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On December 13 2016 12:51 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2016 12:19 xDaunt wrote:On December 13 2016 12:09 LegalLord wrote:On December 13 2016 12:02 xDaunt wrote:On December 13 2016 11:48 LegalLord wrote:On December 13 2016 10:57 xDaunt wrote:On December 13 2016 10:46 LegalLord wrote:"CIA veterans" urge caution on revelations and say that something seems politicized. Updated | CIA veterans—none of them fans of Donald Trump–are urging caution about leaked allegations that Russia waged a secret campaign to put the New York Republican into the White House.
“I am not saying that I don't think Russia did this,” Nada Bakos, a top former CIA counterterrorism officer tells Newsweek, in a typical comment. “My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.”
Reports on the alleged Russian effort have been anything but cohesive, or complete. During a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee last week, a senior FBI counterintelligence official reportedly scoffed at the CIA’s conclusion that Russia had plotted to put Trump in office, calling the evidence “fuzzy” and “ambiguous.” Details of the meeting were leaked to The Washington Post. Source Of course all of this nonsense is highly politicized. There has been no evidence in support of the allegations made other than anonymous CIA sources saying things that could be utter bullshit, and which we know that the FBI is not supporting. That it is isn't what I would contest. What I am curious about, though, is to what end are they doing this? Are they hoping for a widespread Russophobic reaction? A new Oversightghazi game? The possibilities are endless but few are desirable. Just think about how many people in Washington have something to lose from a Trump presidency. Bureaucrats, media people, lobbyists, the democrat party --- there is a very long list of people who are rightfully scared of what Trump campaigned on. There are a lot of people who have a vested interest in preventing or crippling a Trump presidency. Fortunately, Trump isn't a pussy like other GOP predecessors, so I expect him to eventually put these people in their place. It doesn't seem like they have an organized strategy for dealing with him though. They're kind of flailing around and hoping something sticks. Correct, which is why they'll fail in the end. They haven't figured out that their old playbook won't work against Trump. But let's at least agree that Russia should be retaliated against with a well timed cyber attack.
Of course. The US should give Russia a swift, proportionate kick in the balls.
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Its a clear message hiring the CEO of one of the worlds major oil players that your FP priority will be flexing and defending the petrodollar. Despite the chaos there is reason and intelligence.
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What kind of cyber attack against Russia could do that without provoking a larger scale counterattack?
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On December 13 2016 12:56 LegalLord wrote:
What kind of cyber attack against Russia could do that without provoking a larger scale counterattack?
I'm sure that the president could come up with something. It's not hard to simply ask his people to come up with a few different proportionate plans for retaliation for him to evaluate and then select.
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On December 13 2016 13:05 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2016 12:56 LegalLord wrote:
What kind of cyber attack against Russia could do that without provoking a larger scale counterattack? I'm sure that the president could come up with something. It's not hard to simply ask his people to come up with a few different proportionate plans for retaliation for him to evaluate and then select.
A leak wouldn't have the same effect, and beyond that it would be hard to think of an effective proportionate response. And do something bigger like sabotaging infrastructure and the retaliation will hurt.
Assuming Trump chooses retaliation, that is.
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To expand on my statement, here's the problem with hitting Russia back. Technically, it's not a problem; nation-states hack each other all the time and there's probably plenty of potential data that could be leaked. But what was special about this leak in specific is not the technical side (it's above-average phishing, I know plenty of people who work on the exact same kind of hacking and could possibly make it work), and it's not because there was something so damn incriminating there. It's because they managed to strike a nerve and turn some pretty small-fry info into a substantial thorn in the Clinton campaign. It's the fact that they managed to turn such small-fry leak info into an embarrassment on the national level with good timing and targeting.
Honestly, four or five emails that show explicit bias against Bernie Sanders by top-ranking DNC members isn't that big a deal on its own. We all pretty much knew that the Bernie Sanders camp felt wronged by the Clinton campaign and that they were not altogether wrong to feel that way. If that happened all on its own, there would be a few public words of criticism, one or two people would be fired, and then, business as usual. But what happened was that it came on the backdrop of a bunch of people calling for DWS's head (before the hax) and a stubborn refusal by powerful Democratic officials to remove her. And then comes something that publicly justifies the Bernie Sanders outrage, and the story goes quite well from there. But it's not the Russians that made DWS such an obtuse and stubborn chair with establishment support that made it difficult to remove her, nor did the Russians force Clinton to put DWS on her campaign.
