMZ”, and CNN, Shame! Raise Your Standards! “Russia unveils ‘Satan 2 Missile”. Though this sloppiness never involved people, it distorted world affairs in important ways. After AT&T acquired CNN in 2018, this became much less common.

CNN remains highly variable in quality. Politics, particularly tactical, is the strong suite; it always betrays intelligence. Even when I disagree, I think, that is a well-thought out opinion. This does not extend universally to other areas, when too often sophistication is lacking, or the tone patronizing. Too often, the word “expert” is invoked, in place of drilling down to reason.

This take may result from the liberal arts backgrounds of media executives. It even extends to foreign affairs, when the adversary shares nothing of cultural background, and to economics, in discerning the dichotomous rift between numbers and social welfare.

One point of view is that this smudged mirror is the necessary result of tuning the news presentation to the average person. But the smudging affects all of us; public discourse is getting dumb and dumber. Could CNN swipe that mirror with some Windex?

(CNN) Cops who prey on drivers so their cities can profit.

This is an old problem.

Having been stalked myself by a trooper through Georgia, the following  Alabama documentary is highly recommended:

My Cousin Vinny

Sequel to Russians try to take down Intel9 ?

More curious emanations from a rented OVH SAS server in Roubaix, France at IP 51.75.123.243 .

Friday: (CNN) BA.2, the newly detected version of Omicron, is not a cause for alarm, scientists say. Quoting,

There’s no indication that BA.2 causes more severe disease or spreads more easily than the original strain of Omicron. A report released Thursday by the UK’s Health Security Agency offers additional reassurance, suggesting that current vaccines protect about as well…

Monday: (medRXiv)Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC subvariants BA.1 and BA.2: Evidence from Danish Households. Quoting,

We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection, but do not increase its transmissibility from vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections.

What a difference three days make! BA.2  is now dominant in Denmark.  Now look at (JHU) Timeline Comparisons; Data Sources: Cases and deaths data. Scroll down to the interactive timeline charts, Jan. 1, 2020 to present. Nota bene. Napkin calculations are not to be trusted. They can still inform.

• Napkin Calculation #8 begins with the most primitive form of prediction, extrapolation of the smoothed chart.
• Time between the first two  peaks: 9 months.
• Smooth the 9/21 peak and the 1/22 peak into one, 11 months. Smoothing is necessary to avoid overfitting the data.
• Prediction via extrapolation: A peak 9-10 months past 1/22.

Three points on a noisy graph do not make a valid extrapolation. We add factors  that could push/pull/confirm the extrapolation,  acting as substitutes for the missing graph points, a crude form of data fusion:

• The current daily death rate is about the same as the 4/20 peak, likely the result of the countervailing effects of better interventions and less fear.
• Assumption. Effective immunity, which wanes with time, as opposed to official vaccination status, is approaching a plateau.
• Argument. Community presence will stabilize around levels  influenced by fear, caution, and irrational exuberance. From (CNN) CDC’s big announcement: Take Off Your Mask,

As of today, China, with 5X the population, and a poorly protective vaccine, records 4,636 deaths to our 596,646. China citizens are compliant with public health regulations; U.S. citizens are not. By this metric, COVID-19 could be defined as a social problem, not medical.

• In the U.S., BA.1 has a big head start over BA.2, delaying the next wave until  immunity induced by BA.1  wanes.

The above factors converge broadly on fall 2022. Most infectious respiratory disease is influenced by season.

• October is favored for the next wave as a traditional seasonal factor.

Intuitively, the added factors are worth one or two more graph points.

What of severity? The speculation of Omicron, a Good Thing? is wrong. Omicron infection provides some cross immunity, at terrible cost. Whether faded immunity from Omicron, 9 months hence, reduces severity is an open question, which only a variant can answer.  Mortality will probably decline, due to increased human immune  system experience, but remain at uncomfortable levels.

Since napkin calculations are not to be trusted, what’s the takeaway? If vaccine uptake/effective immunity is plateauing,

• Mortality statistics are likely to revert to the characteristics of earlier decades, perhaps the 1950’s.

For the foreseeable future,

• Work-from-home is a good idea.
• Keep immunization status current.
• Avoid activities favored by crowds of risk-taking extroverted strangers.

(CNN) Ukrainian soldier kills 5 in shooting rampage at military factory.

Two perspectives compete for our attention, legal and intelligence. Legal is deliberate and fair, where speculation is frowned on. Intelligence is time-urgent, a product of unilateral judgement that usually presents as probabilities. This is the current perspective. It is speculation,  of possible use to investigators.

