New indictments against Russian cyber-crime

John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, issued a statement yesterday about new indictments against Russian officials over cyber-espionage, part of which involved a kind of propaganda (USDOJ press release 10/04/2018):

A short while ago, the Dutch Minister of Defense and the United Kingdom’s National Security Advisor held a joint press conference announcing a recent intelligence operation against several Russian agents conducting a clandestine mission in The Hague.

The Joint UK/Dutch intelligence operation led to four Russian GRU officers being caught red handed in The Hague, while they attempted to breach the cyber security of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW].

This GRU target and an additional laboratory in Switzerland that was their next target were analyzing the deadly Russian nerve-agent recovered in the UK following an assassination attempt, as well as other chemical agents that were used in Syria against innocent civilians. ...

Our indictment today charges some of the same Russian operatives caught in The Hague, along with their colleagues in Moscow, as part of a conspiracy to hack a variety of individuals and organizations, in the United States, Canada, and Europe, to obtain information or access that was then exploited for the benefit of the Russian government.

More specifically, this indictment alleges a conspiracy to use computer hacking to obtain non-public, personal health information about athletes and others in the files of anti-doping agencies and sporting federations in multiple countries, and to release that stolen information selectively, and sometimes misleadingly. All of this was done to undermine those organizations’ efforts to ensure the integrity of the Olympic and other games. Other targets of this conspiracy were the chemical weapons laboratory in The Hague and a nuclear power company here in America.

Three of the seven defendants charged in this case were previously charged in the indictment brought by the Office of Special Counsel in July of this year, which pertained to a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The current indictment did not arise out of the Special Counsel’s work. Nonetheless, these two indictments charge overlapping groups of conspirators. And they evince some of the same methods of computer intrusion and the same overarching Russian strategic goal: to pursue its interests through illegal influence and disinformation operations aimed at muddying or altering perceptions of the truth. [my emphasis]

The alleged cyber-attacks on weapons labs, the OPCW, and the nuclear power company are more in line with traditional espionage hard targets, targets that have some important national security role or could become targets for sabotage.

But probing the anti-doping agencies and sports federations to find potentially embarassing material to irritate other countries over the Olympics sounds more like an effort looking for propaganda material and/or facilitating Russian cheating at the Olympics. Obviously, releasing private individuals' medical records without their consent would be a bad act in itself. And poking around in those institutions could also potentially be used for blackmail or possibly help gain access to other systems with more obvious national security signficance.

Two things strike me in this press release. One is that while private acts of this kind are crimes that should be prosecuted, considering them individually as acts of war would be a blank check for every warmonger and mischief-maker with access to influence foreign and military policy. And what countries would we not be at war with by that standard? Even Micronesia has probably engaged in some kind of cyber-espionage on the US, who knows?

The other is that the goal of using information to make propaganda and misinformation around the Olympics strikes me as kind of a petty goal in the grand scheme of things. How that could function as political propaganda that might have any significan effect in US politics isn't at all clear.

Trump is not happy about former intelligence officials talking about the Russians and the 2016 election

Jake Tapper interviewed James Clapper and John Brennan on Trump's latest rejection of the USA intelligence agency findings on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 Presidential eleciton, Ex-intelligence chiefs fire back at Trump criticism (Entire CNN interview) 11/12/2017:

Juan Cole evaluates this significance of this interview in Former CIA Dir.: Trump is afraid of Putin Kompromat Informed Comment 11/13/2017:

The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency openly alleged the real possibility that the sitting president of the United States is being successfully blackmailed and that policy is being made as a result of Trump’s fear of exposure.

Brennan was clear that he has no proof that Trump is compromised.

But Brennan would not make this allegation unless he had at least circumstantial evidence of “kompromat” or compromising materials in the hands of Putin, of the release of which Trump is deeply afraid.

I've never felt comfortable with Democrats or liberals puffing that they're shocked! shocked! I tell you shocked! that Republicans or anyone else would dare question our sacred intelligence agencies. That's a silly and even irresponsible position to take.

