Good point. It's easier to say you got hacked by nation state actors than to tell your boss you accidentally screwed up a major system with no way to recover. It's not like 99% of the management could tell the difference.

Agree. In hindsight though the claim gets a little more credibility.

Is there a particular reason to take any state account of anything at all at face value? At some point you either have to accept to play the game or reject all news.

In this case, it fits squarely in with American foreign policy, especially their orientation towards Venezuelan chavismo.

It also fits squarely with corruption in Venezuela, specially regarding energy. Venezuela has been rationing electricity across the country since 2009 and has been involved in countless corruption scandals involving Odebrecht, PDVSA, Derwick Associates.

I understand the US's foreign policy is a global threat, but let's not let that be an excuse for the atrocities and corruption of tyrants in Venezuela and other places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis_in_Venezuela

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odebrecht_case#Venezuela

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derwick_Associates

What is the scandal supposed to be in the first one? No water in the dam? Mismanagement? Nationalization itself?

The Derwick one seems pretty light too, at least the article here just mentions an accusation from a journalist. And even then, if we are using corruption/overbilling with regard to a government contractor as an "atrocity" now.. That's going to have wider repercussions than here.

And ok, Venezuela took bribes from another government contractor, along with many other countries. I wouldn't call that an atrocity, but if that's what it is I guess I will give you the benefit of the doubt about it.

I give you benefit of the doubt about everything really! I just don't know if you have packaged your case here well is all.

The scandal is that the energy crisis was declared in 2009, and 17 years later, after investing $100 billion of which up to $80 billion disappeared, there are still blackouts across the country. That's all in the first article. The Derwick one is not just one reporter either, there's local and international reporters involved including claims from Reporters Without Borders where reporters received "threats, pressures, bribe offers". That's also in the article.

As for the attrocities I meant the Maduro (and current) government in general. There are currently over 1000 political prisoners in the country, a mix of protesters, politicians, reporters, etc. A lot of them have been tortured and many have died in custody. Most of the sources from NGO are in Spanish but the Wikipedia is a good start, specially the section about the Maduro government [1]

If you check the news right now you'll see that only in the past month about 50 have been released. There's a huge effort in the country right now to get the hundreds of others out.

Ultimately, what I want to say is that while we can express disdain for the US government we can do the same for the Venezuelan one, even if they claim to be against each other. Maduro and his gang are not the victims here, they've oppressed the Venezuelan people for 27 years, let's not give them an easy out

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

There's quite a rich history in that article. Looks like the current president's father was tortured to death by the then right-wing executive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Antonio_Rodr%C3%ADguez

Perhaps there's more at play here than pretending like Maduro is a uniquely bad guy but also so hilariously incompetent his corruption scheme blacked out the country.

Let's be clear here, there are many evil states in this world. But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.

>> But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.

Just showed you an article describing all the human right abuses, tortures and forced disappearances done under the Maduro regime and this is your take away? I can only assume you're not arguing in good faith.

Check the news right now, about the prisoner releases happening as we speak and the hundreds still to go. One died only last week in captivity. Guess we can tell their families at least Maduro is not bin Salaman. Such cruelty, man

Perhaps. This seems somewhat suicidal of a corruption scheme for the leader of a country. Surely there must be easier ways to personally profit than making an international embarrassment of the country—every other country on earth manages this sort of graft just fine.

Maduro lies about many things, so his claims in particular should be viewed with more skepticism than any other state account picked at random.

In the 2019 book "Sandworm", which discusses cyber warfare against infrastructure like this, but between Russia and Ukraine, the author begs the question in an interview with a US military/intelligence official,

"why doesn't the US go after these hackers and designate targeting civilian infrastructure as a crime?"

To which the response was essentially "The US would like to reserve those types of cyber attacks for their own uses"

These quotes are very loose, I read it last year, but essentially, the US didn't make a stink about older grid attacks in order to save face when the US does it.

Additionally, much of VZ's difficulty was due to the massive sanctions against the nation. Sanctions are effectively attacks on a nation's citizens to pressure the government. Disabling power infrastructure is absolutely in-line with the motives of sanctions and embargos.

I think perhaps nationalizing your oil companies, looting their assets for political reasons, and driving out the only people with the competencies to operate your only valuable industry might have a tiny bit to do with the state of the country.

I feel like Mother Goose had a cautionary tale about killing your golden goose that perhaps Venezuela’s leadership ought to read up on.