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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting, because Edward Coristine was fired "cybersecurity firm Path Network in 2022 for allegedly leaking internal company information to a competitor" [1]. Seems like an ideal candidate for recruitment by a foreign espionage service. And he'd used accounts on a cybercrime social network [2]. How in the world is this person still able to work anywhere near the government?

But if Russian spies wanted to access US Gov resources, why would they use their own IPs as the origin? Unless getting caught was deliberate, to foment discord?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine

[2] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...

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As a PSYOP, it’s great:

- create account

- attempt to access whatever records, don’t worry about succeeding

- wait for US news to cause fragmentation

Undermining US unity is an objective of Russian influence, as we’ve seen from the spectrum of advocacy groups they funded ads for.

- - - - -

There’s also the suspicious timing that this happened just as the US was engaged with Russia to negotiate peace in Ukraine — and that this embarrasses the regime doing so and encourages a feud with Russia. (As an indication that it may not be so simple.)

Spying is complicated.

Aptly observed. I'm not even sure if it's what I believe is the case, but there's some serious merit in this line of thought.

It could make a lot of sense even if they have better means of access, and even with this attention risking the compromise of said access, simply because of how valuable even slight furthering of any division and political incoherence is right now both mid and long term.

Still wouldn't seem the more likely Plan A, as success would obviously be even better than such an apparently close failure, but I can see it being used to justify acting. Succeed at the intended plan and you win -- fail and you still win, just a little less so.

Just like Harvard graduates hire other Harvard graduates, criminals hire other criminals.

> How in the world is this person still able to work anywhere near the government?

It's a pretty long road, but it goes like this:

1. SCOTUS gets rid of campaign finance laws, opens up billionaires buying elections.

2. The world's wealthiest billionaire, Elon Musk, bought the 2024 US presidential election, and put himself in charge of the "government efficiently" office.

3. Elon Musk chose Edward Coristine, and no one said "no" because 1) everyone who would have said "no" has already been fired or pushed out and 2) no one else at the White House could actually pass a rigorous FBI background clearance, so they're just giving them to everyone by fiat.

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