Podesta was a little bit harder to properly judge because it came with pussygate so it kind of got tossed aside for a bit but came back with a vengeance eventually. Mostly they just trickled in in a manner that reminded people why exactly it is that they don't like Hillary Clinton. And again, nothing so very deeply incriminating there, it's just that the climate led to it being magnified and explosive.
With Russia, it's harder to do that because there just isn't such a polarized and divisive climate at the moment. And it's not for lack of resentment of Putin's leadership or of various other parties or of justified allegations of corruption, it's just that the climate isn't so troubled that a leak of high-level shittiness would have that effect. One example (which probably wasn't a hack, though some activists suspect so) is the Panama Papers matter, which did in fact involve a pretty potentially embarrassing trail of money leading through Putin's close allies. Yet that one went down a fair bit more calmly; the links were explained, some discussion was had, and then things mellowed down.
Leak or not, what needs to be there is an opportunity to embarrass important people on a national level. It would be hard to think of something that could have the kind of effect the DNC leaks did because the climate just isn't one that is ready to explode. And while "a message" could be sent, some form of "we can hack you too" statement, all that would really accomplish would be the equivalent of saying "fk u kid" because practically, that happens all the time anyways. Which doesn't seem to be the kind of message that Trump intends to send to Russia anyways.
This is actually more so a PR matter than a technical matter of hacking. Who looks stupid and who doesn't.
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I get that but it seems weird to say "we know you hacked us but we're not going to do anything about it." doesn't that just encourage them more? I don't know what the solution is but doing nothing seems like its just enabling them to try again and again
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As far as I'm concerned it's just another in a long string of back-and-forth gestures between the two countries that just seek to embarrass each other. There will always be another opportunity to do that. How it blew up is actually quite disproportionate to what Russia actually did; that is more of a testament to how fucked 2016 was.
Hell, the "response" would probably be best not being a hack. That "Aleppo human rights" hoopla a month ago was more in line with what a proportional response looks like. At this point they're just using Russia as a scapegoat to push a given agenda, as is true very often.
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I think Alex Jones just broke.
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He's got a point, there were no flies around Trump so that demonstrates he's legit
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On December 13 2016 14:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
I get that but it seems weird to say "we know you hacked us but we're not going to do anything about it." doesn't that just encourage them more? I don't know what the solution is but doing nothing seems like its just enabling them to try again and again
They're going to respond to it in a similar way as their response to domestic terrorism. The first three things that should be mentioned are monitoring, monitoring and monitoring. The NSA, CIA, FBI and like a dozen other combinations of letters will receive increased funding to be everywhere online even moreso than they already are.
Fourth, they will probably double down on their own efforts of spreading their point of view. I remember Kerry asking for funding to counter the propaganda effort by RT a while ago, maybe something like that would pass if Congress connects the idea behind the general efforts of RTs inception to the more specific hacking & social media trolling efforts. The EU has already begun a prelude to counter (amongst others) "Russian propaganda" by passing a resolution regarding all that (it even mentions using NATO to coordinate).
Fifth, they will probably ask social media companies to work with them on restricting unwanted or foreign access to those services. If not exactly that, think of the increased screenings to get on planes since 9/11 and put it in a social media context to get some sort of idea of the kinda stuff that might happen. The US government could also work to enable methods to remove that kind of trolling in the same sort of ways that copyright violations are removed.
It could just be plain old censorship as well. Or maybe there won't be a great wall on your southern border, but a great firewall instead. Also, I suspect there might be some sort of effort to get countries to agree to rules about hacking each other through the US or some such. I doubt it will be very fruitful.
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Censorship would do more harm to public sentiment than Russian propaganda. It would be a disaster, even if they might end up trying it because some people just don't have enough common sense to realize how bad people take that sort of thing.
