Here’s some context in a new Carnegie Europe report for the recent Russian Telegram star assassination.

Established within the National Security Council in 2021, the Center on Countering Disinformation debunks Russia’s manipulative and misleading narratives, including through social media platforms. This is a formidable task as many of these platforms, especially Telegram, have become a safe haven for disinformation due to lack of scrutiny and proper moderation policies.

Especially Telegram.

The tone of this report emphasizes how Ukraine easily regulates and rebuffs disinformation using curated sources of trusted information.

Investigative journalists and civil society organizations, such as StopFake and Detector Media, complement governmental efforts in checking facts and providing accurate information. A December opinion poll found that Ukrainians, including in the most vulnerable southern and eastern regions, decisively reject Russian narratives of internal divisions and Western betrayal of the country.

We see Ukraine described in terms of protecting the most vulnerable and preventing harms.

The report continues to say heavy regulation, including forced breakup of oligarchial control over media, is Ukraine’s charted path for freedom of speech.

Ukraine’s resilience in the information war has created momentum for deepening reforms to preserve media freedom and pluralism of views. As a part of the conditionality for membership, the EU called for introducing legislative norms that would regulate the media sector in accordance with its directives in this field. In December 2022, the parliament passed the required law. If properly implemented, the law would not only strengthen the instruments to counter Russian disinformation but also develop norms to ensure transparency and the independence of media from undue political influence.

All of this points towards Russia being the most likely motivated assassin of its own journalists.

First, it’s the common tool of Putin. Second, the Russian victim early could have stepped over a line that triggered the dictator’s press-killing secret police. Third, internal divisions in Russia are growing severely over bungling mismanagement of war with Ukraine.

The question about the assassination is really how could it not be Russians killing each other? Ukraine hasn’t needed to resort to such tactics, given its commanding control over the information domain.

While Ukrainians show steady resistance to narratives of internal division, Russia (like a Tesla factory) viciously attacks its own top performers to kill speech about obvious internal fragmentation.

That being said, an explosion is uncommon and unusual for Russian state assassins. It’s somewhat significant for being in a Russian city lounge being “guarded” by far-right miltants.

The attack carries hallmarks of Russian domestic anti-war extremists.

The primary target wasn’t a journalist or reporter in the usual sense. He had been a coal miner and jailed in Ukraine for bank robbery. In 2014 he “escaped” with Russian help to become a militant separatist within Ukraine. His Telegram role essentially was Russian puppet coddled by military handlers inserting him into high-risk war zones to generate disinformation. You can see why he thought he was safe and where.

Obviously the victim being targeted while in a plainly vulnerable Petersburg cafe, surrounded by at least two dozen of his fans (13% of Russian Telegram users are in that city, second only to Moscow), sends a strong message of resistance to Russians.

Or as Ukrainians have expertly explained:

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English…. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

A Ukrainian pro-Russian militant extremist propaganda leader, who promoted killing civilians (“we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone”), seems to have been killed in a civilian setting by Russian anti-war militant extremists.

An assassination doesn’t fit within increasing Ukrainian success in disarming disinformation at every level. I mean they wouldn’t have any real need to expend the kind of heavy effort to physically target such a mediocre blogger from Moscow visiting his Petersburg fans.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t Ukraine, just that it has stronger hallmarks of local action. And if Russian authorities crack down even harder on expression now, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue any increase in incidents inside Russia isn’t inevitable domestic resistance.

I’ve been asked about the explosive, and it seems far too early to make that kind of call. I’m reminded of giving a talk at a mystery writer’s conference about how to hack into computers, where the distinguished speaker immediately before me was an explosives expert describing how to assassinate people (mostly with cars). Apparently there’s some kind of shared theme here? My, how times change.

We certainly know the target was killed with 30 people around him injured, suggesting very high precision planning. Since the statue was unexpected as a shiny gift in a box, and in the image of the target himself, it seems an obvious play on a Telegram star’s glaring insecurity — curated, not just plain explosives. And there does seem to be a thread that suggests the statue was part of a compound attack, somehow causing the target highest proximity harm from an earlier planted incendiary.

But what do I know about those things, I’m just the computer guy who studies information integrity.

