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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 11 2016 03:08 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:03 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:46 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:25 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:20 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 01:44 Biff The Understudy wrote:
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I did. It won 47 Pulitzer. Please find a more reliable and more respected daily newspaper. They don't print stuff lightly, and they don't do bullshit and desinformation.
I get it: you guys are fired up and ready to argue for a thousand pages over thin air when it's about the Clinton Foundation, but are ready to shout HAHA BULLSHIT when a newspaper that won half a hundred pulitzers says it source at the cia confirms what every experts has been saying for months.
It's a bit tiring to argue with you and those basis, I hope you realize. I have no problem if you guys want to be skeptics and require hard evidence even with such a reliable source, but please don't insult our intelligence by changing your attitude in such a grotesque fashion depending on who is the target. Let me clarify. I do believe this is a few magnitudes better than pretty much anything presented against Hillary. And as someone who has not trusted Russia supposed "fall" since the mid-90's, I too find it hard to believe that they are innocent in what happened. I think this is a very good start to an actual investigation. Prestigious institution believes they have contacts with someone willing to corroborate their story. As the investigation deepens and as we learn more we can become more confident of the information. Its a good start, and I'm glad they are doing it. All that's needed is solid proof/solid testimony and we are in. I also would be skeptical of any claim that Russia didn't play a hand in all this. To some extent I know it not to be true, and to another extent I am fairly familiar with the pattern of how Russian intelligence operates in situations like this. I do think that whether or not the Russian intelligence wing is actually culpable, that the Russians would be accused, and that there's some truly impressive games of plausible deniability that can be played when the hacks themselves are basically just clever phishing attempts on people who aren't very smart with technology. What this article does though, is ascribe motive based on an anonymous source through a game of telephone. If the only evidence so far circumstantially connects the hax to Russia, they are very far from being able to reliably ascribe motive here. That goes a bit further than saying Russia hacked the DNC or Podesta or whoever else. Agreed. What makes it a good start, for me, is that the agency making the news has done good work in the past (I am likely to trust Hawking if he makes random comments on Astrophysics for example, due to his record on the topic), so I am willing to follow this rabbit hole assuming it continues to give carrots and not just the promise of carrots. If it is true that they have someone twice removed, then the next article I expect is the words of the source itself. An established news agency saying they have someone is merely enough to pique my interest, but it isn't evidence yet. Once we get to that point, then we can start the actual investigation. I, on the other hand, see recent evidence of bullshit (the PropOrNot fake news article) and suspect that recent evidence is more indicative of their credibility than awards received by other people for doing other things under the same organization name. Lets agree to disagree on their notoriety, especially since we have similar conclusions to their analysis--IE it's not good enough as is. I hope we could also agree on the following statement: blind trust (or distrust for that matter) of a news organization, regardless of their previous record of credibility, is unwarranted and naive. The "credible" ones still have to prove what they say, and the "uncredible" ones that provide good proof should be considered. In other words, WaPo saying it's true doesn't mean it's true just because "they won 47 Pulitzer Prizes OMG." WaPo saying its true does not make it true. WaPo saying they have someone who says "____" gives me reason to think they have someone, and I would like to know what that someone has to say. Until they give that someone, then the most they have is that they might have a source. The same is true for other news organizations. Saying you might have something is enough for me to believe you might have something, but it isn't enough for me to believe the something you have is relevant. WaPo says they have someone from the CIA who says "____". The CIA is contacted and says nothing to Reuters. And does anyone have the original WaPo source so that we can be one level up in the sourcing stream? That would be a start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/the-cia-concluded-russia-worked-to-elect-trump-republicans-now-face-an-impossible-choice/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c81fac00aa7fThey say they have a source in the CIA, and they correlate it with a Democrat commission to investigate further. They then point to lots of GOP attempts to stifle the discourse as well as point to Trump actively skipping meetings where he is to be informed of the Russian hacks. So far we don't have the direct source, just a source within the CIA And so far the argument is mainly correlative, not causative--but the dots line up real well to those who distrust Russia and Trump.
