[Peace-discuss] From the NY Times - " The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming " ( Again )

[David Johnson]

>From the NY Times - " The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming " (
Again )

The latest example of crap journalism /  corporate ruling class propaganda
from the New York Times. According to the Times so called " Intelligence
expert " , if you vote for either Trump OR Bernie Sanders, you are helping
Putin

 

Same Goal, Different Playbook: Why Russia Would Support Trump and Sanders

Vladimir Putin is eager both to take the sheen off U.S. democracy and for a
counterpart who is less likely to challenge his territorial and nuclear
ambitions.

 

 

Intelligence reports suggest that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has
been working to get President Trump re-elected, and to help Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont secure the Democratic nomination.Credit...Alexander
Zemlianichenko/Pool, via Reuters

.  .  At first glance, it may seem contradictory that the nation's
intelligence agencies were telling Congress that President Vladimir V. Putin
is
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/politics/russian-interference-trump-d
emocrats.html?searchResultPosition=1> presumably striving to get President
Trump re-elected, while also warning
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/us/politics/bernie-sanders-russia.html?s
earchResultPosition=1> Senator Bernie Sanders of evidence that he is the
Russian president's favorite Democrat.

But to the intelligence analysts and outside experts who have spent the past
three years dissecting Russian motives in the 2016 election, and who tried
to limit the effect of Moscow's meddling in the 2018 midterms, what is
unfolding in 2020 makes perfect sense.

2020 Election

 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/us/politics/bernie-sanders-nevada-caucus
.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article> Bernie Sanders wins
2020 Nevada caucuses.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders represent the most divergent ends of their
respective parties, and both are backed by supporters known more for their
passion than their policy rigor, which makes them ripe for exploitation by
Russian trolls, disinformation specialists and hackers for hire seeking to
widen divisions in American society.

But in this election, the broad strategy - as opposed to the specific
tactics - is not exactly a mystery. Mr. Putin, the analysts agree, mostly
seeks anything that will further take the sheen off American democracy and
make presidential elections in the United States seem no more credible than
his own. After that, he is eager for a compliant counterpart in the White
House, one less likely to challenge his territorial and nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders disagree on almost everything, but both share an
instinct that the United States is overcommitted abroad: Neither is very
likely to pursue policies that push back aggressively on Mr. Putin's plan to
restore Moscow's influence around the world, from the former Soviet states
to the Middle East.

And if you are trying to sow chaos in an a vitriolic election, Mr. Putin can
hardly hope for better than a face-off between an incumbent with a history
of race-baiting who is shouting "America First" at rallies - while
suggesting that the coming election is rigged - and a democratic socialist
from Vermont advocating a drastic expansion of taxes and government programs
like Medicare.

"Any figures that radicalize politics and do harm to center views and unity
in the United States are good for Putin's Russia," said Victoria Nuland, who
in a long diplomatic career had served both Republican and Democratic
administrations, and had her phone calls intercepted and broadcast by
Russian intelligence services.

The intelligence reports provided to the House Intelligence Committee,
inciting Mr. Trump's ire, may make the American understanding of Mr. Putin's
plans sound more certain than they really are, according to intelligence
officials who contributed to the assessment. Those officials caution that
such reports are as much art as science, a mixture of informants,
intercepted conversations and intuition, as analysts in the nation's 17
intelligence agencies try to get into the heads of foreign leaders.

 

Though intelligence officials have disputed that the officer who delivered
the main briefing said Russia was actively aiding the president's
re-election, people in the room said that intelligence officers' responses
to lawmakers' follow-up questions made clear that Russia was trying to get
Mr. Trump re-elected.

Intelligence is hardly a perfect process, as Americans learned when the
nation went to war in Iraq based in part on an estimate that Saddam Hussein
was once again in search of a nuclear weapon.

Not surprisingly, the Kremlin says this is all an American fantasy, aimed at
demonizing Russia for the United States' own failings. "These are more
paranoid announcements which, to our regret, will multiply as we get closer
to the election," Mr. Putin's confidant and spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, was
quoted by Reuters as telling reporters on Friday. "They have nothing to do
with the truth."

No matter who is elected, Mr. Putin has probably undermined one of his own
primary goals: getting the United States and its allies to lift sanctions
that were imposed after he annexed Crimea and accelerated a hybrid war
against Ukraine.

