Don’t you have a better punching dummy? Or are you just bored?
I am not in a position to know whether the intelligence agencies or their skeptics are correct in their assessments; I simply lack the information and the background to make that judgment. But I have enough faith in the government at this point (well, pre-2017 anyway) to believe that they at least think they’re telling most of the truth.
One thing that occurred to me, though. It’s not necessary for the Russians to actually hack or meddle in an election; they could accomplish a lot just by convincing people that they’re trying to, and that they have the capability. So that’s why I’m at least open to the idea that perhaps the agencies got it wrong. Not that they got it way, way wrong, and not that some intel errors makes Russian behavior on the whole any less serious. Just that there might be an alternative explanation (not alt facts of course)
Nah, she and Donald are the ideal targets for derision. Her more so since her disastrous candidacy enabled him to win.
Interesting point. A subtle and elegant theory.
Who says they did, necessarily? I have opined all along that I very much doubt Darth Vlad communicated his plot to Trump, because Trump is a blabbermouth who cannot be trusted. What did Putin have to gain? Money. Shit tons of it. He had already concluded a deal with the Prime Minister of Exxon to exploit Arctic oil. Russia needs that money, even more so now that it is an absolute kleptocracy, they’ve got to find money to make up for the money they stole.
Hillary sure as shit wasn’t inclined to do Vlad any favors, like lifting the sanctions imposed on him. And that was the only thing standing in the way of the big money tap being turned and the sweet petrodollars splashing into his treasury. As I recall, Trump had floated more than one trial balloon about lifting the sanctions, a better relationship with Russia, I believe he called it.
So, yeah, Vlad doesn’t need Trump to be his sword and shield, he needs him to be the guy who turns the money tap on. My dark suspicion is the otherwise inexplicable selection of Tillerson to be SecState was the first clear and unambiguous move in that direction. If you have a more plausible explanation, you might very well be the first.
Undoubtedly all those millions who bay Trump committed TREASON. With no Trumpo-Slav Conspiracy it would just be did some foreigners hack the DNC.
As a foreigner I can assure you few of us care about the DNC, those of us that can identify it.
And not being turned into glass. That’s important to some people.
I totally forgot about Putin trying to avert an impending thermonuclear attack. Good catch, there, Evan.
Well it was a lot more likely than Donnie blowing up the world to catch Little Kim in a gigantic Tom and Jerry cartoon as certain people banged on about just last week.
The key to Hillary is her massive self-regard: the key to Donald is that if it doesn’t make him money he’s not interested.
Except Russia has a well-established track record of hacking (and being able to hack) government and non-government systems in achieve its socio-political goals.
Since this was a DNC computer/network we’re talking about and not some type of secured U.S. government network, I don’t think there was ever any real doubt about whether Russia had the capability to conduct a spear-phishing attack or not given this track record.
Russia had the motive (in that they had the open desire to hurt Hillary and at least a lukewarm appreciation for Trump), the capability, and the DNC hack just happens to fit their M.O. Oh, and Wikileaks turned down a trove of hacked Russian documents in order to focus on Hillary in 2016. Sometimes when all signs point to a particular culprit, that culprit is actually the one responsible. This isn’t Perry Mason.
I’m sure the Trump administration would welcome the opportunity to have a full and complete investigation which would clear their names.
Just like that TV/Radio presenter ( American ) a few years back would have welcomed a full investigation to clear his name of having raped and murdered a young girl in the '90s.
For the record, I believe the Russians actually did hack, probe, whatever you wanna call it. I find it hard to believe that the intelligence agencies would, one-by-one, after their own reviews of evidence, reaffirm such a damning set of allegations without at least some proof that something like that happened.
I’m just saying, like the Yellow Cake story, there are situations in which a power might opt to project the appearance of power rather than actually demonstrating the full exercise of it. This is for several reasons:
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By merely projecting power, you keep your real capabilities secret.
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By merely projecting power, you reduce the likelihood of a response in kind. The United States is arguably the most capable at delivering crippling cyber attacks. Russia knows this - everyone does. There’s a limit to what they’d be willing to do, I would think. After all, we were able to jam North Korean missile tests - just for starters.
