Russian interference, 2020

[reagansghost]

Americans are at each other's throats. Politically, socially and culturally, we suspect each other's motives and plain sanity. So certain are we of the other's intent to do the nation harm, some of us have joined political gangs and assaulted one another, resulting in at least 1 death.

Which is to say: Americans have played into Russian President Vladimir Putin's hands — again. It is assumed he can attack next year's elections if he so chooses, but since no outsider knows exactly how, what comes next is one of the great underlying mystery-dramas of the 2020 election campaign.

- The fear is dangerous needling of already-fraught U.S. social turmoil.

The big picture: Espionage and trickery between the West and Russia is not new — it goes back to Peter the Great, 3 centuries ago. But scholars say they are pressed to identify any episode of direct political mischief-making in this long history comparable to the breadth, scale and intensity of the Russian hacking, leaking and social media campaign in the 2016 U.S. election.

- When it comes to its rivals and enemies, Moscow's objective often is to create chaos, and thus incapacitate the other power as a threat to Russian aims.

- To get there, the weapon of choice is usually the exploitation of existing divisions in the other society.

- That is where, in 2016, the U.S. made itself a sitting duck — and where polarized, ultra-bellicose Americans remain perhaps even more exposed to emotional manipulation in the coming election.

Russia hands in Washington and elsewhere are worried. No one can say with absolute certainty that Putin will attack this time, nor if he does, what means he will use. But what no one disputes is that the country — despite mountains of descriptions of Russia's actions last time — is little-better prepared now to defend itself than it was 3 years ago.

In 2016, the GRU — Russia's military intelligence arm — carried out the hacking of Clinton adviser John Podesta's emails and documents at the Democratic National Committee, according to the investigative report by special counsel Robert Mueller. At the same time, the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency was behind the massive social media campaign to provoke discord.

President Trump and Republican leaders at the federal and state levels have stifled efforts to form a national political strategy to combat a redux of the Russian campaign. One reason: Trump seems to view such efforts as challenges to the legitimacy of his 2016 victory.

While the defenses remain down, Trump appears especially prepared to stoke rawpolitical, societal and social emotions, often amplified by political commentators and talk show hosts at Fox and other media outlets.

- "If Putin is going to throw the match of chaos, he needs kindling here. Our political system provides far too much of it right now," says Richard Fontaine, CEO at the Center for a New American Security.

- Some possibilities of what's next:

- Aric Toler, lead researcher at Bellingcat, a European investigative organization, says that if he had to choose one possible Putin plan for the U.S., it would be more of the same — "a lot of ad hoc actors within and from outside the Russian government/security services with similar targets as in 2016."

- Mark Galeotti, a leading scholar on Russian intelligence and author of "We need to talk about Putin," foresees an effort "to escalate and magnify the inevitable divisions that become exacerbated in election times. With Trump running, and many Democrat voices prone to castigate his supporters as racists and morons, these opportunities are likely to be plentiful."


The bottom line: "I see no reason to expect that U.S./Western actions since 2016 have changed Moscow’s appetite for risk. Buckle up," said Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment.

A wild card: A Russia expert contact of mine formerly with Britain's MI-6 said that, if Putin's strategy is what's expected — to do whatever will best polarize the U.S. — he may choose to do nothing. "Trump seems to be doing a pretty good job all by himself, depending on where you sit, so it might be easier to leave well alone."


https://www.axios.com/russian-interf...9faa6a760.html

[reagansghost]

just as I suspected very few if any Americans are concerned about Russian meddling

thread fail, Putin laughs

Трамп готов к переизбранию!

[Celticguy]

No, Ameticansare not. Liberals are using it as an excuse for unseemly behavior.

[Bigdog]

just as I suspected very few if any Americans are concerned about Russian meddling

thread fail, Putin laughs

Трамп готов к переизбранию!

Socialists refuse to accept election results (unless they win).

[reagansghost]

No, Ameticansare not.

I just posted that in English

[Celticguy]

I just posted that in English

That's nice.

[moon]

[Flash]

just as I suspected very few if any Americans are concerned about Russian meddling

What do you want people to do--talk about it some more?

Are you concerned about the 2018 interference?

[dukkha]

In 2016, the GRU — Russia's military intelligence arm — carried out the hacking of Clinton adviser John Podesta's emails and documents at the Democratic National Committee, according to the investigative report by special counsel Robert Mueller. At the same time, the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency was behind the massive social media campaign to provoke discord.

complete horse shit.

https://www.thenation.com/article/qu...er-russiagate/
The inference here is that the IRA was a part of the Russian government’s “sweeping and systematic” interference campaign. Yet Mueller’s team has been forced to admit in court that this was a false insinuation. Earlier this month, a federal judge rebuked Mueller and the Justice Department for suggesting that the troll farm’s social media activities “were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government.” US District Judge Dabney Friedrich noted that Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of the IRA “does not link the [IRA] to the Russian government” and alleges “only private conduct by private actors.” Jonathan Kravis, a senior prosecutor on the Mueller team, acknowledged that this is the case. “[T]he report itself does not state anywhere that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency activity,” Kravis told the court.

Kravis is correct. The Mueller report did not state that the Kremlin was behind the social media campaign; it only disingenuously suggested it. Mueller also goes to great lengths to paint it as a sophisticated operation that “had the ability to reach millions of U.S. persons.” Yet, as we already know, most of the Russian social media content was juvenile clickbait that had nothing to do with the election (only 7 percent of IRA’s Facebook posts mentioned either Trump or Clinton). There is also no evidence that the political content reached a mass audience, and to the extent it reached anyone, most of it occurred after the election

[dukkha]

just as I suspected very few if any Americans are concerned about Russian meddling

thread fail, Putin laughs

Трамп готов к переизбранию!

Russiaphobic garbage

[dukkha]

n the report, Mueller goes to great lengths to insinuate—without directly asserting—that two key figures in the Trump-Russia affair, Konstanin Kilimnik and Joseph Mifsud, acted as Kremlin agents or intermediaries. In the process, he omits or minimizes extensive evidence that casts doubt on their supposed Russia connections or makes clear their far more extensive Western ties. Mueller ignores the fact that the State Department described Kilimnik as a “sensitive source” who was regularly supplying inside information on Ukrainian politics. And Mueller emphasizes that Mifsud “had connections to Russia” and “maintained various Russian contacts,” but doesn’t ever mention that he has deep connections in Western intelligence and

Stephan Roh, a Swiss lawyer who has previously represented Mifsud, has maintained that Mifsud “is not a Russian spy but a Western intelligence co-operator.” Whatever the case, it is puzzling that Mueller emphasized Mifsud’s “connections to Russia” but ignored his connections to governments in the West. It’s also baffling that none of this was clarified when the FBI interviewed Mifsud in February 2017—which raises a whole new question for Mueller.

[dukkha]

CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims
https://www.realclearinvestigations....ng_claims.html

[dukkha]

https://www.realclearinvestigations....ng_claims.html
But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:

The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks.
The report's timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party's legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, "a private Russian entity" known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party -- in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump

[Stretch]

But, the left doesn't mind Communist China meddling in our affairs...tech and otherwise.

[dukkha]

But, the left doesn't mind Communist China meddling in our affairs...tech and otherwise.

Joe "China" Biden says they aren't even competitors!