"By actively exploiting divisions within American society and having its
activities revealed, the Kremlin has ensured that its longer-term goal of
having the U.S. remove sanctions and return to a less confrontational
relationship so far has been thwarted," Angela E. Stent, a former national
intelligence officer for Russia and now a professor at Georgetown
University, said in her book "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and
With the Rest."

Ms. Stent noted on Saturday that if the Russians were in fact interfering in
this election, "it could bring about new energy sanctions." She said that
one piece of legislation in the Senate would require new sanctions if
evidence of Russian meddling emerged from intelligence agencies. So far, Mr.
Putin may have concluded that the penalties are a small price to pay if he
can bring his geopolitical rival down a few more notches, she added. And the
early intelligence analyses suggested that by backing Mr. Sanders in the
primary and Mr. Trump in the general election, Mr. Putin would probably have
a good chance of maximizing the electoral tumult.

Robert O'Brien, the president's national security adviser, said in an
interview with ABC to be broadcast on Sunday that he had not seen evidence
that Russia sought to intervene in Mr. Trump's favor, and that the reports
of Mr. Putin helping Mr. Sanders's campaign came as "no surprise."

Mr. Sanders, for his part, on Friday warned Moscow to stay out of the
election.

The senator is hardly a new target for the Russians.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller-indictment-russian-i
ntelligence-hacking.html> The 2018 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence
officers for their activities in the last presidential election - issued by
the Justice Department under the Trump administration - claimed that the
officers "engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory
information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted
Cruz and Marco Rubio and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald
Trump."

Robert S. Mueller III, in the report on his investigation into Russian
operations, concluded that the release of memos hacked from the Democratic
National Committee were meant to inflame Mr. Sanders's supporters by
revealing that the committee was funneling assets to Mrs. Clinton.

The more recent public reports emerging from the Department of Homeland
Security and the F.B.I., and classified reports generated by the C.I.A. and
others suggest that while the Russian objectives have remained the same, the
techniques have shifted.

"The Russians aren't going to use the old playbook - we know that," said
Christopher C. Krebs, who runs the Department of Homeland Security's
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

His organization, along with the National Security Agency and British
intelligence, has been steadily documenting how Russian operatives are
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/us/politics/russia-hacking-disinformatio
n-election.html> becoming stealthier, learning from the mistakes they made
in 2016.

As they focus on evading more vigilant government agencies and technology
companies trying to identify and counter malicious online activity, the
Russians are boring into Iranian cyberoffense units, apparently so that they
can initiate attacks that look as if they originate in Iran - which itself
has shown interest in messing with the American electoral process. Russians
are putting more of their attack operations on computer servers in the
United States, where the National Security Agency and other intelligence
agencies - but not the F.B.I. and homeland security - are prohibited from
operating.

And, in one of the most effective twists, they are feeding disinformation to
unsuspecting Americans on Facebook and other social media. By seeding
conspiracy theories and baseless claims on the platforms, Russians hope
everyday Americans will retransmit those falsehoods from their own accounts.
That is an attempt to elude Facebook's efforts to remove disinformation,
which it can do more easily when it flags "inauthentic activity," like
Russians posing as Americans. It is much harder to ban the words of real
Americans, who may be parroting a Russian story line, even unintentionally.

Mr. Krebs said that this was why the Department of Homeland Security had to
focus on educating Americans about where their information was coming from.
He asked last year: "How do you explain, this is how you're being
manipulated? This is how they're hacking your brain?"

In 2018, the United States Cyber Command and the National Security Agency
mounted a new and more public campaign to push back at the Russians,
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics/us-cyber-command-russia.html
> attacking and blocking their Internet Research Agency for a few days
around the November elections and texting warnings to Russian intelligence
officers that they were being watched. The N.S.A. is preparing for similar
counterattacks this year: On Thursday, the United States cited intelligence
and blamed Russia
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/world/europe/georgia-cyberattack-russia.
html> for a cyberattack last fall on the republic of Georgia, another place
where Mr. Putin seems to be holding dress rehearsals.

Now American intelligence agencies face a new question: How do they run such
operations, and warn Congress and Americans, at a moment when the president
is declaring that the intelligence on Russian election meddling is "another
misinformation campaign" that is "launched by Democrats in Congress"?

 

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