James Clapper was Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under Obama (2010-2017), Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Shrub Bush and then Obama (2007-2010), Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Old Man Bush and Bill Clinton (1991-1995). He is a hawkish Democrat affiliated now with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

John Brennan was Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Shrub Bush (2004-2005), Homeland Security Adviser to Obama (2004-2005), and Director of the CIA under Obama (2013-2017).

I might look at those backgrounds and wish that President Obama had been more cautious about appointing people to senior positions who had been comfortable working in high positions from an irresponsible warmongering like George W. Bush.

But by the same token, it would be difficult to look at those backgrounds and honestly conclude that these were liberal Democratic ideological hacks.

It is also important to remember that some of the claims about the 2016 election interference that were accepted by the Democrats and the press didn't pan out exactly the way they were publicized. This MSNBC segment includes a reminder that the "17 intelligence agencies" trope that Hillary Clinton used in a debate with Trump was not actually true. The most relevant intelligence agencies - the CIA, the FBI and the NSA, endorsed by the Director of National Intelligence - did find that there was real Russian interference.
What Happened To America First? | Kasie DC | MSNBC 11/13/2017;

Dana Priest provides some useful perspective in this piece looking at whether we should fault the US intelligence agencies and the Obama Administration for failing to report publicly during the election campaign what they believed they knew with confidence on Russia interference, Russia’s Election Meddling Is Another American Intelligence Failure New Yorker 11/13/2017.

I found this observation particularly interesting:

Government analysts have always viewed open-source information, or OSINT, as it is called in the intelligence world, as a poor substitute for classified information. Intelligence officials often dismiss the importance of public pronouncements by foreign leaders, actions recorded by journalists, data collected by university professors, and discussions at open conferences. It is a decades-old problem. In 2002, the practice helped blind U.S. intelligence officials to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s evidence that Iraq did not actually possess weapons of mass destruction. In 2010, it blinded them again to the Arab Spring revolutions brewing across the Middle East. Devaluing OSINT has become a more significant problem as Russia and China use social media as an arena to wage disinformation operations.

Unless F.B.I. agents and American intelligence officers get over this bias, they will continue asking for special powers to snoop on Internet users in ways that should not be allowed. If they are denied their surveillance requests, they will likely throw up their hands and say that they then can’t help fix the problem. [my emphsis]

Pragmatic talk about the Russian hacking issue

I saw a couple of items from yesterday that enunciate the real issue with Russian hacking and related issues without going beyond what we know from what's in the public record. One was this Tweetstorm from Paul Krugman:

Judging from my mail, people still seem to have a hard time understanding both what happened in November and what causation means 1/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2017

But Trump won the electoral vote, with margins of <1 percent in PA, MI, WI. So a national 1 percent swing would have changed everything 3/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2017

The answer is, there were multiple things that shouldn't have happened. Maybe HRC should have run a better campaign 5/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2017

while underplaying Trump's cesspool of corruption. And even then she'd have had that 1% if Comey hadn't violated every rule 11 days out 7/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2017

Or make that a perfect Stormfront. And yes, Putin may also have tipped the scale. Nothing in there says that Trump deserves our respect 9/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 17, 2017

Then there's this from outgoing UN Ambassador Samantha Power, UN Ambassador Power warns against ‘historical amnesia’ in future Russian relations PBS Newshour 01/172017:

She says in surveying the major issues in US-Russia relations, "All of that plus, of course, the most recent and most egregious example that hits close to home for us, which is interfering in our elections through hacking, through fake news, and with an eye to trying to help one candidate win."

And she talks in a pragmatic vein about both the common interests and the points of difference between the two countries:

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people’s country. We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

And we, as Americans, have an interest in ensuring that the only people who get to vote for our elected leaders are our citizens, and not some foreign people who think that they have an interest in skewing our election in one direction or another.

Look, I think the point that we all agree upon is that we have to engage with Russia. I have spent, you know, as much time with my Russian counterpart as I have probably with anybody else, including close family members, over the course of the last four years. And we have done really important work together.

