The government person doesn't characterize it as evidence, only information.

So they are sharing the information vs sharing the evidence. Which isn't very satisfying, but it is at least coherent.

The speaker probably could have articulated it a little better and not played so coy about the line of questioning.

It’s a fair point. They were sort of talking past each other about information and evidence.

What definitions of evidence and information are you using?

I am referring to the specific words in the transcript that they were using as they talked past each other, not trying to (re)define anything. The member of the press seemed to be under the impression that information should be associated with evidence, while the speaker did not.

Surely any evidence enough to satisfy the reporter would be enough to locate the source of the leak?

What would you do if you were the US government? They're trying to stop a war.

they are trying to start a war: even their ukranian marionettes had to ask them to stop doing that.

There is no war to be stopped, only falling ratings of Biden and Johnson.

There does not have to be any specific evidence of the plot itself. It would be enough to show the necessary military buildup, but apparently the current Russian deployments near Ukraine are not enough and not in the configuration for attack. US government has a track record of lying about international affairs. It’s time to stop listening them.

In fairness, if the actual data (classified) or information (classified) can be merged with context known only by the adversary, the disclosure of such data jeopardizes sources and methods (https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/why-protecting...), giving the adversary an opportunity to either detect sources or alter their own methods to avoid further disclosure. That's why what you're seeing disclosed is essentially only the knowledge.

tl;dr: disclosing data could tell the adversary how we found out, leading to changes by the adversary or deaths of spies crucial to how we learned what we learned.

Doesn’t that sort of make it a noop though? I.e., its just a claim for which they can provide no evidence, and anyone can (and do) make those all the time and it’s just how politics works.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to protect sources, but the end state must eventually be to provide evidence or there is no way to tell the difference between an intelligence service and a method for manufacturing unsubstantiated claims at the convenience of whoever operates the agency. Maybe I’m being naive.

>> Doesn’t that sort of make it a noop though?

No. By revealing a likely course of action, it can prevent them from taking that course of action.

For example, if I plan to cheat at a card game by keeping extra cards in my shirt sleeve and another player at the table says: "He cheats. I hear he keeps cards in his sleeves." Then it will much harder, perhaps impossible for me to cheat that way because everyone will be watching my sleeves and my movements carefully.

Yup, and it's also the kind of thing they can really only do preemptively. If you tried to talk about the "crisis actors" scenario after the supposed attack has happened and video is released, you'd literally end up sounding like Alex Jones.

Alex Jones actually said they would likely use crisis actors before the shooting happened where he said it actually happened. That doesn’t make him correct or more credible. It just means he didn’t have any evidence either before or after.

At some point presumably you have to provide evidence. If you never can, that’s when you sound like Alex Jones.

If I don’t need evidence, though, I can just say you are a cheat (and worse, since I don’t need any evidence) anyway and then if you beat me whip up a mob to run you out of town. Politicians do this sort of thing to each other all the time.

I don’t mean noop in the sense that nothing can happen as a result, so it was probably a bad choice of a word, but that it just doesn’t provide any info. Maybe you’re telling the truth, maybe you’re lying for your own reasons, I have no way to know and so what can I do with the info?

I see the point you’re making too, though, and it makes sense.

In your analogy, you are forgetting that the US Intelligence community is the boy who cried wolf, so nobody will believe you even if he does have a card up his sleeve.