He’s a billionaire. That seems to be good enough for Trump. Though there’s also this:[quote]Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates actually recommended Tillerson to Trump as a potential secretary of state nominee, two anonymous sources told Politico. Both Rice and Gates work for the consulting firm Rice Hadley Gates, which counts Exxon as a client.[/quote]
I don’t know about you guys but delegitimizing the election of Trump is not my greatest concern at this point. I fully accept that Trump is lined up to be our next president and I hope that he is able to do his duty and serve America’s interests in a kind and benevolent manner. But that’s where I have my doubts. Not about his election but about his motivations and his allegiances.
It’s amusing watching someone who spent 8 years doing nothing but trying to de-legitimize the Obama presidency, bitch about people delegitimizing his own.
It’s more amusing when you consider how there is already infinitely more reason to question Trump’s legitimacy, and he’s not even in office yet.
It’s the President who maintains classification authority, so if the President decides to give information to a foreign country, it is not espionage. [quote=“barstein, post:131, topic:127454”]
ODNI “doesn’t embrace” CIA assessment on Russia hacking (Reuters).
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Not opining on the CIA assessment here, but I will say that the ODNI has been considered a joke in the intel community for years. While the are the “top” in terms of being on the top of the pyramid, they’re nowhere near the most sophisticated and they do not produce analysis of the depth and quality that comes out of the CIA and NSA.
No, they did not, because that evidence can be intentionally misleading, and there’s nothing but circunstancial evidence suggesting any connection with the government. It says that right in the article, and I know it’s tempting to jump to conclusions, but technically, there’s no conclusive or “smoking gun” evidence.
You can say that of all alternatives, it is more likely to be Russia than anyone else, but no one can affirm that without reasonable doubt, so it’s not acceptable in due process or anything of the sort.
I’m curious though. Have you worked in the area of cybersecurity, or do you have any actual knowledge in that particular field?
There’s a difference between giving information to a foreign country and working for them. I give information to other systems all the time. It’s part of working together and sharing experience and lessons learned. I do not however work at one company while working for another.
Just to be clear, the DNI agrees that it was the Russians messing with the elections. The only dispute is with the motive; CIA thinks it was to help Trump, FBI and others think it might be for other reasons.
Such as…?
To help Clinton of course. Or per Bolton’s insane suggestion, no doubt Obama asked Putin – as a personal favor – to help HRC win.
The article says nothing of the sort - point me to where you think it is saying that the evidence in this case could be intentionally misleading. The only thing that even hints at that is this line: “There is also an extremely remote possibility that all of this has been some sort of “false flag” operation by someone else with extremely deep pockets and a political agenda,” which is what I was addressing with my comments about overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Saying that there is “reasonable doubt” that this is Fancy Bear is just silly conspiracy theory. Likewise, the evidence that the Fancy Bear group works for the Russian government seems both substantial and widely accepted, it was the basis of all of the intelligence agencies saying that Russia was responsible. The only dispute being had anywhere in this is about whether Russia’s goal was specifically to affect the outcome of the election, or simply to harm the US overall. For that, the evidence is perhaps less solid, but it’s still pretty significant:
- The hacks seem to have targeted both the DNC and RNC and Hillary’s campaign chair, but only the information that would hurt Hillary was released, so that implies at least an anti-Hillary agenda
- The information was released slowly over the course of the campaign and wrapped up just before election day, with no new information being released since, which means it’s pretty clearly tied to the election specifically
- Trump’s campaign at the time of the second set of hacks was run by a guy who was being paid by Russia and who ended up stepping down because of those ties
- There are several other links between Trump and Russia, from Trump’s businesses to the server connected to the Russian bank, etc
- Trump is taking a very pro-Russia stance compared to prior US policy, to his own party’s previous stance, and to Hillary’s stance.
- Trump is planning to appoint someone with a massive stake and good relations with Russia as the US Secretary of State (note, not just someone with a good relationship who could be useful as Ambassador, but put him in charge of all of US foreign policy).
None of that is a smoking gun, but it’s pretty strong evidence and that’s without any access to classified information. So unless the classified information contradicts that evidence, it seems like there’s a strong case here. Even in cases where we’re talking about capital murder, circumstantial evidence can be strong enough to leave no reasonable doubt. Given all of the above, does seem reasonable to conclude that Russia was just messing around to see what it could hack in the US and happened to not find anything damning about Republicans that was worth publishing, happened to only find their stuff during the election, happened to only target election campaigns, while Trump just happened to do a bunch of things before and after the election to help Russia? I think you have to twist into a partisan knot to find that conclusion reasonable.
Going even further, why is “beyond a reasonable doubt” even the standard here? How often do we prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, especially in the field of international diplomacy or politics generally? Are just supposed to assume that everyone is innocent of wrongdoing unless we catch them on tape admitting to it?
Yes.
Tell me what such evidence would look like, if not this. Or are you simply saying that hacking can never under any circumstances be proven beyond the level of “it’s more likely it was X than anything else”?
Here:
But while the hackers may have been caught in the act digitally, the details by themselves don’t offer definitive proof of the identity of those behind the anti-Clinton hacking campaign. Public details currently don’t offer clear insight into the specific intent behind these hacks, either.
What is indisputable, however, is the existence of genuine hacking evidence. And this information certainly does provide enough to give the reported intelligence community findings some context.
