Back on December 1st in Status Labs Piñata Party I described a very concerning security problem that affects Status Labs, an Austin based reputation management firm. The individual who was approached by whomever is running statuslabs[.]co seems satisfied with the work I’ve done, so this is a bit academic for me.
But when put in context along with Sovereign Challenge Unmet and the wave of spoofs of geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, which first appeared in Disconcerting Inauthenticity, I feel this is a series, growing problem that needs attention.
I guess what set me to writing this evening isn’t a direct problem in this area, but I watched this Sixty Minutes Australia piece on the 53 countries that now have Chinese secret police stations. The thing that grabbed me was the image board culture trolling tactics being used against opponents of the Xi regime.
I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of that sort of thing, and this rising tide of Reality Under Siege is just … even those of us who are hardened to it don’t do well trying to make rational decisions when intentional deception is afoot.
Attention Conservation Notice:
This is just me grousing about a company that should know better, and then dialing back to look at the big picture.
A Puzzling Lack Of Response:
I published Status Labs Piñata Party on December first after several fruitless days of trying to get someone at the company to pay attention to statuslabs[.]co, which is spoofing them. I can think of several scenarios that might have motivated this:
Straight up grifting.
Angry former employee striking back.
Angry client seeking revenge.
Competitor seeking to smear them.
Perhaps an intelligence operation …
If I had the resources they do and someone stepped on my brand I’d have pounced instantly. This is what RiskIQ showed Monday night - no change in registrar or any other signs that the domain has been seized.
The only discernible activity in response to my article was a flurry of SEO oriented puff pieces about the company between December 14th and 19th.
I can’t even tell if this is Status Labs in action.
Implications Of Inattentiveness:
Status Labs could get clobbered via a high profile news story if the statuslabs[.]co operators get access to a high profile targets’s systems. The Sovereign Challenge domain, in the hands of a foreign adversary, could have produced some grim results. The Peter Zeihan videos just look like petty intellectual property theft … but I think I saw one video that wasn’t just a straight theft of content, what he was saying had been subtly altered.
I haven’t been able to find and verify that the Zeihan spoofs are pushing disinformation, but I started paying attention to the sources. I guess I’m going to have to feed many hundreds of minutes of transcripts to some sort of AI tool if I want to see if there is some AI generated voice being used to lead people astray.
Maybe I’ve spent too many years wrapped up in online conflict, it’s just too easy for me to see how tiny fault A can lead to pivot point B, and then on to disaster C.
Conclusion:
When the Soviet Union dissolved, thirty two years ago Tuesday, the KGB were basically cut loose. They joined the most brutal of organized crime organizations, bringing what was previously nation state capabilities to the game. If Zeihan is right about China’s condition, and I believe he is, they’re going to go sideways MUCH harder than the Soviet Union did.
What comes out of that imperial crash will be an order of magnitude larger and dramatically more aggressive than the KGB were. China, which imports 80% of the inputs they need for agriculture, stands to lose hundreds of millions of people. Those who survive will be figurative cannibals at a bare minimum, if not actual. We can not get hard enough fast enough, given what is coming at us.