Doomberg;

On September 1, the Financial Times broke the ominous news that a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the target of a jamming operation meant to interfere with its Global Positioning System (GPS). Russia was immediately fingered for the job. According to the report, the plane was forced to circle over Plovdiv, Bulgaria, for over an hour before pilots resorted to the use of paper maps to safely land.

We would link to the story, but the original has since been edited and most of the key claims—repeated countless times and breathlessly by news outlets around the world—were patently untrue. The plane did not repeatedly circle Plovdiv, it landed only nine minutes later than scheduled, and the pilots did not use paper maps to navigate. Demands made by a Bulgarian member of the European Parliament that von der Leyen denounce the reporting as “fake news” have been ignored. The affair has since been largely memory-holed.

We assumed the story was suspect immediately upon reading it, if for no other reason than keeping von der Leyen in her current role has to be one of Moscow’s top strategic priorities. Who else is more qualified to destroy the European Union (EU) from within? Under her bold leadership, the EU has impaled itself on nearly all the foundational attributes that underpin economic and geopolitical power—most notably by accelerating deindustrialization and forging ahead with disastrous energy policy.