Meanwhile, the White House, home of the top dog of the entire US military, doesn't know what the fuck happened and they're waiting for someone, we don't know who, to fill them in. Yeah, right.

This is the main problem with cyber-war - it's conducted in secrecy. Why? I don't know. I assume to protect those involved from consequences.

Mike Burgess, ASIO (Aus's CIA): Several years ago, the A-team successfully cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician. This politician sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime. At one point, the former politician even proposed bringing a prime minister's family member into the spies' orbit. Fortunately that plot did not go ahead but other schemes did.

If a politician, paid by the public, is 'selling out their country', why do they get to remain anonymous? It only encourages others to do it if there are no consequences. Asked why he was divulging this info now, he replied:

First – awareness. Australians need to understand what the threat looks like so they can avoid it and report it.
The second reason is more complicated. We decided to confront the A-team and then speak about it publicly as part of a real-world, real-time disruption.
We want the A-team to know its cover is blown. We want the A-team's bosses to know its cover is blown. If the team leader failed to report our conversation to his spymasters, he will now have to explain why he didn't, along with how ASIO knows so much about his team's operations and identities.

I'm calling BS. If you want them to know their cover is blown & For Australians to understand the threat, just name them. The A-Team is obviously the CCP, why are they being shielded? Well, we know the answer to that - it's due to Aus's economic dependence on China, so they can't afford to make their bosses angry. Let's also not forget that ASIO's entire blueprint for it's new HQ was leaked to China, so maybe that's why they don't want anyone being held accountable.

Burgess referenced the Optus internet outage last year - which he claimed was likely not a cyber-attack - but without transparency we'll never know.

That's one phone network not working for one day. Imagine the implications if a nation-state took down all the networks? Or turned off the power during a heatwave? I assure you, these are not hypotheticals – foreign governments have crack cyber teams investigating these possibilities right now, although they are only likely to materialise during a conflict or near conflict.

They're finally catching up to warnings Formosa Hut has been making for years. But i fail to see how shielding the perps & collaborators from public scrutiny is doing anything to prevent it. In fact, that would likely have the opposite effect.