At the same time we’re at each other on Aleppo, on Ukraine, we’re authorizing peacekeeping missions, putting sanctions in place on North Korea for its nuclear tests. We need to find means for cooperation.

Keeping up with the multi-faceted positioning on the Russian hacking issue

The Russia issue right now reminds me all too much of the early years of Cold War 1.0, when militarized and simplistic views of the Soviet Union gained the upper hand. Even George Kennan, the realist credited with the "containment" doctrine, later criticized the actual implementation of the policy as being much too exclusively.

PBS Newshour's Political Wrap segment Friday, Shields and Brooks on Russian intrigue in American politics, Obama’s farewell 01/13/2017, Bobo refers to the far-right parties that ideologically align with Putinism - or should we call it Trumputinism now? - as "Marxism in reverse." Which makes no sense conceptually, but it's an example of how American images of post-Soviet Russia are still heavily shaped by Cold War ideas and experience.

Here are some notable recent analyses of the Russian-interference issue.

Gareth Porter, Mainstream Media’s Russian Bogeymen Consortium News 01/13/2016

Masha Gessen, Russia, Trump & Flawed Intelligence NYR Daily 01/09/2017

Sophia McClennen looks at the larger context of foreign interference in elections in The new American exceptionalism: How the Russian connection to the 2016 election signals the destruction of our nation’s ideals Salon 01/014/2017. This is an area where we need to be able to walk and talk at the same time. Yes, the US tries to interfere in political processes including elections in other countries. Despite formal diplomatic and legal requirements, it's part of how statecraft is practiced. And part of the game on all sides is to try to have Our Side get away with it while preventing the Other Side from doing it. This context is important, even beyond the US-Russia context. McClennen embeds this tweet:

What's that, America? A foreign gov helped install a puppet leader? Sorry, I can't hear u over the sound of ALL of Latin America laughing.

— Derrick Lemos (@DerrickLemos) December 10, 2016

The Insanity of a New Cold War: A Top Russian Scholar Sounds the Alarm Truthdig 01/13/2017

David Ignatius' interview is worth hearing, What we still don’t know after a week dominated by Russia questions 01/13/2017:

Timothy Snyder speculated in April of 2016 on Putin's likely view of Trump (Trump’s Putin Fantasy NYR Daily 04/19/2016):

Trump correctly says that Putin respects strength. But of course Putin prefers weakness, which is what Trump offers. As Putin understands perfectly well, the president of the United States has standing in Russia, and enjoys far superior power to the president of Russia, only insofar as he or she mobilizes the moral and political resources of a rule-of-law state. It is precisely Trump’s pose of strength that reveals his crucial vulnerability. As anyone familiar with Russian politics understands, an American president who shuns alliances with fellow democracies, praises dictators, and prefers “deals” to the rule of law would be a very easy mark in Moscow. It is unclear how much money Trump has, but it is not enough to matter in Russia. If he keeps up his pose as the tough billionaire, he will be flattered by the Russian media, scorned by those who matter in Russia, and then easily crushed by men far richer and smarter than he. ...

The Russian expectation is that a Trump victory would be ruinous for American power, and that such power as remains will be deployed to support Russian interests. Trump’s fantasy friendship with Putin is one more reason to expect that a Trump victory would also be disastrous for American values and institutions. Putin can be expected, if the two men actually meet as presidents, to flatter Trump’s vanity and urge him onward toward a full assault on the Constitution. Russia is in a downward spiral of its own; what Americans must consider now is a weak presidential candidate who wants to follow Putin’s charm where it leads, which most likely means straight to the bottom.

Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed, Trump adviser had five calls with Russian envoy on day of sanctions - sources Reuters/MSN News 01/13/2017:

Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's choice for national security adviser, held five phone calls with Russia's ambassador to Washington on the day the United States retaliated for Moscow's interference in the U.S. presidential election, three sources familiar with the matter said.

The calls occurred between the time the Russian embassy was told about U.S. sanctions and the announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he had decided against reprisals, said the sources. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing internal U.S. government deliberations about the issue.