Any big rig is going to require maintenance.

Truckers, much like farmers, expect repairs and breakdowns to come with the complexity of their machinery.

I mention farmers because of their right-to-repair precedent and ongoing litigation.

In that context you’d think the Tesla Semi being observed broken down wouldn’t cause any concern beyond the usual $10-20K annual operating schedule.

Except there’s a giant problem.

Tesla promoted its trucks as far less or even no maintenance, and then required any work be done only by them. Breaking down often (even if it is still less than a diesel) immediately undermines their entire value pitch, especially because it was built on a monopolist cost model (artificial scarcity).

If your truck is towed every month for a $20K repair that you can’t argue with… that’s just a slimy snake-oil subscription model you didn’t sign up for. Tesla right now looks like a dangerous trap.

Indeed, the reported breakdown of at least eight Tesla Semi in just the past couple months is related to dumb, distracting and totally vulnerable “infotainment” systems. What trucker is being trained to work on those? Tesla probably just throws them away and installs new ones they hope will break down soon, depending on a notoriously unreliable foreign supply chain. Everything operational runs on fragile wiring harnesses to a set of low quality screens prone to go blank. Screen failures then cause complete system shutdown until another big repair bill is footed.

Again, breakdown should have been something normalized and modeled for highly distributed field repairs a long time ago. The Tesla Semi was announced in 2017 with fanfare to revolutionize transit by 2019. Instead in 2018 they were… breaking down.

Tesla could have said back then that breakdowns are common and they are working on an “open road” plan so truckers are self-sufficient and unburdened.

Although, let’s be honest, if a trailer full of spare parts can’t help keep the truck running then something really, really stinks. Good thing they don’t build ships.

Instead of opening up more about the issues, Tesla used a top-down centrally planned tone to argue breakdowns aren’t real for them (not asleep at the wheel just driving eyes closed), that electric inherently should be easier to keep running (a lie — most vehicle fires are electrical), and that everything about their repairs has to be a giant, freedom-sucking secret.

Which national security desk is being briefed right now on country-wide Tesla hacks shutting deliveries down for weeks?

And thus, in these crucial first few months of “production” operations, their breakdowns are actually a giant ugly problem. A business and engineering disaster. It’s not really new, either.

They launched three years late, slowly delivering something they said was going to be amazing and worth the loooong wait, yet out of the gate it can’t stay on the road.

On top of truckers pointing out how backwards and stupid a monopolist repair model is for long-hauling (e.g. none of the tow trucks are controlled by Tesla), they also have a huge list of basic complaints.

That giant greenhouse window collecting sun and precipitation yet impossible to shade or clear, inability of greenhouse windows to open fully, door awkwardly shifted behind the seat, mirrors stuck like an afterthought in a position too far to clean, lack of rest space, center seating stupidly buried away from everything, depending on touch screens for everything… the obvious trouble list goes on and on.

Everything I have read so far suggests nobody at Tesla understood Semi driving before designing this. Fun fact? The head of Tesla Semi claims zero experience in the trucking industry. Semi announced 2017 for a 2019 release? Sheltered inside Tesla almost his entire five year career, Semi is his first real project after graduating college (BS 2009), ladies and gentlemen.

I guess this cartoonish thing answers the question of what Stanford teaches?

I’m still looking at those mirrors sticking out awkwardly and thinking about the CEO spreading “no exterior mirrors” disinformation about the future, encouraging owners to break laws by removing them. Tesla often promotes breaking the laws today as their concept of becoming “future proof” for a fantasy world they dream about. If only they had learned why mirror safety isn’t even remotely solved by vulnerable screens that abruptly fail unsafely… they wouldn’t have had to stick those giant ugly bandaids over the problems they created.

Such fantasy games are downright dangerous. The sheer fact that Tesla again created an intentionally deceptive video (refusing to disclose details about Semi) to keep investors hooked on a trucking fantasy should be treated as criminal (e.g. Advanced Fee Fraud). Hello, FTC?

In conclusion, Tesla has created the Pontiac Aztek of trucking. Except it will cost 10X any other truck because of a hidden subscription system that is designed for abuse and exploitation of owners.