So here's a question for you. Take the working assumption that it is the Russians who hacked the DNC, RNC, Podesta, and others (including the Breedlove emails of DCLeaks), but motives are unknown. And suppose we suspect that their motive is simply to cause chaos in the electoral process and in the country in general. Do you think that releasing the RNC leaks would do more for that purpose than what happened already? Just imagine how a theoretical RNC leak would have played out and think about whether the results of that would be more chaotic or less than the trajectory of the campaign as is.
If such a course of action (withholding the RNC leaks) works with the motive as given here, can you really say that Russia wanted Trump to win? The actions line up with either supposed motive.
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On December 11 2016 03:07 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:05 Tachion wrote:
Is anyone still skeptical that Russia was involved at all? Between the department of homeland security, the office of the director of national intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA confirming Russian interference, is there any doubt left to be had?
Ultimately it is still circumstantial and the hacks were done in really trivial ways (phishing mostly), so it is possible that it was just lone wolf hackers or some other government / hacking group. I do see the hand of what looks like Russia here (the way they were operated looks like the hand of Russian intelligence operations) but no, intelligence agencies saying it to be so isn't proof.
How did those agencies all come to the same conclusion? I don't expect security and spy agencies to be particularly transparent in their sources or methods of investigation, I just think it's rather telling that they all ended up in agreement.
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I'm not sure we know whether the argument is more correlative than causative. If the CIA source is to be believed, this is a more detailed and sourced report than just "look it was only Democratic emails being hacked".
Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
...
U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed "with high confidence" that at some point in the extended presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin's government had decided to try to bolster Trump's chances of winning.
The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said.
Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said.
Reuters
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On December 11 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:08 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:03 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:46 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:25 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:20 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
Let me clarify.
I do believe this is a few magnitudes better than pretty much anything presented against Hillary. And as someone who has not trusted Russia supposed "fall" since the mid-90's, I too find it hard to believe that they are innocent in what happened. I think this is a very good start to an actual investigation. Prestigious institution believes they have contacts with someone willing to corroborate their story. As the investigation deepens and as we learn more we can become more confident of the information. Its a good start, and I'm glad they are doing it. All that's needed is solid proof/solid testimony and we are in. I also would be skeptical of any claim that Russia didn't play a hand in all this. To some extent I know it not to be true, and to another extent I am fairly familiar with the pattern of how Russian intelligence operates in situations like this. I do think that whether or not the Russian intelligence wing is actually culpable, that the Russians would be accused, and that there's some truly impressive games of plausible deniability that can be played when the hacks themselves are basically just clever phishing attempts on people who aren't very smart with technology. What this article does though, is ascribe motive based on an anonymous source through a game of telephone. If the only evidence so far circumstantially connects the hax to Russia, they are very far from being able to reliably ascribe motive here. That goes a bit further than saying Russia hacked the DNC or Podesta or whoever else. Agreed. What makes it a good start, for me, is that the agency making the news has done good work in the past (I am likely to trust Hawking if he makes random comments on Astrophysics for example, due to his record on the topic), so I am willing to follow this rabbit hole assuming it continues to give carrots and not just the promise of carrots. If it is true that they have someone twice removed, then the next article I expect is the words of the source itself. An established news agency saying they have someone is merely enough to pique my interest, but it isn't evidence yet. Once we get to that point, then we can start the actual investigation. I, on the other hand, see recent evidence of bullshit (the PropOrNot fake news article) and suspect that recent evidence is more indicative of their credibility than awards received by other people for doing other things under the same organization name. Lets agree to disagree on their notoriety, especially since we have similar conclusions to their analysis--IE it's not good enough as is. I hope we could also agree on the following statement: blind trust (or distrust for that matter) of a news organization, regardless of their previous record of credibility, is unwarranted