This claim is far more specific, verifiable and explainable that the Russia-hacks-DLC-gets-documents-toWikileaks-and-thereby-tilts-the-election-to-Trump story. The evidence for the hacking claims that the intelligence community thinks it's safe to put into the public record is limited by the concern of protecting "sources and methods." In the case Flynn's calls to the Russian Embassy, whether he made the calls or not should be easy for the intelligence agencies to verify even from standard phone records. It's a highly questionable thing for a senior official of a new Administration to be doing without coordination with the current US government. It was shady thing to do no matter what the content of the conversation was, and especially at that particular time.

Russian hacking, Wednesday version

Here are some recent entries into the commentary and analysis of the Russian hacking and closely related issues.

Bob Kuttner writes in Trump, Putin, and the Pacifist Left The American Prospect 01/10/2017 about what he sees as well-established in the story and what deserves continuing skepticism. He also puts it into the context of US foreign policy toward Russia.

Philip Giraldi explains his own skepticism about the report in No Smoking Gun on Russia Hack American Conservative 01/11/2017.

Paul Pillar weighs in on the hacking and its implications in The Anti-Intelligence President-Elect The National Interest 07/06/2017:

Understanding when and how politicization can infect the work of intelligence agencies requires reflection about the mission and raison d’être of such agencies. For a wholly foreign intelligence organization such as the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency, objectivity is essential to the organization’s existence. If the handling of information were a matter of politically-driven case-building rather than objective analysis, then the task could be left to policy and speech-writing staffs, and we might as well dismiss all the intelligence analysts. Such an agency doesn’t even have another major mission to relate to, as, for example, the FBI does with its traditional role as a domestic law-enforcement organization. Politicization can set in when the policymakers—the bosses and customers of the intelligence officers—have a very strong policy objective driving a need for shaping information into a public case. The most salient example of that in recent times was the George W. Bush administration’s selling of the Iraq War. There is nothing remotely resembling that policy impulse that could be affecting the intelligence community’s current work on the Russian hacking.

Such politicization as is occurring on this issue is coming from Mr. Trump, and from others with a stake in downplaying the idea of Russian interference having affected the result of the U.S. election.

In a separate column, Russia Had Plenty to Work With: The Crisis in American Democracy The National Interest 07/06/2017, he observes why Russia might plausibly think the US is vulnerable to the kind of disinformation campaign the FBI, CIA and NSA has said they ran in 2016:

...this is a nation with a long history and strong tradition of representative democracy. But this tradition is visibly and seriously eroding. The trend is unfavorable. ...

Democracy scholar Thomas Carothers believes, somewhat more optimistically, that “as Trump and his team move to actual policymaking,” their support for democracy and human rights abroad “will prove less consistently negative than their initial signals might indicate.”

Carothers correctly identifies, however, the biggest negative of all: “Various problematic features of U.S. political life in recent years—the institutional gridlock, the ever-rising role of money in politics, and the frequent skirmishing over basic electoral rules and procedures—have already tarnished the United States’ image abroad. But the recent U.S. presidential election process damaged this image much more widely and deeply. Although this damage had many sources, numerous actions that Trump took during the campaign and since the election—from his vows to prosecute his main opponent to his baseless postelection assertions of massive electoral fraud—figure significantly in the dispiriting diminishment of America’s global political brand.” ...

Primary among the likely Russian motives, as suggested in the official government report on the Russian initiative, was “to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process”. Sure, what the Russians did is worthy of condemnation, but Americans ought to be most disturbed by the fact that there already were enough reasons to shake such faith that the Russians knew they had a vulnerable target. The recent election, with or without Russian interference, provided still more reasons.

Now we have Mother Jones introducting new questions in Al Vicensjan's The FBI Is Investigating Allegations That Russia Has Compromising Information on Trump 01/10/2017. Philip Giraldi also comments on that story inHow a Former CIA Officer Reads the Trump Dossier: Fact, fiction, or speculation? American Conservative 01/11/2017.

