“In some ways, a perception hack is the flip side of what happened during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Four years ago, the Russians waged a major inter

“In some ways, a perception hack is the flip side of what happened during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Four years ago, the Russians waged a major interference campaign that included hacking Democratic Party emails and creating false social media accounts to exploit political divisions. Despite the broad scale of the Russian effort, it received only modest attention before the balloting.” I get confused when something like this is posted in the middle of good content on a (generally) trusted source. Factually correct, like saying Einstein was a Jewish physicist. Depending on the author and tone, though, you wonder why the mention... The queasiness for me sits with the words “major” and “broad”. This is an American election so needs to be measured against American past practices. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is no suffrage for women or slaves, 8 is involvement in Iranian and Central American political affairs in the 1900s, 5 is the poll tax in the South, 3 is gerrymandering of election districts or Watergate, and 2 is the editorial policies of press conglomerates. Where do the reported Russian activities sit? By this, admittedly arbitrary scale, from what has been released to the public, my personal call is a 2, maybe 1. “Major” in the shrieking world of fringe or DNC political operatives (not NPR, hence the issue), “minor” to “trivial” compared to what we have done to ourselves and others. Annoying as a act, more concerning as a precedent. Not an issue to brought up in an otherwise good article...