and naive. The "credible" ones still have to prove what they say, and the "uncredible" ones that provide good proof should be considered. In other words, WaPo saying it's true doesn't mean it's true just because "they won 47 Pulitzer Prizes OMG." WaPo saying its true does not make it true. WaPo saying they have someone who says "____" gives me reason to think they have someone, and I would like to know what that someone has to say. Until they give that someone, then the most they have is that they might have a source. The same is true for other news organizations. Saying you might have something is enough for me to believe you might have something, but it isn't enough for me to believe the something you have is relevant. WaPo says they have someone from the CIA who says "____". The CIA is contacted and says nothing to Reuters. And does anyone have the original WaPo source so that we can be one level up in the sourcing stream? That would be a start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/the-cia-concluded-russia-worked-to-elect-trump-republicans-now-face-an-impossible-choice/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c81fac00aa7fThey say they have a source in the CIA, and they correlate it with a Democrat commission to investigate further. They then point to lots of GOP attempts to stifle the discourse as well as point to Trump actively skipping meetings where he is to be informed of the Russian hacks. So far we don't have the direct source, just a source within the CIA And so far the argument is mainly correlative, not causative--but the dots line up real well to those who distrust Russia and Trump. So here's a question for you. Take the working assumption that it is the Russians who hacked the DNC, RNC, Podesta, and others (including the Breedlove emails of DCLeaks), but motives are unknown. And suppose we suspect that their motive is simply to cause chaos in the electoral process and in the country in general. Do you think that releasing the RNC leaks would do more for that purpose than what happened already? Just imagine how a theoretical RNC leak would have played out and think about whether the results of that would be more chaotic or less than the trajectory of the campaign as is. If such a course of action (withholding the RNC leaks) works with the motive as given here, can you really say that Russia wanted Trump to win? The actions line up with either supposed motive.
I have three issues with their conclusion:
1.) The conclusion requires more data that is not presented. Even if we know that Russia hacked both servers, we have no evidence provided to show cause as to why they would target the Dems over the GOP. We can make some assumptions, but that's not proof.
2.) Russia not leaking GOP information does not mean that there was bad GOP information there. It could be that they hacked the GOP and found proof that republicans are good little snow flakes without anything wrong with them. Once again, unlikely, but the act of not leveraging information does not prove favoritism. (It does suggest to me that they might plan to use GOP leaks as threats to members of the GOP to better control votes during this presidency, but that's just my suspicion)
3.) A CIA source whose analysis is that "everyone knows" is not as good to me as a source that says "I saw ___, he/she/it does/did ____, and that's how I know ____." This is because, to me, a guy from the CIA telling me that everyone he works with doesn't trust Russia is not news, it's actually my underlying assumption of how the CIA works. Its like a waiter telling me that customers are shitty people to servers; yes, I know that.
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On December 11 2016 03:29 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:07 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:05 Tachion wrote:
Is anyone still skeptical that Russia was involved at all? Between the department of homeland security, the office of the director of national intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA confirming Russian interference, is there any doubt left to be had?
Ultimately it is still circumstantial and the hacks were done in really trivial ways (phishing mostly), so it is possible that it was just lone wolf hackers or some other government / hacking group. I do see the hand of what looks like Russia here (the way they were operated looks like the hand of Russian intelligence operations) but no, intelligence agencies saying it to be so isn't proof. How did those agencies all come to the same conclusion? I don't expect security and spy agencies to be particularly transparent in their sources or methods of investigation, I just think it's rather telling that they all ended up in agreement.
The issue is proof.
Agency: "We found proof russia is bad!"
People: "How did you get it?"
Agency: "Absolutely not through torture, promise, cross my heart--and you'll never find the body that doesn't need to be looked for anyway."
They can't show us why they know this to be true, so they ask us to believe them. We can't really believe them because they haven't shown us why it's true. But both of us "know" that we are in agreement to the conclusion.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 11 2016 03:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:29 Tachion wrote:On December 11 2016 03:07 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:05 Tachion wrote:
Is anyone still skeptical that Russia was involved at all? Between the department of homeland security, the office of the director of national intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA confirming Russian interference, is there any doubt left to be had?