John Feffer, Donald Trump and the Russian Honeypot LobeLog Foreign Policy 01/11/2017:

I don’t think Russia directly tampered with the vote in November. Nor do I think that the revelations connected to the alleged Russian hacking made the difference in the election. Trump won for other reasons; Clinton lost for other reasons too. I’m not even sure that Putin wanted Trump elected. The Russian president probably just wanted to sow some confusion and discord in the U.S. political system.

Nor do I want to see a new Cold War develop between the United States and Russia. I’m not a fan of Vladimir Putin or current Russian policies in Ukraine or Syria. But Moscow and Washington can certainly identify common interests such as reducing nuclear weapons, preserving the landmark agreement with Iran, and negotiating some new agreement with North Korea.

But the honeypot that Russia has used to trap Trump will have much more serious ramifications than a few email accounts hacked or disinformation spread around the Internet.

As he explains in this case honeypot has a different meaning that what we get in spy novels, "But it’s not a conventional version of the scheme in which an attractive woman makes eyes at a lonely intelligence officer. Rather, the 'raven' in this case is Vladimir Putin. And the dupe is Donald Trump."

Trump and the Intelligence Community

On the Russian hacking issue and other things closely associated with it at the moment, I've maintained that everyone should try to reminder that it's important to walk and talk at the same time. We can be concerned about Russian interference in the election and also be alert to how outrage over that issue can be instrumentalized for nefarious purposes by the bad operators. We can insist on the need for skeptical evaluation and close reading of government and media claims about the Russian hacks and also recognize that some of the reactions from Trump and his Republican Party are also concerning.

On that latter consideration, Josh Marshall steps back to look at how Trump and his team seem to be viewing the US Intelligence Community more generally (Trump Prepping Ominous Moves to Gut US Intel Capacity TPM 01/04/2017):

There appear to be three separate forces in play here - which is in the ascendent is not clear.

First, Trump wants payback against an agency that he believes is his enemy. Period. He is undoubtedly encouraged in this by his closest advisors. Which brings us to number two ...

Second, Trump's chief foreign policy advisor Michael Flynn wants payback against the people who ended his career. Flynn was a career intelligence officer and one with a very strong reputation - working within specific and defined parameters. People who had worked with him earlier in his career said they couldn't recognize the person he became when he was placed in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was a disastrous manager, was taken in by numerous conspiracy theories and eventually had to be fired. Other generals got crosswise with the civilian appointees in the Obama administration. But they left with their reputations intact. Flynn was different. Flynn's personal beef is clearly the source of his animus against the DNI and the CIA.

Flynn is simply nuts and he wants to get even. This suggests Trump is going let him do just that.

Third, Trump and Flynn are not the first to push the 'CIA is missing the real story' line about the CIA. In fact, this is a debate which goes back some forty years. Trump has surrounded himself with a number of people who are either the intellectual descendants of the people who made this argument in the past or the people themselves.

And he elaborates on the history of the neocon "Team B" approach that eventually gave us the Iraq War.

Dawn Stover also notes in In denial: Trump on both climate and intelligence Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12/16/2016 that Trump's expressed skepticism on intelligence claims about Russian hacking may be something other than a sign of careful reflection and skeptical thought:

When a president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, and relies instead on his own judgment and that of confidants who lack intelligence expertise—or are compromised by lucrative, personal ties to the Kremlin—he can cause huge problems for both foreign relations and the American people.

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, for example, might have been avoided if President George W. Bush had paid more attention to an August 2001 presidential briefing warning that Al Qaeda was preparing to strike the United States. Afterward, Bush chose to believe that Saddam Hussein—rather than Osama bin Laden—was behind the attacks, and that the CIA had been fooled, despite protestations from intelligence officials.

