Russia keeps doing bad things, and Trump keeps helping
Plus: Mark Zuckerberg is stealing from me and other authors
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT!
I know our new president is smitten with Putin, but here are a few stories to remind us (again) that Russia is not our friend and not a country we should appease or emulate.
Children Abducted in Ukraine
In case it had slid under your radar: Russia is trafficking Ukrainian children. Researchers believe more than 30,000 children have been abducted in Ukraine and brought to Russia and Belarus. There, they have their Ukrainian identity squeezed out of them. They are forced to speak Russian, are subjected to Russia’s “patriotic education,” which advocates that Ukraine does not really exist and is part of Russia, and are given new names and families. It’s quite disgusting.
It’s also a war crime.
In fact, Putin and Russia’s “commissioner for children’s rights,” Maria Lvova-Belova, who has been organizing all this trafficking, have both been indicted at the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Lvova-Belova herself has “adopted” a teenager from Ukraine, saying on Telegram he was homesick at first but soon came to love Russia. Touching.
This week, the assholes at DOGE cut funding to a Yale research project that was tracking those Ukrainian children.
Yes, you read that correctly. The US cut funding for research into Russia trafficking children.
It gets worse.
Worse than trafficking children? Yes.
It’s possible (likely?) the US deleted the program’s evidence of Russia’s war crimes, which was to be handed over to European officials. A State Department spokesperson denied the database containing the evidence had been destroyed, but for some odd reason, I don’t take anyone in this administration at their word. Someone familiar with the program told the New York Times the evidence had, in fact, been destroyed. That would be quite a gift to Putin.
Did I mention Russia is also attacking us and our allies?
Yeah, I think I’ve mentioned that a few times, like here, here, here, and here.
This week, the Associated Press published this useful interactive map to track these attacks in Europe. They documented 59 incidents since the start of the full-scale invasion, but the number is certainly larger: AP only included incidents that government officials had confirmed. Notably, as I have said repeatedly, these types of attacks are meant to be deniable, and thus difficult to verify. However, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told a NATO meeting in December 2024 around 500 suspicious incidents were recorded across Europe in 2024, with up to 100 directly attributed to Russian activities. Ergo, 59 is likely only a fraction of the real number.
Mark Zuckerberg stole my book
Lastly, The Atlantic set up this handy database for authors to check if their writing is being used to train Meta’s AI. And yep, Victor in Trouble is on the list.
Did I give permission for my writing to be used in this way?
No, I did not.
Am I being compensated?
No, I am not.
Am I being screwed?
Yes. Yes, I am.
Meta is using my writing, along with the writing of thousands of other authors, to train its AI to write books so they can replace us actual humans who are creative, empathetic, curious, and, well, human. They hope those qualities can be learned by AI in order to spit out books without the menace of having to pay authors. Cool.
Class action lawsuits are already underway against Meta and other companies that are using copyrighted material to train their AI. In any case, I’m very much looking forward to an AI-generated Hector Cabo as the protagonist in Hector in Treble, a satirical spy thriller set at an a cappella competition in Russia.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
THE TRUMP AUTOCRACY
‘This Is Worse’: Trump’s Judicial Defiance Veers Beyond the Autocrat Playbook (NYT)
HUAWEI SCANDAL IS THE NEW QATARGATE
Huawei bribery scandal: 4 charged with corruption (Politico)
EXCELLENT RESOURCES!
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
A link to this essay has posted to the subreddit for Active Measures. Thought you might be interested.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/s/eVHnU0jq4y
And that's American socialism at work, the rich get to profit off labour of the masses and claim it as their own. In their entitled ' little gray cells' it is a preordained right to fleece the masses; we are captains of industry, so smart much smarter and deserving.