How an Army vet became the “Cyber Rambo” in an alleged Bolivian coup

| February 1, 2020


Former Army Sgt. Luis Suarez, a student enrolled in the Tracked Vehicle Recovery Course at Regional Training Site Maintenance-Fort Hood, Texas, during his re-enlistment in 2015. He was medically discharged in 2016. He was recently highlighted in reporting about social media mass tweeting and posting following the resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales. (Army TImes archives) Do these guys know how to party or what?*grin*

This interesting article comes to us from Ex, via Skippy. Sort of a convoluted route, but not that unusual among Admins. Seems a former US Army Sergeant, medically discharged, was learning computer skills, including coding. What happened after he developed an algorithm that would re-tweet certain comments was both comedy gold and helped to bring down a South American socialist president. Read on..

Todd South

Accusations of voter fraud rose and protests erupted in Bolivia late last year, leading to the resignation of President Evo Morales. Some news outlets and social media sites were calling it a coup d’état.

But, nearly 4,000 miles away, that’s not how U.S. Army veteran Luis Suarez saw it.

“It was not a fair fight,” Suarez, a Bolivian native, now U.S. citizen, told Army Times.

What the 38-year-old former Army sergeant did next landed him in the center of an online storm accusing him of being a traitor, “Cyber Rambo” and, in some conspiracy theories, an agent of the Army’s Cyber Command trying to topple foreign governments.

Suarez saw claims of a coup by Morales supporters as their own form of misinformation, so he wrote a 25-line code algorithm that would retweet anti-Morales posts. It was, he said, something that “any programming student could have done.”

It worked.

The algorithm managed to cycle more than 13,000 retweets in just a few days, at one point managing 69 tweets per second.

And that little algorithm thrust Suarez into the midst of online accusations, conspiracy theories and headline news across major media outlets focusing on Latin America.

Suarez laughed off the claims in an interview with Army Times, pointing out that he was a mechanic in the Army who reached the rank of sergeant and was medically discharged in 2016 and never served in a cyber unit.

His special Army training? Tracked vehicle recovery.

An Army spokesman told Salon that Suarez had served from 2010 to 2016 as a mechanic with one deployment to Afghanistan. An email request for Suarez’ service history to Army Human Resources Command was not immediately returned Friday.

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Articles by El Diario, a left-leaning Spanish news site and by Salon pull from research by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which identified some of the larger social media patterns.

The commission’s December report found 68,000 fake Twitter accounts in support of Morales’ opposition party candidate Luis Fernando Camacho created 14 hashtags that were then shared by 252,090 different accounts, making for a grand total of 1.05 million tweets in over an eight-day period in November.

Morales resigned that same month following mass protests claiming election fraud.

Read the entire article here: Army Times

Thanks, Skippy!

Category: Army, Bravo Zulu, Guest Link, Politics

15 Comments
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Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

Morales didn’t have high enough morales to be El Presidenty of Bolivia.

MS

The kid is a hero. They should build a statue of him in La Paz.

Skippy

Morales was a true wannabe Chavez/Castro
It’s amazing what happens when you take
The lefts tactics and turn them around
And use them on them they absolutely
Hate it and go crazy 😜 I have only one thing I can
Great job Buck Sargent !!!!!

I’m stunned Lars isn’t trolling this article

BHWHAHAHAHA !!!!!!

Fyrfighter

He will later, he’s busy working Burnies balls…

Cameron Kingsley

If I remember correctly, President Evo Morales threw a hissy fit when the American Embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem when Jerusalem was recognized as Israel’s capital by President Trump.

From Wikipedia (YMMV/TWAGS): President of Bolivia Evo Morales was critical of the US decision and accused Guatemala of mocking the international community and ignoring UN resolutions by moving its embassy to Jerusalem. He also claimed that “some governments sell their dignity to the empire” for not losing the crumbs of USAID. Hypocrisy much considering what he was trying to pull in Bolivia?

TWAGS: Take With A Grain of Salt.

Skippy

One more thought
Not every immigrant is a leftist

Slow Joe

Yes, but the majority are.

Skippy

Sadly your right

5th/77th FA

No, no, no, y’all have it all wrong. This is just another example of the lap dogs of the depostic Norte American Imperialist interfering with the legitimate freely elected government of Bolivia. This was all a deep cover plot by the CIA. There is no way that a dirt digging mechanic Sergeant is smart enough to steal twitter accounts and interfere with the wishes of the freedom loving peoples of Bolivia. There must be an immediate investigation of the collusion between Trump, Suarez, and Twitter. Check too, and you will find that the Kavanaugh boy had no morals when he was having his way with Morales. /s/

The Bolivians kilt Che, but they didn’t kill Epstein.

Quartermaster

I guess the “running dogs of imperialism” got tired and became lap dogs.

Graybeard

Bolivia, like most of South & Central America, is chock-full of tyrants.

Years ago we had a sweet old widow as a next door neighbor, when we were still trapped in Houston. She was from Bolivia – and she did not trust anything remotely related to the government, including the US Postal Service.

With very, very good reason.

Sadly, Bolivia’s chances for a good government are very slim.

2banana

The above example is why the US Army is so great and so hard to beat.

An immigrant buck Sergeant working on vehicles can f*ck up your entire country.

Imagine what the cooks can do…

Skippy

I shared a wall with one in Germany
During a awards ceremony his class A’s
Blinded me with all the eye candy
Definitely someone I’d want on my side
If shit ever hits the fan

A Proud Infidel®™

You should be getting deleted as soon as AW1Ed sees this, so buh-bye!!!