In the case of the Russian election hacking, Americans may never know whether it affected the outcome of the election. But we do know that Putin has powerful friends within Trump’s inner circle, and that Trump’s businesses have significant financial connections to Russia. If a President Trump remains unwilling to believe intelligence about Russia, or disinterested in hearing it, that creates a huge blind spot surrounding one of America’s most powerful adversaries. And if one of the unnamed officials quoted in the NBC News report is correct, Putin’s goals were not only to carry out a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton, but also to convince America’s allies that they can no longer depend on the United States “to be a credible global leader.”

Intelligence denial and climate denial are dangerous for the United States’ international standing and ultimately for the security of the whole planet. If Trump doesn’t believe a solid scientific consensus, or a firm assessment by the US intelligence community, what other information will he choose to disbelieve in the future?

Friday's public release on the Russian hacking issue

The US Intelligence Community released a new public statement about the Russian hacking during the 2016 election with the impressively ponderous title, Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution; the link is to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) website.

It will come as no surprise that it's carefully worded and lacking in voluminous backup.

In fact, the report proper consists of only five pages of text in a 25-page document. There are three pages of general introductory material and a two-page summary at the start. Seven pages in an appendix reproduce a 2012 report about RT/Russia Today and a one-page appendix defines some terms.

The fact that it's carefully worded means that it's worth paying attention to what is said, what is not said and what is heavily implied but not said. This "Key Judgments" summary statement, appearing all in bold in the report, is obviously newsworthy:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

It strikes me that there's a lot of wiggle-room in those two paragraphs. It particularly strikes me that the wording walks right up to saying that Russia tried to help Donald Trump get elected without actually saying so explicitly. That would be one entirely plausible conclusion to draw from those two paragraphs. But they don't say that directly.

On the partisan political point that the Clinton campaign and many of her supporters have been pushing that the Russian intervention threw the Electoral College to Trump, this report provides no such argument. It explicitly avoids the question, "We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion." (p. i)

Yes, I had to suppress a snicker on the last point, too. They are technically not supposed to, of course. But as we saw in the election, the FBI Director didn't seem to be above partisan calculations on how his public statements could influence the outcome of the Presidential vote.

Speaking of which, the report is explicit about representing the views of three intelligence agencies:

This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. It covers the motivation and scope of Moscow’s intentions regarding US elections and Moscow’s use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion.

The Key Judgments section expands on the activities it covers (emphasis in bold in original:

• We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.
• Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.
• Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals.

The careful wording that the Russian effort was "to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible" again stops short of saying explicitly that it was the Russian intent to throw the election to Trump, i.e., aiming to help someone's chances in an election is not precisely the same as trying to make sure they win. I'm not trying to split hairs. It's just that we have to presume that every word in such a report was carefully evaluated for the messages it would send to various parties.

The statement, "When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency," also suggests that the Russians involved by no means assumed that Trump was likely to win.

In writing this, I feel like I'm having an argument with an invisible Pollyanna. That's because a great deal of the public discussion over the Russian hacking issue has been amazingly simplistic and lacking in international and historical content. And often discussed as though this was some new outrage out of thin air, as though the US and Russia haven't perceived a major stake in each other's internal politics since at least the First World War.

The above considerations are compatible with an assumption that the Russian leadership including Putin may have preferred a Donald Trump as President because of his business connections in Russia and indications that he might pursue policies on Ukraine and Syria, both current priorities in Russian foreign policy, that would be more amenable to Russian preferences than those Hillary Clinton favored. (See page 1) Unless they had a super-secret and hyper-sophisticated independent polling operation in the US that was accurately predicting a Trump victory - and which has gone as yet undetected by US intelligence - the Russian leaders must have expected that Clinton was the more likely winner. And, of course, she did win the popular vote decisively.

Page 1 of the report also uses cagey wording:

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

The report describes a variety of actions aimed at influencing the election in some way: the infamous hacking; reporting and editorial claims via RT and Sputnik News; passive cyber-spying on state and local election systems (though "DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. [emphasis in original]"; public statements by Putin contrasting Clinton's policies to Trump in a manner favorable to the latter; "pro-Kremlin" bloggers; trolls on social media like Twitter; statements in the Russian press and public comments by other senior Russian officials.

