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Unwritten Cold War rules pretty much said you don't pursue the opposing officers unless you catch them on your turf. It's obvious that the troll factory people

• toyg 9y ago
  Unwritten cold war rules have gone out of the window. Russian agents used isotopes and nerve gas in GCHQ’s backyard. The sitting US President might have received their help to win the election. Russia just made the only major territory annexation by a superpower since WWII (iirc). Obviously we didn’t start the fire, as Billy Joel would say, but we certainly live in interesting times.
  • dahdum 9y ago
    We interfere all the time in foreign elections, and so many countries tried to influence ours I don’t see anything innately wrong with it. Other than possibly the fact they played a little dirty. So did the DNC (per emails), the RNC (because why would they be better?), and many political groups. Unless Trump made a deal with them to do so, this looks like business as usual to me.
    • Analemma_ 9y ago
      It’s amusing to watch that as the walls close in, you guys are gradually changing your story from “There was no collusion!” to “There was collusion... but it’s no big deal”. Should I expect you’ll be fully switched over, with no acknowledgement a shift ever occurred, by the time Muller hands out indictments?
      • dahdum 9y ago
        Us guys? I was not and am not a Trump supporter, but to believe collusion requires actual proof.
        • kevindqc 9y ago
          What do you think is more likely judging by the WH and Trump's behaviour, though? Sure we don't have proof right now as it would be Top Secret if it exists, but I'm sure we will find out in due time. I will reserve my final judgement until the special counsel investigation is completed, but it certainly seems to point towards collusion to me, or Trump has something just as big to hide (RICO).
          • dahdum 9y ago
            I honestly think it’s unlikely any collusion happened, but if proof comes out impeachment is the answer. This investigation reminds me of Whitewater, Travelgate and other political theatre Bill dealt with. The Stormy story is a watered down Lewinsky. With that ballot we were going to get 4-8 years of this garbage news pandering either way. Obama was an outlier, far cleaner than average.
          • mistermann 9y ago
            > I will reserve my final judgement The problem is, the camp of people willing to reserve judgement until we have verifiable evidence is a very exclusive club.
            • chillwaves 9y ago
              Outside of collusion, Trump's public deference to Putin is inexcusable and highly suspect.
              • mistermann 9y ago
                deference - humble submission and respect Respect - is this improper? Submission - really? Or am I misinterpreting you? Is there something verifiable that I'm overlooking? Why the particular hostility to Russia? China is a far worse country in most any respect, yet no one bats an eye. I wonder if skin color has anything to do with it.
        • GVIrish 9y ago
    • sgc 9y ago
      Hmm. what about... Your comment doesn't pass a basic test of moral decency, which is that there is no reason to point fingers. Actions should be judged based on their own merits, not what others are doing. That is just deflection. I doubt you meant it that way, but that is how it came across. And of course it is a very big deal and not at all palatable to interfere with the internal politics of another country to destabilize it, regardless of how often it has been done, the roles of its internal members, or their cooperation with you.
      • dahdum 9y ago
        It’s a connected world, and the US being one of the centers means that nearly every country has a stake in the outcome. I don’t think it’s wrong of them to use their influence, as we do. It bothers me, but then I think of what we should do if Turkey ever came up with a free election. In my opinion that would be doing everything we can to influence, the slide to dictatorship and oppression is more unpalatable to me.
        • stordoff 9y ago
          I feel there's something rather ironic about countering "the slide to dictatorship and oppression" by using state power to interfere in foreign elections, particularly if it used covert or underhanded means rather than openly setting out the country's position.
          • dahdum 9y ago
            My personal way around this is that a democracy using state power to interfere in a dictatorship, with the goal of bringing democratic reforms, is net better for humanity than doing nothing to oppose them. State power includes sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and the promise of lifting those measures for the preferred candidate/party. I do suspect we only disagree on the degree of influence.
            • stordoff 9y ago
              > I do suspect we only disagree on the degree of influence. You are quite possibly correct. Much of "sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and the promise of lifting those measures for the preferred candidate/party" would fall under what I meant by "openly setting out the country's position", and is qualitatively different from the (alleged) Russian interference and how the US (and others) have historically influenced elections. I think much of the difference comes down to attributability (giving the country/government's opinion and how they will deal with any particular winner is fine; making claims that appear to come from other/in-country sources, or misleading the population of that country is not) and whether you are directly taking actions within the country/working with a particular political party (what is a small amount of money to the US could very easily skew the election massively in some countries, and lead to the US de facto deciding the result).