Ultimately it is still circumstantial and the hacks were done in really trivial ways (phishing mostly), so it is possible that it was just lone wolf hackers or some other government / hacking group. I do see the hand of what looks like Russia here (the way they were operated looks like the hand of Russian intelligence operations) but no, intelligence agencies saying it to be so isn't proof. How did those agencies all come to the same conclusion? I don't expect security and spy agencies to be particularly transparent in their sources or methods of investigation, I just think it's rather telling that they all ended up in agreement. The issue is proof. Agency: "We found proof russia is bad!" People: "How did you get it?" Agency: "Absolutely not through torture, promise, cross my heart--and you'll never find the body that doesn't need to be looked for anyway." They can't show us why they know this to be true, so they ask us to believe them. We can't really believe them because they haven't shown us why it's true. But both of us "know" that we are in agreement to the conclusion.
In this case I highly doubt it's torture. In part because it's unlikely there's any access to any specific person who could be blamed on this. Just banal data work.
On December 11 2016 03:29 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:07 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:05 Tachion wrote:
Is anyone still skeptical that Russia was involved at all? Between the department of homeland security, the office of the director of national intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA confirming Russian interference, is there any doubt left to be had?
Ultimately it is still circumstantial and the hacks were done in really trivial ways (phishing mostly), so it is possible that it was just lone wolf hackers or some other government / hacking group. I do see the hand of what looks like Russia here (the way they were operated looks like the hand of Russian intelligence operations) but no, intelligence agencies saying it to be so isn't proof. How did those agencies all come to the same conclusion? I don't expect security and spy agencies to be particularly transparent in their sources or methods of investigation, I just think it's rather telling that they all ended up in agreement.
"All ended up in agreement" implies independence of their investigations, which probably isn't the case.
That said, it probably was Russia. There just isn't hard evidence, much less knowledge of specific motive with certainty.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 11 2016 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:08 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:03 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:46 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:25 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:20 LegalLord wrote:
[quote]
I also would be skeptical of any claim that Russia didn't play a hand in all this. To some extent I know it not to be true, and to another extent I am fairly familiar with the pattern of how Russian intelligence operates in situations like this. I do think that whether or not the Russian intelligence wing is actually culpable, that the Russians would be accused, and that there's some truly impressive games of plausible deniability that can be played when the hacks themselves are basically just clever phishing attempts on people who aren't very smart with technology.
What this article does though, is ascribe motive based on an anonymous source through a game of telephone. If the only evidence so far circumstantially connects the hax to Russia, they are very far from being able to reliably ascribe motive here. That goes a bit further than saying Russia hacked the DNC or Podesta or whoever else. Agreed. What makes it a good start, for me, is that the agency making the news has done good work in the past (I am likely to trust Hawking if he makes random comments on Astrophysics for example, due to his record on the topic), so I am willing to follow this rabbit hole assuming it continues to give carrots and not just the promise of carrots. If it is true that they have someone twice removed, then the next article I expect is the words of the source itself. An established news agency saying they have someone is merely enough to pique my interest, but it isn't evidence yet. Once we get to that point, then we can start the actual investigation. I, on the other hand, see recent evidence of bullshit (the PropOrNot fake news article) and suspect that recent evidence is more indicative of their credibility than awards received by other people for doing other things under the same organization name. Lets agree to disagree on their notoriety, especially since we have similar conclusions to their analysis--IE it's not good enough as is. I hope we could also agree on the following statement: blind trust (or distrust for that matter) of a news organization, regardless of their previous record of credibility, is unwarranted and naive. The "credible" ones still have to prove what they say, and the "uncredible" ones that provide good proof should be considered. In other words, WaPo saying it's true doesn't mean it's true just because "they won 47 Pulitzer Prizes OMG." WaPo saying its true does not make it true. WaPo saying they have someone who says "____" gives me reason to think they have someone, and I would like to know what that someone has to say. Until they give that someone, then the most they have is that they might have a source. The same is true for other news organizations. Saying you might have something is enough for me to believe you might have something, but it isn't enough for me to believe the something you have is relevant. WaPo says they have someone from the CIA who says "____". The CIA is contacted and says nothing to Reuters. And does anyone have the original WaPo source so that we can be one level up in the sourcing stream? That would be a start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/the-cia-concluded-russia-worked-to-elect-trump-republicans-now-face-an-impossible-choice/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c81fac00aa7fThey say they have a source in the CIA, and they correlate it with a Democrat commission to investigate further. They then point to lots of GOP attempts to stifle the discourse as well as point to Trump actively skipping meetings where he is to be informed of the Russian hacks. So far we don't have the direct source, just a source within the CIA And so far the argument is mainly correlative, not causative--but the dots line up real well to those who distrust Russia and Trump. So here's a question for you. Take the working assumption that it is the Russians who hacked the DNC, RNC, Podesta, and others (including the Breedlove emails of DCLeaks), but motives are unknown. And suppose we suspect that their motive is simply to cause chaos in the electoral process and in the country in general. Do you think that releasing the RNC leaks would do more for that purpose than what happened already? Just imagine how a theoretical RNC leak would have played out and think about whether the results of that would be more chaotic or less than the trajectory of the campaign as is. If such a course of action (withholding the RNC leaks) works with the motive as given here, can you really say that Russia wanted Trump to win? The actions line up with either supposed motive. I have three issues with their conclusion: 1.) The conclusion requires more data that is not presented. Even if we know that Russia hacked both servers, we have no evidence provided to show cause as to why they would target the Dems over the GOP. We can make some assumptions, but that's not proof. 2.) Russia not leaking GOP information does not mean that there was bad GOP information there. It could be that they hacked the GOP and found proof that republicans are good little snow flakes without anything wrong with them. Once again, unlikely, but the act of not leveraging information does not prove favoritism. (It does suggest to me that they might plan to use GOP leaks as threats to members of the GOP to better control votes during this presidency, but that's just my suspicion) 3.) A CIA source whose analysis is that "everyone knows" is not as good to me as a source that says "I saw ___, he/she/it does/did ____, and that's how I know ____." This is because, to me, a guy from the CIA telling me that everyone he works with doesn't trust Russia is not news, it's actually my underlying assumption of how the CIA works. Its like a waiter telling me that customers are shitty people to servers; yes, I know that.
Here's another: do you think that:
1. Damaging the Trump campaign would do more good than harm here for maximizing chaos?
2. What could be leaked about the RNC would be both timely and significant enough to maximize chaos?
Like I can't think of a strategy more pro-chaos than giving Trump a better chance of victory, whether or not his actual victory was the goal. Even some of his supporters (e.g. xDaunt) are explicitly pro-chaos.
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On December 11 2016 03:39 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:08 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:03 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:46 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:25 Thieving Magpie wrote:
[quote]
Agreed. What makes it a good start, for me, is that the agency making the news has done good work in the past (I am likely to trust Hawking if he makes random comments on Astrophysics for example, due to his record on the topic), so I am willing to follow this rabbit hole assuming it continues to give carrots and not just the promise of carrots. If it is true that they have someone twice removed, then the next article I expect is the words of the source itself. An established news agency saying they have someone is merely enough to pique my interest, but it isn't evidence yet. Once we get to that point, then we can start the actual investigation.
