@houseoftolstoy Where are you seeing this speculation?

All I've read indicated that a different group of autistic man-children from another site (who were former 4chan users) hacked the site. They released the source code and some screenshots of the server environment - after reviewing it (I do this for a living) it was immediately clear that the site wasn't maintained at all (the infrastructure, not the content) in many years.

There were easily a half-dozen security issues with the operating system alone, which was far from current. The source code was a mess of improvements that weren't written to be maintained - only to function. It wasn't a matter of if, not when, the site would be compromised either by external actors or internal mistake.

The "reveals" also indicated how little infrastructure (and by extension, cost) was needed to keep the site afloat. While that wouldn't confirm or exclude the presence of paid actors, it does reveal how the founder was able to make some money, enough to warrant some sort of value exchange to hand over control to a new owner. The disclosed admin/janitor list certainly had academic (i.e. .edu) emails associated with the site, there were no overtly government actors.

I'm not certain that they were the direct benefactors of USAID money - although some of it could have been used to compensate posters and moderators/janitors (janitor is their their term for a type of moderator).

Whether they come back or not isn't of great concern to me - there are plenty of alternative forums for their low-quality content that are already running with notable user counts. I think they're easily replaceable.

@Vermillion-Rx an accurate site? Nope. But there there are lots of European and Oceania-based sites that provide enough coverage for someone to figure it all out. Combined with the mandatory disclosures of US spending (we've spent billions on paying government pensions and operating costs) that a full, honest disclosure of the "aid" would quickly reveal how much of it is not being spent on military operations (logistics, soldier pay, equipment, munitions, etc.)

Quick summary of gains and losses: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682 recent events (with links to sources): liveuamap.com/

There are a handful of other sites that I read when I want to get better perspective when something happens (like the use of ICBMs by Russia - based on what I've read so far, there are no indications that they're nuclear-armed) - I'll start to keep a list.

@Vermillion-Rx I don't think we're even close to using nuclear weapons yet - he's holding a fair amount of land and based on the change in government in the US, I'd wager that he's going to keep a significant portion of it in exchange for peace. Trump, for his part, wants to end the never-ending foreign aid.

@MentORPHEUS - not only is he rushing through additional aid, some of it was structured as "forgivable loans" - and he's forgiving them now - which means there's almost no chance that we're getting any of that money back.

Personally, for all of the money we've spent so far, there should be a lot (more) dead Russian soldiers and actual progress in repelling Russia's incursion. Beyond minor gains near Kharkiv and Kherson, we very little military progress and only grainy video to justify billions in aid. We've paid for infrastructure and pensions in a country that is a shell of what it was before the invasion.