> My thought was more along the lines of Russian propaganda needing to keep up the general narrative that Russia is not fighting a “fair” fight with Ukraine. They are fighting against the entire western world.
When the war drags on, and Russia keeps having setbacks, they will say it is because they are fighting the West.

Then maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, maybe they should avoid picking fights with the US and its allies…?

I sincerely wish that NATO were actually involved from the start. Because then this really would have only lasted 3 days… 3 days to an occupied moscow, that is.

Good article, thanks. As you said, there's no way that amount of money is 100% corruption. On the other hand, there's no way it's all being used for things outside the scope of national defense. Sometimes secrets must be kept - the titanium procurement for the SR-71 is one such example. Yes, it's absolutely shady, but that doesn't automatically mean it's improper.

And a scif (sensitive compartmented information facility) is a place that's secure enough to store/transmit/work with certain types of documents/information. It's just a type of room built or modified to a certain certification to allow the handling of classified stuff. Less nuclear bunker and more windowless room with a faraday cage.

I've been inside a few as a lowly navy e4, they're nowhere near as exciting as people seem to think. Including congressmen who don't know what they're talking about, or who had to take the GED 3 times before passing. It's a low bar.

> underground skiffs where high ranking officials can learn of certain secrets they are cleared for

No you don’t understand, the navy uses skiffs, the army uses dinghies

> I read one year (2016 I believe) that 6.5 trillion went “missing” into black budget projects

I’d ask for a source but it’s probably the same place you thought you learned what a scif is for

It would take many times the amount of time, people, and equipment that the NC attacks were perpetrated with in order to effect the kind of damage that the FAA problems created.

And they are not power stations, they’re distribution stations. Try shooting up a coal plant and see how far you get. Might even make it to within eyesight of it.

Shooting a power distribution station and cutting power to a town is a little bit different than shutting down all united states air travel