This bit from page 1 strikes me initially as a bit of a head-scratcher, "Putin has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder." The puzzling part is why the report calls out Berlusconi and Schröder by name. (And, BTW, doesn't the DNI's office have word-processing software with the o-umlaut "ö" on it?)

I haven't been into the weeds of this story enough to know if there is any new informational twists in the public disclosures in this passage: "We assess with high confidence that the [Russian military intelligence] GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries." (my emphasis in bold this time)

The Podesta e-mails, which were supposedly the object of a different hack than the DLC ones, are not explictly addressed.

The report lays great weight on RT's general role:

RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism. Some Russian officials echoed Russian lines for the influence campaign that Secretary Clinton’s election could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.

If the policies of the upcoming Trump Family Business Administration weren't so unpredictable at this point, I would read the emphasis on RT in this report as a possible buildup for significant news restrictions on Americans' access to RT reporting.

This is also an interesting and somewhat puzzling tidbit:

Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 US presidential election represented a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations aimed at US elections. We assess the 2016 influence campaign reflected the Kremlin’s recognition of the worldwide effects that mass disclosures of US Government and other private data — such as those conducted by WikiLeaks and others—have achieved in recent years, and their understanding of the value of orchestrating such disclosures to maximize the impact of compromising information.

Are we meant to make a distinction here between post-Soviet Russia and Soviet Russia? If so, aren't the FBI, CIA and NSA telling us that the leak of DNC documents to Wikileaks was a greater intervention in US politics than anything that occurred during the existence of the Soviet Union?

This definition is also notable: "Russia’s state-run propaganda machine [is] comprised of its domestic media apparatus, outlets targeting global audiences such as RT and Sputnik, and a network of quasi-government trolls."

The sensational element that has received by far the most attention was the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of some individual Democratic leaders. And, despite how satisfying it might be from a partisan viewpoint to mock Trump as having been elected by Russian interference, that argument depends on assuming this sequence of events: (1) Russian hacking leads to (2) a leak to Wikileaks which (3) causes enough public dismay in four Rust Belt states (Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) to flip the Electoral College vote to Trump.

The first step, the Russian hacking, has been probably as well established in the public record as any such obscure operations are likely to be in the relatively short run. Like most people, I assume that as a given, though far from fully explained in the public record. The second step, the Russians providing key documents to Wikileaks, seems plausible and even likely, though not as well established in the public record as the first.

The third step, that the Wikileaks revelations were decisive in the election outcome in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has not been proved and, so far as I can see, virtually impossible to prove or even argue that it's plausible, despite some energetic efforts by Hillary partisans to do so.

All of this argues for several obvious things: better US cyber-security; more, better and more critical reporting by the US corporate (and other) press on this complex of issues on an ongoing basis; and, taking full account of this issue complex in the larger field of US-Russia relations.

Hopefully, everyone can agree on the first and presumably this will be an ongoing, evolving effort indefinitely. The third will hopefully take place; it's hard to imagine that an un-provable claim of Russian throwing the election to Trump would lead to total non-cooperation on all other issues, nor would it be desirable - even setting aside the improbability of a Trump Family Business Administration wanting to do so.

The possibility of the US corporate press drastically improving its critical coverage of these issues will probably occur just after the Second Coming of Christ.

Russian hacking., the US and regime change

Owen Jones provides some useful, brief real-world history of American regime-change operations in Americans can spot election meddling because they’ve been doing it for years Guardian 01/05/2017:

... while Americans feel justifiably angry at alleged interference with their political process, they have also been handed a mirror, and the reflection should disturb them.

For the US is a world leader in the field of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries. The alleged interference is far more extensive than hacking into emails belonging to unfavoured political parties. According to research by political scientist Dov Levin, the US and the USSR/Russia together intervened no less than 117 times in foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, or “one out of every nine competitive, national-level executive elections”.