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By merely projecting power, you can claim that you’re not really doing anything bad. That may or may not help in the short run, but it can sow doubts about the credibility of intel gathering down the road, and that’s not insignificant. CIA’s credibility took a major hit after the Yellow Cake story and the pre-Iraq war build-up. That can make a democracy less willing to initiate a war, or even preparations for war, in the future. And that kinda already leads into point 4:
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By merely projecting power and not actually using it, you can embarrass the shit out of a country’s government if they turn out to be wrong about even just a few of the core facts. And in a democracy, this is especially powerful because government operates on the consent of the governed. Lose their trust, and then you have a problem of legitimacy. You don’t need an actual hack to achieve any of this destabilization; it can be the result of merely the appearance of aggression.
Actually, the rather lunatic portentous claim that 17 agencies — who knew the US had 17 intelligence services ? There would be some danger of reduplication and tripping over each over… ) — each checked and reviewed before coming to an independent conclusion, one of Hillary’s little exaggerations in October *, reduced under the evidence of General Clapper ( Clapper of the NSA ! ) to just 3 agencies working in unison.
*Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community,” the former DNI said.
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*Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking were “hand-picked” from the CIA, FBI and NSA.
*
Consortium News [ leftish ]
- Politico ( warning: video starts )
Best post about this huge mess so far.
I want to add as well, that Russia under the ex-KGB leader (read up on Soviet propaganda programs and techniques to understand how Putin likes to work) ALSO has a very deep and long standing program of undermining trust in OTHER NATIONS intelligence operations, by the exact means being used by The Nation and other Right Wing propaganda fonts here in the US.
There has been a LOT more than just hacking going on, for a very long time. Cyber warfare is just like modern guerrilla/terror-based warfare, in that in addition to overt efforts such as hacking and publishing secrets, and overt acts such as pushing “alternate facts” and directly manufactured propaganda versions of events, there are also Russian agents here and abroad, who are pretending to be average Americans, voicing personal opinions that are derisive of the genuinely factual reports coming from untainted sources. In short, there are people who are paid by Russia to go online, even in forums such as this, and pretend to be Americans who are certain that Russia and Putin are as innocent as pure snow is white.
They USE the clumsiness and foolishness and occasional mistakes of the people they are working to undermine, to persuade the rest of us to throw out the ENTIRE tub of bathwater without even bothering to check for babies of any kind. It’s the same trick they used to great effect back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, helping the Left in the US to undermine the conservative government, just as they are now manipulating the Right in the US to undermine the conservatives and moderates.
Going back to the opening post, asking “what if there was no hack?” Is worse than a mistake, it is itself a propaganda attack. I am not going to accuse the OP of being a Russian plant, that actually doesn’t matter, even as it didn’t matter that some of the people on the Left back in the sixties were led to act on the Soviet Union’s behalf as dupes, were not themselves traitors. But make no mistake, the act of casting doubt on established facts, and then calling for everyone to start attacking each other rather than recognize and deal with the ongoing Russian efforts to gain advantage in various places, is part of the Russian plan.
The sad trombone sounds for the OP as people who actually understand techie stuff chime in:
That techdirt article is awful. There’s a lot of holes in the “the speed was too fast” story but techdirt hasn’t managed to hit a single one of them.
a) Hackers often stage data onto temporary VPSs so the speed of the Romanian internet is irrelevant. It’s likely both machines were within an AWS data center and the transfer was happening purely on a LAN.
b) It’s irrelevant whether Romania could theoretically get 180Mbps internet since the major contention of the theory is that 180Mbps is more akin to USB drive transfer speeds than internet ones.
but
c) Last modified dates only show the most recent file transfer. It’s possible the files were slowly trickled out over a long period of time and then transferred via USB to an air gapped computer to be distributed, thus explaining the time stamps.
“But that overlooks one crucial detail! The express train from London to Blightbone did not depart as scheduled! It left the station at 1:27pm, and could not possibly have arrived at Buggerton Manor before 4:47pm! Perhaps you would like a moment to contact your solicitor, Col. Mustard?”
The idea that the Russians were behind such a hack seems to be nothing but an evidence-free conspiracy theory. The idea that there was a hack at all relies on an unsupported assertion by interested parties, while those with the actual knowledge say it was a leak and not a hack. The report the FBI issued on the other supposed Russian hacking relied entirely on the idea that Russian tor exit nodes, which would be used by someone pretending to be Russian, must be being used by actual Russians.
He engages in far too much profitless and vindictive pettiness for this to be true.
Emphasis mine. Cite that.