July 8, 2015

The Shocking Truth About Wednesday’s Apocalypse Involving Wall Street, China, ISIS, and United Airlines

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”

Henk Badenhorst/iStock

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When the New York Stock Exchange inexplicably halted trades at about 11:30 Wednesday morning, people around the Twittersphere reacted with their typical restraint, reasoned analysis, and careful double-checking of the facts.

Or not.

After all, there were an unusual number of suspicious events today, and Twitter was swirling with paranoid conspiracy theories linking Wall Street, the grounding of United Airlines flights, ISIS, and the Chinese financial meltdown.

Initial reactions were largely variants of this one:

But the conspiracy theories—involving the Chinese, the CIA, and even ISIS—were not far behind. Some came from on high. Here’s one from US Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.):

He wasn’t the only one taking things in that direction:

And even after the US Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication that the NYSE situation was due to a malicious act, some people weren’t buying it:

The theory that China might be behind this series of events could be supported by data from the Norse Intelligence Network,  a California-based online security company. The company offers up a real-time cyber attack map, which seemed to show at midday on Wednesday that China was the number-one attacker and the US was the number-one target:

Screenshot from the Norse Intelligence Network attack map on July 8, 2015. map.norsecorp.com

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