Dnipro is about 100 miles from Donetsk. The Line of Contact is just west of Donetsk. The cities are connected by European route E 50, and parallel secondary roads.

Hypothesis. There was a getaway driver, intended to lead Ukrainian forces in high speed pursuit down E50, with carefully orchestrated cell tower pings, always behind the actual location. The Russian intent, to give the illusion of a high speed Ukrainian strike force, intercepted while in pursuit of the shooter, near or in the Line of Contact. The appearance, a Ukrainian “provocation.”

The crime is of small importance. But if the hypothesis is substantiated, it implies that war has been decided.

Curious emanations from a rented OVH SAS server in Roubaix, France  at IP 51.255.65.124.

Whoever it is, they want Intel9 down real bad.

(CNN) Blinken warns any Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine would be met with a ‘severe and a united response’ following Lavrov meeting. Quoting,

“You claim that we are going to attack Ukraine, although we have repeatedly explained that this is not the case,” Lavrov said when asked about a potential invasion by CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen.

You’re in great form, Sergey Lavrov. I’ve never heard better.

Edit. It appears to require clarification. A reader with native tongue sophistication would understand. Sergey Lavrov was not speaking with candor.

(CNN) US weighs more military support for Ukraine to resist Russia if it invades. Quoting,

US officials left the meetings in Europe last week even more pessimistic about what Putin could be planning, and how limited the west’s leverage is to stop it—even with the punishing sanctions and increased NATO presence in eastern Europe currently on the table.

Regular readers may have wondered about my silence.  It has to do with  how this blog is perceived outside the U.S. Some foreign readers may have the suspicion that this blog is an occasional back channel, or is  in some way “influential.”  This has never been the case. Nor I have ever been privy to affairs of state. Nevertheless, since the suspicion is impossible to dispel, I try to  avoid the moral equivalent of violating the Logan Act.

With previous Russian aggression in Ukraine, there was no significant U.S. response so  the issue did not arise. This time, the U.S. response, in the hands of Secretary Blinken’s capable team, is really on the ball.  The CNN quote, exposing some of the inner debate, allows some limited commentary, as a private, unaffiliated person. Blinken’s team has these choices:

1. Maintain the current level of support. Bleed the Russians in subsequent guerrilla war. This has historical irony, since there was such a war. See Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. This history may give Putin the feeling it can be dealt with.

2. Go heavy on equipment provision. Some of this equipment contains classified elements. After inevitable Russian capture of samples and reverse engineering, NATO stockpiles would have to be modified at considerable expense. If Putin can be deterred by the human and economic costs, it has a shot at success.

If Putin is undeterred, this strategy encounters the same military reality that has cursed Poland’s history, flatness. The vast bulk of Ukraine is flat, part of the East European plain. This landscape works to the benefit of a mobile force with air superiority. Ukraine forces would become what are described in war games as “static divisions”, against which Russian thermobaric weapons would be effective. A lot of Russians would return to the motherland in coffins, without saving Ukraine for democracy.

3. Make a deal for a kind of Austrian neutrality.  It is illogical to sacrifice Ukraine to preserve NATO expandability. It would not be helpful to go into specifics in any way, shape, or form. Let’s skip to justification, which is provided by one or possibly two famous men.

George F. Kennan was the original author of the policy of Containment for the postwar Soviet Union. See Kennan’s Long Telegram. On Feb. 5, 1997, the NY Times published his opinion piece, A Fateful Error. Quoting,

…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era…. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.

Did Kennan get anything wrong? His description of the present is eerily prescient. The argument it would have happened anyway has an uphill fight. Might a neutral Ukraine posthumously honor his prescience?

On December 19, 1994, the Washington Post published Henry Kissinger’s opinion piece, EXPAND NATO NOW. Loud and clear. But on July 1, 2008, the NY Times published Kissinger’s Unconventional wisdom about Russia. Quoting,

…the movement of the Western security system from the Elbe River to the approaches to Moscow brings home Russia’s decline in a way bound to generate a Russian emotion that will inhibit the solution of all other issues…

This statement was made against a hopeful background for Russian politics that no longer exists. His opinion is doubtless available to the Administration. Kissinger is an advocate of diplomacy backed by force. He may question whether the available measures are sufficient.

Note to Vladimir Putin. You are on the verge of an historic error. Prior to 2014, Europeans had forgotten the meme of war for the sake of war. It had simply become inconceivable. Think thrice before you cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Once loosed, they cannot be recaptured in our lifetimes. China, not NATO, has claims on Russian territory.