The European response is missing the point as well, FWIW. More so than addressing the problem they ignore the genuine concerns that led people to populism and legitimize RT and the like by making it look edgy and dangerous in a sort of "here is the DANGEROUS truth your government doesn't want you to know."
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On December 13 2016 15:15 LegalLord wrote:
Censorship would do more harm to public sentiment than Russian propaganda. It would be a disaster, even if they might end up trying it because some people just don't have enough common sense to realize how bad people take that sort of thing.
The European response is missing the point as well, FWIW. More so than addressing the problem they ignore the genuine concerns that led people to populism and legitimize RT and the like by making it look edgy and dangerous in a sort of "here is the DANGEROUS truth your government doesn't want you to know."
Well, we are not dealing with rational actors are we?
With that in mind, I suspect they might even look to the Danish for guidance.
+ Show Spoiler +
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I can say with a pretty solid degree of certainty that any attempt to counter so called "Russian propaganda" will cause more harm than the "Russian propaganda" itself. People do stupid things in desperation but in this case it will be self-destructive.
Frankly, I think all the anti-Russian sentiment got used up on Ukraine and people just aren't really in the mood to be angry at Russia again. For all the Ukraine efforts they basically just inherited a strategic liability, or part of one anyways.
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Really? My experience is that nobody really watches RT except some conspiracy nuts. It barely has any influence.
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And would that change if it were considered edgy and dangerous enough to censor because they say stuff the government doesn't want you to hear?
I remember when Alex Jones was a nobody that occasionally appeared in a YouTube video or something. Now, he is pretty well known. Sometimes being "out there" is an advantage.
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On December 13 2016 10:46 LegalLord wrote:"CIA veterans" urge caution on revelations and say that something seems politicized. Show nested quote +Updated | CIA veterans—none of them fans of Donald Trump–are urging caution about leaked allegations that Russia waged a secret campaign to put the New York Republican into the White House.
“I am not saying that I don't think Russia did this,” Nada Bakos, a top former CIA counterterrorism officer tells Newsweek, in a typical comment. “My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.”
Reports on the alleged Russian effort have been anything but cohesive, or complete. During a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee last week, a senior FBI counterintelligence official reportedly scoffed at the CIA’s conclusion that Russia had plotted to put Trump in office, calling the evidence “fuzzy” and “ambiguous.” Details of the meeting were leaked to The Washington Post. Source
Yeah, I said something similar some time ago and I was told that in fact the media should be trusted absolutely.
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On December 13 2016 05:43 xDaunt wrote:
Do any of the leftist posters around here think that the media and democrats are doing themselves a favor by pushing this "Russia hijacked the election, therefore Trump shouldn't be president" narrative?
Speaking for myself, I don't have any thought that the election can be turned or that that's the objective when I talk (though I think it's absurd that you can lose by 2+% of the vote and still be president). It's about making people question what motives are out there behind the scenes that are potentially coloring their opinions--why you are seeing some things on WikiLeaks but not others in this case for example--things like that. Making people understand the manipulation more for the future, to be skeptical etc, especially to look critically at Trump's double standards, falsehoods, and times when he's actually against their interests.
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On December 13 2016 04:11 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I can't believe people are still calling Clinton disliked after she got as many votes as Obama in 2012...
Its like they can't believe a woman who's won the popular vote 3 times in a row could have won it because she was liked by the people.
Personally I'd class unfavourabity ratings as a better judge of popularity than how many votes she recieved? Ever consider the fact that tens of millions voted for Clinton because even though they disliked her they hated Trump more? Because that is literally what happened.
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On December 13 2016 12:56 Sermokala wrote:
Its a clear message hiring the CEO of one of the worlds major oil players that your FP priority will be flexing and defending the petrodollar. Despite the chaos there is reason and intelligence.
Which means continuing the middle east war agenda, including invading countries which threaten to switch to trading oil in currency other than USD.
Check the date on this guardian article titled Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro (for oil trade) - Feb 2003, just one month prior to the US invasion.Naturally after ths US invasion the dollar was returned as the currency oil was traded in Iraq. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro
I'm not sure how the US can keep up this interventionist policy of defending the petrodollar whilst improving relations with Russia as Trump seems to imply.Something has to give here.
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EPT
