CrowdStrike’s massive blunder, which resulted in worldwide outages, has brought the company back on the radar of the American citizenry, who now remembers its work with the World Economic Forum, Vanguard, and the Democratic Party.
On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said that a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” had led to a major breakdown in Microsoft operations.
This resulted in more than 18,000 flights being grounded across the globe, including 1,200 in the United States.
What’s more, the crash brings the company back into the spotlight for yet another negative reason: The company has been synonymous with the political sphere for the better part of the last decade.
‘Why didn’t they allow the FBI in to investigate the server? I mean, there is so many things that nobody writes about.’
Many will remember CrowdStrike’s appearance in headlines during the 2016 electoral campaign when the cyber-security company was called upon to investigate the alleged hacks of the DNC servers. The timeline of its collaboration with government entities is just as troubling today as it was then.
According to CrowdStrike’s own timeline, “Russian intelligence gained access” to DNC networks at the “beginning of July 2015.”
On July 13, 2015, CrowdStrike announced a $100 million investment led by firm Google Capital.
In September 2015, the FBI allegedly contacted the DNC to inform Democrats of a hack.
Months later, in 2016, CrowdStrike said it was hired by the Democratic Party to investigate an alleged hack that resulted in the release of the John Podesta emails, revealing Hillary Clinton’s email server. By this point, the company already had former FBI employees on its payroll for some time.
This included Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, who joined CrowdStrike in 2012.
CrowdStrike also announced on April 18, 2024, that it had hired Steven Chabinsky, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division, as its general counsel and chief risk officer.
CrowdStrike said it was contacted by the DNC on April 30, 2016, to collect intelligence and analyze the breach. The company added that the DNC was alerted about the hack by the FBI, but CrowdStrike was hired because the FBI doesn’t “perform incident response or network remediation services when organizations need to get back to business.”
CrowdStrike concluded on June 14, 2016, that Russia was “behind the DNC hack” and that its claim was “supported by the U.S. Intelligence community and also by independent Congressional reports.”
This, of course, led to the “Russia, Russia, Russia” investigation into Donald Trump by a special counsel headed by Robert Mueller.
Trump was asked about CrowdStrike in April 2017 surrounding the leak of the Podesta emails. The implication was that Ukraine possibly possessed information that would clear Russia of any wrongdoing in relation to the hacks.
“They shouldn’t have allowed it to get out. If they had the proper defensive devices on their internet, you know, equipment, they wouldn’t even allow the FBI,” Trump said. He then questioned why the FBI didn’t investigate the hacks themselves.
“How about this — they get hacked, and the FBI goes to see them, and they won’t let the FBI see their server. But do you understand, nobody ever writes it. Why wouldn’t (former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John) Podesta and Hillary Clinton allow the FBI to see the server? They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based.”
“CrowdStrike?” an Associated Press reporter asked.
“That’s what I heard. I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard. But they brought in another company to investigate the server. Why didn’t they allow the FBI in to investigate the server? I mean, there is so many things that nobody writes about. It’s incredible.”
Then-President Trump mentioned the company by name in his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the same phone call that led to his impeachment.
“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine; they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people. … The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump said according to CNN. “[William Barr will call] you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it,” Trump added.
‘I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.’
Not to be forgotten, CrowdStrike has been involved with the World Economic Forum for some time.
In August 2015, the WEF named it a “Technology Pioneer” for “driving visionary leadership and long-standing market value.”
In 2020, the WEF started its partnership against cybercrime with a stated goal of “harness[ing] AI to Combat Cybercrime.”
CrowdStrike is one of the companies involved in the partnership.
Also, Americans may be interested in learning that investment giant Vanguard is the largest shareholder of CrowdStrike shares, with a combined 12.41% ownership between Vanguard and Vanguard Index Funds. BlackRock also has ownership but at less than 1%.
“I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not,” Return’s Peter Gietl said of Vanguard’s ownership. “Unfortunately BlackRock and Vanguard have bought up large stakes in many of the most important companies around the world. It becomes more and more clear that the ‘free market’ is a mirage on the macro level, and a few select, deep state approved companies have captured control of most industries,” Gietl continued.
“What’s particularly concerning about this outage is that CrowdStrike had kernel access to most of the systems around the world. This seems very dangerous, allowing a hacker or an accident to crash systems around the world. Never mind that a WEF partner has that level of system access,” he added.
It should also be noted that Nancy Pelosi owns significant shares in CrowdStrike, having purchased between $500,000 and $1,000,000 worth of shares in 2020.
A page called Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker, which monitors the politician’s extremely profitable trading, claimed that she owns “millions in Crowdstrike.”
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Return, Crowdstrike, Wef, World economic forum, Vanguard, Dnc, Democrats, Russia, Russian hack, Tech