Anyone buying into this is clearly not thinking clearly. There’s nothing positive to report about the Tesla Semi. Boasts about it being reliable and efficient not only seem flagrantly untrue, the breakdowns end up being tied to a Stanford-like diabolical profit model that taxes owners just to keep their unstable rig on the road.

Update March 31: Tesla just three months after pushing its years late product to market has issued a recall for its Semi because the brakes fail. Specifically the brake in park doesn’t activate, so the NHTSA warns a Semi can roll away.

Tesla recalls lately have been for the steering wheel, seatbelts and brakes. Just the little things.

If people don’t know how to swim, they take swimming lessons or drown. Right?

It’s foundational to enlightenment that human independent skill, an evolving ability to learn and adapt, doesn’t come from divine intervention (e.g. one day suddenly being thrown totally unprepared into the deep end of a pool with no help doesn’t end well).

Of course dictators hate this because it means slow and steady pace at low margins, hard work with unpredictable outcomes, is where power really comes from. How is a tyrant supposed to monopolize power and exploit people busy reinvesting in themselves, let alone thinking about the power shift gained when consent has been learned?

For years we have been witness to Tesla’s tinpot tyrannical CEO throwing “intelligent” cars and his defrauded customers into a deep end of a pool without any proper swim lessons. Of course they’ve been drowning at alarming rates, killing hundreds unnecessarily.

A “version 11” is still running red lights, and probably should be grounded. Imagine a bank robber saying “that was just my eleventh beta robbery, you can’t arrest me until the day I finally learn how to avoid being arrested.” It’s a fool’s recipe for destroying society with fraud.

The Russian military similarly is dumping unprepared machines and soldiers into high risk conflict with tragic mass deaths as a result. It reads to me the same as Tesla.

Russian brigade destroyed and reformed 8 times

Some military analysts foolishly predicted Russia to adapt and revise during battles, but we are now witness to the exact opposite.

…[SATMO has] seen a flexibility in [Ukrainian] planning and operations that is inherent in Western doctrine [that is] not inherent in the Soviet style of top-down command [still used by Russia].

Up to 100 failed Russian assaults in a single day is like Tesla “driverless” disengaging every mile. These are systemic problems due to mismanagement, and why monopolist leadership is about hiding failures and building “exit moats” instead of learning how to reduce and avoid harms.

Russia has had roughly just five weeks of major winning, all in the beginning from the end of February until late March; the rest of this period of escalation, Russia has been almost entirely losing. That’s right, that’s little more than five weeks out of over fifty weeks of Russia winning with over ten straight months of Russia losing, its miniscule gains coming at such terribly Pyrrhic costs that considering them “victories” is a stretch.

Version 8 may become version 11 with the same deadly results because whether in Russia or Tesla corruption makes true learning economically and politically unviable to these dictators.

Once you realize Musk and Putin are operating in the same mindset, bullies who see all of humanity only as disposable machines, you can see why any future they aim towards is demonstrably worse for everyone.

The elephant in the room is whether war no longer expected as context for leaders facilitating mass crimes against humanity. Is Tesla enough of a political entity setup to harm that the ICC can charge executives with crimes?

The people (no longer) support Milosevic. A minority, less than 20%, think that Milosevic doesn’t deserve to be in prison. But some people don’t understand that in order to be an equal and recognized part of the democratic community, we should fulfill the conditions and respect the rules of the democratic community.

Or maybe the opposite? Tesla continue to be used as violent explosive assault weapons, so perhaps they’ll be reclassified for conditions of war like missiles and bombs and thus owners held to account for adherence to agression doctrine. I guess just watch America and wait.

At this critical moment in history, I am pleased to announce that the United States supports the development of an internationalized tribunal dedicated to prosecuting the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack announced Monday.

Update: This just in! More of the same. Let’s call it the 10th version.

“Russia’s 10th Tank Regiment has likely lost a large proportion of its tanks while attempting to surround Avdiivka from the south,” the British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update. The ministry said the losses were likely due “tactically flawed frontal assaults” similar to Russia’s failed attack on nearby Vuhledar.

Sounds like a Tesla to me.