Since at least May 2021, Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, has been claiming he has the absolute factual data that China interfered with our elections in November 2020. The most recent version from the World Tribune focuses on 20 packets of what is called PCAP information.
He asserts that PCAPs can only be captured in real time. There is no way to alter them according to him. So, what are PCAPs? This quote from Wikipedia should help:
“In the field of computer network administration, pcap is an application programming interface (API) for capturing network traffic. While the name is an abbreviation of packet capture, that is not the API's proper name. Unix-like systems implement pcap in the libpcap library; for Windows, there is a port of libpcap named WinPcap that is no longer supported or developed, and a port named Npcap for Windows 7 and later that is still supported.”
So, PCAPs are part of a family of network software applications written to collect data on networks in real time. Is this data unalterable? Hard to say. One can imagine though that multiple users could be tracking the same traffic data. If they compare notes, any cheater could be found.
One point of concern from the World Tribune article is the mention that Lindell has thousands of these PCAPs from election night. Yet, he has disclosed only 20 which he thinks can be absolutely proven to be true. This suggests there are other issues to resolve before any PCAP is “ready for prime time.”
This question about China’s possible role in election night is complicated by prior claims which seem to have not stood up to muster. Mike Lindell, in his original documentary (hastily produced by the way) had put up charts purporting to show internet traffic data that later had to be put aside. The startling picture of a global map with “internet assaults” coming from China and other countries seems to need much more scrutiny.
That said, it doesn’t mean the information is wrong. Instead, by any standard of criticism and debate, the validity of this information has to be beyond reproach. It just doesn’t appear to have reached that threshold yet. Will there be proof, or will his efforts just crash and burn in public embarrassment?
Perhaps worth considering is that his work may dovetail with the work of others such as Matthew DePerno. This lawyer has done important work that will find it’s day in court. His technical experts have managed to reverse engineer key algorithms and he claims the ability to demonstrate other wrong doing. 13 people in the state government have been cited in his case as guilty of fraud. None of this comes without a fight. Michigan Republicans issued a report recently claiming there was no election fraud in Michigan. Mr. DePerno begs to differ.
At some point, these pieces of information will also come together, the picture will emerge and the truth will have come out.