There’s also a PDF mentioned in the article that shows the evidence to say the hacks used are most likely Russian, which is definitely not conclusive, even if it strongly points to a strong Russian participation in that specific malware.
Of course, as I said, it’s most likely that russians are involved. There’s a good chance they are mercenaries of a sort, though, and who contracted them is anybody’s guess (if anyone). It could be the Russian government. It could be a Russian enterprise. It could be Trump. It could be anyone with money and motives. There’s no real way to know by examining details of the hacks alone, unless someone in the hacker group drops some conclusive evidence, and even then, it would likely be disputable. This whole thing is essentially espionage, and we know how slippery that field can be, especially when you’re talking about professionals in the field.
Now, as for your facts. The hacks targeted DNC and RNC and Hillary, yes. And indeed only information that hurt Hillary was released, yes. But we don’t know if whoever released the information is the same group that hacked everything - it could be that someone bought the whole info and just released what was interesting, and we don’t know who did that. Could be the Russian government. It’s even likely. But it could be anyone, really, in the world, with an interest in tampering with the election.
Now, again, Russia benefits from Trump in many ways, so that makes them more likely. It doesn’t make them automatically guilty.
Shouldn’t we strive for high standards? Should we judge someone guilty without having reasonable reason to do so?
This requires a full and proper investigation, definitely, using both classified and non-classified information. Knowing that espionage is “business as usual” between sovereign nations doesn’t mean you’ll not do your best to protect yourself from it. But it must be in the proper manner, without pointing fingers at anyone without knowing the proper facts, or we may frame the wrong group and make things even worse.
Payments done by the Russian government (or traceable proxies) to the group that commited the hackings. Verifiable recordings of meetings between VIPs. Data dump endpoints traced to Russian government installations/datacenters. Putin coming out and saying “we did it”.
But the only certainties we have at this point are:
- there was a hack (actually, more than one);
- there’s a very high chance that the hacks were mainly executed by a group counting with many Russian hackers, some of them operating from Russia itself (but not necessarily exclusively);
- whoever released the information had the intention to damage Hillary’s campaign.
That’s it. Anything else is speculation.
This was how Trump defended himself: “Computers are vast and mysterious and impossible to understand because I don’t understand them. The only thing about computers we can know for sure is that there’s no way it was Russia using them.”
Is it really “speculation” that a group of high-level Russian hackers who have been operating out of Russia for years is connected to the Russian government? It’s not like the Russian state tolerates a wide array of powerful groups who exist independent of the Russian state. If the hackers were Russian then it would take extraordinary evidence to convince me that the Russian government wasn’t involved.
Spread FUD about elections in general. Spread FUD about the legitimacy of the US President. Prep for propaganda campaign to raise Russia’s international profile at the expense of the US. Create jobs for russian hackers. Mess with Clinton and Trump and the US Intelligence community.
Without some human intel, or captured command & control communications (none of which would ever be made public if at all possible), it’s tough to tell, but there are any number of possible reasons, including for the lulz.
Thing is, though - with the exception of “create jobs for Russian hackers,” there’s no meaningful distinction between those goals and “they did it to help Trump.” Helping Trump achieved exactly those goals. And no one has pointed to any Russian action to harm Trump.
I don’t understand why Barron isn’t running our National Security of the Cyber department. He’d have this sorted out in no time.
But really, there was a hack made to influence our election. There’s proof. No matter which group or faction did it, it influenced the election. How does that not taint the results enough that we redo this?
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. (NYT)
The D.N.C.’s fumbling encounter with the F.B.I. meant the best chance to halt the Russian intrusion was lost. The failure to grasp the scope of the attacks undercut efforts to minimize their impact. And the White House’s reluctance to respond forcefully meant the Russians have not paid a heavy price for their actions, a decision that could prove critical in deterring future cyberattacks.
I dunno. Much as I’d love the election to be rerun, absent actual, demonstrable tampering with the voting machines, I don’t know how we get to a standard which lets this election be legitimately redone on the basis of “the Russians did some nasty shit”.
Amazing article. The most striking stuff in there:
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The FBI warned the DNC that the Russians were hacking them. Unfortunately, the way the FBI chose to issue this warning was by a series of phone calls that made the situation seem unserious at best, or that the DNC IT department dismissed as crank calls. That nothing like a conference call, video conference, or even in-person meeting was a pretty glaring oversight on the FBI’s part…but holy shit, DNC. Not following up on the issue or asking for clarification or really doing anything of significance is just boggling.
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The Podesta email hack occurred when someone on Team Hillary accidentally replied to Podesta that a Russian phishing email with a hotlink in it was “Legitimate”. The staffer had meant to type “Illegitimate.” Holy shit. That may be the single most consequential miscommunication in US history since “Ask General Ewell to take that hill, if practicable.”
Actually there is. Let’s say that Clinton won. Every one of those goals would also be met. Trump would be screaming “rigged”, and Putin would still get his lulz.
What’s amazing to me these days is that there are still otherwise smart liberals who insist that WikiLeaks is acting completely indepdently and is absolutely not under direct control or influence of Russia.
Maybe I’m missing something and am believing false statements, but isn’t there direct evidence of WikiLeaks withholding tons of RNC information and only releasing DNC information? And that WikiLeaks often feeds their leaks directly to Russia Today (Russian propaganda channel) to the point where RT announces the latest WikiLeaks information before WL themselves release it??