I, on the other hand, see recent evidence of bullshit (the PropOrNot fake news article) and suspect that recent evidence is more indicative of their credibility than awards received by other people for doing other things under the same organization name. Lets agree to disagree on their notoriety, especially since we have similar conclusions to their analysis--IE it's not good enough as is. I hope we could also agree on the following statement: blind trust (or distrust for that matter) of a news organization, regardless of their previous record of credibility, is unwarranted and naive. The "credible" ones still have to prove what they say, and the "uncredible" ones that provide good proof should be considered. In other words, WaPo saying it's true doesn't mean it's true just because "they won 47 Pulitzer Prizes OMG." WaPo saying its true does not make it true. WaPo saying they have someone who says "____" gives me reason to think they have someone, and I would like to know what that someone has to say. Until they give that someone, then the most they have is that they might have a source. The same is true for other news organizations. Saying you might have something is enough for me to believe you might have something, but it isn't enough for me to believe the something you have is relevant. WaPo says they have someone from the CIA who says "____". The CIA is contacted and says nothing to Reuters. And does anyone have the original WaPo source so that we can be one level up in the sourcing stream? That would be a start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/the-cia-concluded-russia-worked-to-elect-trump-republicans-now-face-an-impossible-choice/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c81fac00aa7fThey say they have a source in the CIA, and they correlate it with a Democrat commission to investigate further. They then point to lots of GOP attempts to stifle the discourse as well as point to Trump actively skipping meetings where he is to be informed of the Russian hacks. So far we don't have the direct source, just a source within the CIA And so far the argument is mainly correlative, not causative--but the dots line up real well to those who distrust Russia and Trump. So here's a question for you. Take the working assumption that it is the Russians who hacked the DNC, RNC, Podesta, and others (including the Breedlove emails of DCLeaks), but motives are unknown. And suppose we suspect that their motive is simply to cause chaos in the electoral process and in the country in general. Do you think that releasing the RNC leaks would do more for that purpose than what happened already? Just imagine how a theoretical RNC leak would have played out and think about whether the results of that would be more chaotic or less than the trajectory of the campaign as is. If such a course of action (withholding the RNC leaks) works with the motive as given here, can you really say that Russia wanted Trump to win? The actions line up with either supposed motive. I have three issues with their conclusion: 1.) The conclusion requires more data that is not presented. Even if we know that Russia hacked both servers, we have no evidence provided to show cause as to why they would target the Dems over the GOP. We can make some assumptions, but that's not proof. 2.) Russia not leaking GOP information does not mean that there was bad GOP information there. It could be that they hacked the GOP and found proof that republicans are good little snow flakes without anything wrong with them. Once again, unlikely, but the act of not leveraging information does not prove favoritism. (It does suggest to me that they might plan to use GOP leaks as threats to members of the GOP to better control votes during this presidency, but that's just my suspicion) 3.) A CIA source whose analysis is that "everyone knows" is not as good to me as a source that says "I saw ___, he/she/it does/did ____, and that's how I know ____." This is because, to me, a guy from the CIA telling me that everyone he works with doesn't trust Russia is not news, it's actually my underlying assumption of how the CIA works. Its like a waiter telling me that customers are shitty people to servers; yes, I know that. Here's another: do you think that: 1. Damaging the Trump campaign would do more good than harm here for maximizing chaos? 2. What could be leaked about the RNC would be both timely and significant enough to maximize chaos? Like I can't think of a strategy more pro-chaos than giving Trump a better chance of victory. Even some of his supporters (e.g. xDaunt) are explicitly pro-chaos.
I mostly don't like making such a specific accusation/statement about the Russia involvement. As someone who loves Hillary I have fairly tainted views on Russia and so everything looks like its them attacking Hillary. Which makes me want more proof than is normally required to convince me to make up for my bias.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 11 2016 03:42 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:39 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:08 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 03:03 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 02:49 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 11 2016 02:46 LegalLord wrote:
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I, on the other hand, see recent evidence of bullshit (the PropOrNot fake news article) and suspect that recent evidence is more indicative of their credibility than awards received by other people for doing other things under the same organization name. Lets agree to disagree on their notoriety, especially since we have similar conclusions to their analysis--IE it's not good enough as is. I hope we could also agree on the following statement: blind trust (or distrust for that matter) of a news organization, regardless of their previous record of credibility, is unwarranted and naive. The "credible" ones still have to prove what they say, and the "uncredible" ones that provide good proof should be considered. In other words, WaPo saying it's true doesn't mean it's true just because "they won 47 Pulitzer Prizes OMG." WaPo saying its true does not make it true. WaPo saying they have someone who says "____" gives me reason to think they have someone, and I would like to know what that someone has to say. Until they give that someone, then the most they have is that they might have a source. The same is true for other news organizations. Saying you might have something is enough for me to believe you might have something, but it isn't enough for me to believe the something you have is relevant. WaPo says they have someone from the CIA who says "____". The CIA is contacted and says nothing to Reuters. And does anyone have the original WaPo source so that we can be one level up in the sourcing stream? That would be a start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/the-cia-concluded-russia-worked-to-elect-trump-republicans-now-face-an-impossible-choice/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.c81fac00aa7fThey say they have a source in the CIA, and they correlate it with a Democrat commission to investigate further. They then point to lots of GOP attempts to stifle the discourse as well as point to Trump actively skipping meetings where he is to be informed of the Russian hacks. So far we don't have the direct source, just a source within the CIA And so far the argument is mainly correlative, not causative--but the dots line up real well to those who distrust Russia and Trump. So here's a question for you. Take the working assumption that it is the Russians who hacked the DNC, RNC, Podesta, and others (including the Breedlove emails of DCLeaks), but motives are unknown. And suppose we suspect that their motive is simply to cause chaos in the electoral process and in the country in general. Do you think that releasing the RNC leaks would do more for that purpose than what happened already? Just imagine how a theoretical RNC leak would have played out and think about whether the results of that would be more chaotic or less than the trajectory of the campaign as is. If such a course of action (withholding the RNC leaks) works with the motive as given here, can you really say that Russia wanted Trump to win? The actions line up with either supposed motive. I have three issues with their conclusion: 1.) The conclusion requires more data that is not presented. Even if we know that Russia hacked both servers, we have no evidence provided to show cause as to why they would target the Dems over the GOP. We can make some assumptions, but that's not proof. 2.) Russia not leaking GOP information does not mean that there was bad GOP information there. It could be that they hacked the GOP and found proof that republicans are good little snow flakes without anything wrong with them. Once again, unlikely, but the act of not leveraging information does not prove favoritism. (It does suggest to me that they might plan to use GOP leaks as threats to members of the GOP to better control votes during this presidency, but that's just my suspicion) 3.) A CIA source whose analysis is that "everyone knows" is not as good to me as a source that says "I saw ___, he/she/it does/did ____, and that's how I know ____." This is because, to me, a guy from the CIA telling me that everyone he works with doesn't trust Russia is not news, it's actually my underlying assumption of how the CIA works. Its like a waiter telling me that customers are shitty people to servers; yes, I know that. Here's another: do you think that: 1. Damaging the Trump campaign would do more good than harm here for maximizing chaos? 2. What could be leaked about the RNC would be both timely and significant enough to maximize chaos? Like I can't think of a strategy more pro-chaos than giving Trump a better chance of victory. Even some of his supporters (e.g. xDaunt) are explicitly pro-chaos. I mostly don't like making such a specific accusation/statement about the Russia involvement. As someone who loves Hillary I have fairly tainted views on Russia and so everything looks like its them attacking Hillary. Which makes me want more proof than is normally required to convince me to make up for my bias.
What is true is that Russians don't really like Hillary Clinton very much. Though if you look at some of the shit she's said about Russia and think about how Russians might interpret that, you should easily see why that might be the case.
Another factor, though, is that Trump's win was far from guaranteed and it would be quite a gambit to be in the tank for Trump when it was the improbable outcome. I suspect a different motive with that being the case. Probably the second outcome of merit is that they could help discredit Hillary in the eyes of both the left and the right in a way that isolates her politically if she does become president, leading to a very precarious position.
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I suppose it's a good time to mention again the analysis of the DNC breach by CrowdStrike: click here.
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It's interesting how it works so well when one follows up the other:
On December 11 2016 03:32 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 03:29 Tachion wrote:On December 11 2016 03:07 LegalLord wrote:On December 11 2016 03:05 Tachion wrote:
Is anyone still skeptical that Russia was involved at all? Between the department of homeland security, the office of the director of national intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA confirming Russian interference, is there any doubt left to be had?