    • Taniwha 9y ago
      the thing is that this all rather makes the DNC emails rather suspect, we don't know which bits were original and which bits were doctored along the way, it's no longer a lone wolf who just hacked them and then released them. I'm sure they're 95% genuine, we just don't know which 95% all we have is some KGB guy's word on it
      • dahdum 9y ago
        That’s the argument everyone uses (not just DNC), but as far as I know nobody refuted any of the emails as fake or doctored.
        • Taniwha 9y ago
          exactly - we can't prove they were doctored, or not - but my point is that the "lone wolf hacker doing us a public service" story just went out the window, instead we have an "evil Russian spy hacking Americans" - all the motives that people assumed are different - without inside knowledge there's no way we can know what's true or not, so essentially the emails are proof of nothing
          • stale2002 9y ago
            Until someone comes forward and makes a counter claim, then it should be presumed true in entirety. If you are a political party, I am not going to give you the benfit of the doubt. If you POINT to something and say "specifically this email is untrue", then I'll believe you. But if you stay silent, then I am just going to assume that you believe everything is true. Innocent until proven guilty is for the court system. Political parties do not get that benefit from me. All they have to do is counter claim (about a SPECIFIC, point of fact, email, ect) , and I'll listen to them.
            • Taniwha 9y ago
              I don't see why, the charge is after all that the emails are true - as you say "innocent until proven guilty", and that applies to people, who have rights, not inanimate things like emails that don't. Without proof either way you can't assume anything here is true or false. If you think that American politicians are more corrupt than Russian spies then you probably too biased to rationally discuss the issue anyway.
    • Daishiman 9y ago
      Well given what we know now about Cambridge Analytica and Trump Jr's contacts with Assange, it's pretty obvious that there was a deal. At the very first, a deliberate refusal to report to US intel that the Russians were in contact.
      • lamarpye 9y ago
        Which contacts are you talking about? The ones where CNN reported the wrong date on an email?
    • GVIrish 9y ago
      > We interfere all the time in foreign elections, and so many countries tried to influence ours I don’t see anything innately wrong with it. There's a big difference between 'influencing' an election and committing a concerted campaign of espionage, propaganda, disinformation, hacking, and potentially extortion in an effort to subvert the the government of another nation. The scope and aggressiveness of Russia's actions are quite a different animal than normal statecraft. The fact that several members of the Trump campaign have been indicted and made plea deals indicates that there is a lot of criminal activity there to unpack. Most definitely not business as usual.
      • lokopodium 9y ago
        Everyone with ability and motivation has done this on every occasion. Going after individuals when it's obvious it's a state actor is what puzzles me.
      • adventured 9y ago
        > The fact that several members of the Trump campaign have been indicted and made plea deals indicates that there is a lot of criminal activity there to unpack. Most definitely not business as usual. It was most definitely business as usual. DC is dirty at every corner and most administrations are overflowing with it, including the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Obama's was cleaner than both of those, based on what we know so far. You also need to look at what those Trump campaign members were indicted for: absolutely nothing to do with colluding with Russia to rig the election. They got them on rather routine political corruption charges, which you can probably get half of DC for given the way it operates, if you look. It's the Xi premise of cleaning up China's corruption: they're all doing it, you can get any of them if you want to investigate closely enough.
        • dbt00 9y ago
          > They got them on rather routine political corruption charges, which you can probably get half of DC for This is false. How many members of Clinton and Bush's campaign staff or senior national security staff were ever accused of collusion with or corruption involving hostile/iffy foreign governments? Because there's nothing comparable to NSA Flynn plotting to execute an extraordinary rendition on US soil on behalf of a foreign power (Turkey), or campaign manager Manafort indicted for financial crimes involving hiding money received from a foreign government under active sanctions, or deputy campaign manager pleading guilty to similar charges. > absolutely nothing to do with colluding with Russia to rig the election Reminder: Paul Manafort was indicated for being a paid agent of and conspiring with the Russian government and 13 Russian nationals have been indicted for interfering with the 2016 elections. The closest you get to this is Iran-Contra in 1987 and the rumored 1980 "October Surprise", where George HW Bush -- allegedly -- negotiated with Iran to delay releasing American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter. (They were released on Inauguration day 1981.) However, I would argue that nothing in modern US history comes close to this. No American president has been credibly accused or even remotely tied to foreign government attempts to manipulate the US electorate the way the Trump campaign and White House have been.
    • anigbrowl 9y ago
      I don't have any issue with Russia engaging in this sort of behavior; Vladimir Putin isn't a moral leader, but he's just pursuing his own interests as rules of russia. I have a big issue with the various Americans who have accepted or solicited his assistance.
      • a_tractor 9y ago
        Why? Why aren't Americans allowed to pursue their own interests? If Putin wants to assist, say, movements opposed to globalism and neo-lib foreign policy, and those movements want assistance...? We've used help from foreign nations before, such during the War of 1812, or naval blockades during the civil war.
  • GVIrish 9y ago
    > Unwritten cold war rules have gone out of the window. Exactly. I think the US Govt failed to appreciate that Putin has been waging Cold War 2.0 for some time now. The scary thing is that he is clearly not playing by the old rules and is willing to push far beyond old boundaries. The fact that he would so brazenly use a nerve agent in an assassination means we're well and truly in uncharted territory.
    • petre 9y ago
      He clearly wanted the West to know who was behind the nerve gas poisonings, just as he wanted US investigators to know that Russia was behind the DNC hacks. Come on, an agent forgets to turn on his VPN, nice one. Russian soldiers without insignia in Crimea - they clearly did not get their gear from the army surplus store. "Russia is not just relevant, but a big player and a worthy opponent" - this is the message being sent.
      • GVIrish 9y ago
        Putin often does want the world to know Russia was behind some aggressive action while simultaneously denying it in order to avoid repercussions. In the last decade or two it has been their MO. At the same time, sloppiness has come into play on multiple occasions. They want to project an image of strength but there is a vein of ineptness running through their military and sometimes their intelligence ops. This is why the West needs to slap Putin down rather than appease his aggression. He is a puffed up bully who is trying to push the envelope beyond what he is capable of backing up.
        • petre 9y ago
          Of course its not the official stance and they'd never admit it. They're just hints left in plain sight to point at Russia. Putin's tactics used in Crimea are quite the same ones used by Stalin's Russia after WW2 in Eastern Europe. You can find all of them in decassified CIA reports. The only difference is the lack of insignia on troops, clearly designed to support the claim that the forces that siezed Crimea were rebels as opposed to Russian military. I disagree, Putin doesn't need to be slapped down, for this is too risky and could trigger a war. Nato (US) presence in Eastern (Romania) and Northern Europe (Poland, Eastonia, Letonia, Latvia), military and economic cooperation with these states is sufficient to deter his bulying ambitions. Hungary and Bulgaria have been ruled out for being too cosy with Russia.
  • lokopodium 9y ago
    It's not anything new. KGB did poison attacks in London (Georgi Markov). CIA tried to kill Castro. KGB sponsored PLO. CIA sponsored Afghani rebels. CIA toppled Salvador Aliende. How exactly is Trump story or Skripal poisining new? Why do they suddenly shy away from country vs country action (i.e. sanctions) into indicting low-level operatives?
    • auntienomen 9y ago
      Skripal was freed in a prisoner exchange. Cold war rules were that such people were off limits, so that prisoner exchange werent pointless.
      • lokopodium 9y ago
        Fair enough. I'm not trying to point at who started it, just why are 60 year old rules suddenly forgotten.
• tantalor 9y ago
  > unless you catch them on your turf Is the DNC computer network not on US turf?
  • lokopodium 9y ago
    It was as much on US turf as Hanssen when he received money and dead-dropped secrets. Neither the hackers or Hanssen's handlers were not caught on US turf.
  • vuln 9y ago
    No US governance agency looked at the servers. Only a paid contractor. uS government would need evidence right? The DNC didn't want the government snooping around. So they paid crowdstrike. Why wouldn't they take the free assistance from the US government? The US government angencies have a lot more resources than say crowdstrike...
    • ceejayoz 9y ago
      They had some reasons to be wary of handing over stuff to the FBI: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-rudy-giuliani-leaks_us_5909f5a8e4b02655f84300fc https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-rudy-giuliani-leaks...
      • akhilcacharya 9y ago
        Interesting to note James Comey was fired the following week.
• knodi 9y ago
  The rules on engagement and action has changed in this digital age. Now you can do more damage from far far way. No need for an army but only armed with hand full people, few computers and the dumb-asses to exploit.
  • lokopodium 9y ago
    Most of the damage was always done from far away. Field operatives are a minority in every intelligence service.