Ultimately it is still circumstantial and the hacks were done in really trivial ways (phishing mostly), so it is possible that it was just lone wolf hackers or some other government / hacking group. I do see the hand of what looks like Russia here (the way they were operated looks like the hand of Russian intelligence operations) but no, intelligence agencies saying it to be so isn't proof. How did those agencies all come to the same conclusion? I don't expect security and spy agencies to be particularly transparent in their sources or methods of investigation, I just think it's rather telling that they all ended up in agreement. The issue is proof. Agency: "We found proof russia is bad!" People: "How did you get it?" Agency: "Absolutely not through torture, promise, cross my heart--and you'll never find the body that doesn't need to be looked for anyway." They can't show us why they know this to be true, so they ask us to believe them. We can't really believe them because they haven't shown us why it's true. But both of us "know" that we are in agreement to the conclusion.
Personally, I'm sure that Russia was involved and did the hacking and so forth. The CIA probably tracked it down to the same things (from IP addresses, MACs, OS versions or whatever other data they got on this) they associated with the Russian government before and I have no doubt that the intel is correct (although it could be faulty just like the intel on the WMDs in Iraq).
What I'm not so sure of is that the Russian hacks would have made the difference in the results. Most of the things in the e-mails were either part of known policy (like supporting Al-Quada in Syria and creepy/monstrous ties to Saudi Arabia [I'm not interested in arguments, just taking a hard stance]) or just the plain ol' familiar office politics that were being played over at the DNC (which could be counted as full-blown corruption in a political race, but could also be dismissed).
But, uh, what I really like is how the statement that the Trump transition team put out reflects on both of those lines of thought in a very concise manner. Much more concise than I am, as you may have noticed.
You might not trust the evidence or the people saying they know the evidence (since no actual evidence is provided) based on their previous failure(s). You might also think that regardless of the interference the results of the election were not sufficiently affected by them (in part because of the campaign's ground game/social media victory which translates to the Electoral College).
Brilliant statement, really.
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Tillerson is going to be SoS, and Bolton will be deputy. Sucks to be Romney.
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Canada11349 Posts
Do you think he wanted it?
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I wonder about the issue of "should you work in the trump administration if you think trump is unfit?"
It's a rather open question to me. I can see fine reasons to do either. I can certainly understand not being willing to work under and for someone you think is unfit and doens't know what they're doing. I can also see thinking they need all the help they can get to not screw up horribly so you do work for them.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On December 11 2016 04:32 Falling wrote:
Do you think he wanted it?
I'm sure the Republican establishment wanted Romney. Too bad it didn't gel well with the Trump base.
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On December 11 2016 04:31 xDaunt wrote:
Tillerson is going to be SoS, and Bolton will be deputy. Sucks to be Romney.
Well, that's it then, we're all doomed.
I'm going to assume from now that we live in some sort of simulation where Overlord Zurik Gobbelblab III is just playing with the dials as shklee sees fit. Between the nuclear weapons build-up, all the proxy wars/cyber wars between US and Russia, and Trump getting elected with the kind of cabinet he's putting together as the "anti-establishment populist candidate" it's just too much. I cannot accept this as reality any more.
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The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election specifically to help Donald Trump win the presidency, a U.S. official has confirmed to NPR.
"Before, there was confidence about the fact that Russia interfered," the official says. "But there was low confidence on what the direction and intentionality of the interference was. Now they [the CIA] have come to the conclusion that Russia was trying to tip the election to Trump."
The official adds: "The reason the assessment changed is that new information became available" since Oct. 7, when the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement accusing Russia of interfering with the American election process.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/10/505072304/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-to-elect-trump
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This is the most baffling thing about Trump and his team, the lies about easily verifiable facts. The EC difference is well below average and he keeps calling it a landslide and one of the biggest ever. He's insulting the mental capacities of his supporters by being this lazy with what he lies about.
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On December 11 2016 06:17 Dan HH wrote:This is the most baffling thing about Trump and his team, the lies about easily verifiable facts. The EC difference is well below average and he keeps calling it a landslide and one of the biggest ever. He's insulting the mental capacities of his supporters by being this lazy with what he lies about.
In this case it may be an attempt to distract people. I've seen many people talking about that and ignore the actual substance of the response. Best way to deal with it is to just roll your eyes and address the actual point about the CIA having a pretty awful accuracy record.
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EPT