Indeed, one cannot understand US-Russian relations today without acknowledging America’s role in the internal affairs of its defeated cold war foe. As Stephen Cohen puts it, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the approach of US advisers “was nothing less than missionary – a virtual crusade to transform post-communist Russia into some facsimile of the American democratic and capitalist system”.

And this is a particular dilemma for members of the public trying realistically to understand the situation when the allegations involve intelligence detection of computer hacks for which the information has not been made public so that independent analysts can sufficiently examine them.

Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel keeps on trying, though. In Russia Hacked the DNC, But What, Specifically, Did GRU Do? 01/04/2016, her analysis provides a good example of why this doesn't easily boil down to a simple slogan:

One thing a lot of people don’t realize about the Russian hack attribution is there’s some slippage in the argument.

There are two groups in question: APT 29, which has been publicly associated with FSB, and APT 28, which has been publicly associated with GRU. As I laid out here, those two groups must be kept separate, because the story is that these two groups did different things: FSB hung around DNC’s servers for months and stole a lot of information, but never leaked it. That’s the kind of stuff intelligence services do all the time, including our own. Our government has no reason to make a case against that — which is unwanted but nevertheless normal espionage — because they do it too, such as when, in 2012, they stole communications between then Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and his closest allies.

GRU, by contrast, was believed to have been in DNC’s servers briefly — and John Podesta’s Gmail account even more briefly — but to have, in that time, stolen the documents that ultimately made their way to Wikileaks. That’s the action that was deemed newly beyond the pale (even if the US has probably had documents leaked to Wikileaks itself).

In a sense, then, only the APT 28 attribution matters, because that’s the entity that is believed to have been involved in hacking and leaking; that’s the entity believed to have done things that might have affected the outcome of the election.

But people have long either intentionally or unknowingly conflated the two, claiming that “Russia” hacked the DNC. If FSB hacked the DNC, the claim is true, but that doesn’t prove that Russia is behind the tampering in the election, because unless you prove that GRU is APT 28, then the stuff you’re bugged about hasn’t been properly attributed.

I’ve come to distrust the claims of anyone who has paid close attention to this that doesn’t assiduously maintain the distinction between the APT 29 and APT 28 hacks.

She concluydes this particular post, "None of this is definitive. None of it changes my inclination that Russia probably is behind the APT 28 hack of the DNC (and, even more convincingly, behind the hack of John Podesta). But these are some details that deserve more attention amid the claims that all the case against GRU (as distinct from Russia) is rock solid."

Caution can be a virtue: Russian hacking and Trump foreign policy edition

Paul Pillar calls attention to the fact that we really have surprisingly little to go on in anticipating what the actual foreign policy of the Trump Family Business Administration is likely to be (Winning May Be the Only Thing for Trump, But Not For the U.S. The National Interest 01/03/2017):

Despite the earnest and usually sincere efforts by many commentators to discern pattern, direction, and purpose amid Donald Trump’s tweets and other utterances, the dominant picture is still one of inconsistencies, contradictions, slogans, and lack of a record. We are, late in the transition period, still mostly flying blind regarding the actual future foreign policy of this new presidency. We have little idea of what Trump really cares about in the substance of U.S. foreign policy, as distinct from rhetoric that has worked in a campaign and that helps in his effort to portray himself as a populist.

Citing this piece by Mark Katz, Can Putin and Trump Succeed at Improving Russian-American Relations? LobeLog Foreign Policy 12/31/2016, Pillar does describe a basic dilemma for Trump in dealing with Russia. On the one had, the two countries have common interests and there are good, practical reasons to cooperate on them. But Trump has also relied so heavily on his pro-wrestling tough guy image that he takes a risk being seeing as too compliant to Putin: "He has to be seen instead as having wrung concessions from Putin, and preferably as having gotten the better of him. Katz emphasizes that Trump especially must be seen doing so in the eyes of a domestic audience that includes hawkish, anti-Russian Congressional Republicans. Trump has the added baggage of the Russian hacking and interference in the U.S. election; any favorable move he makes toward Putin risks being interpreted as payback for election favors."

Pillar goes on to explain the risks of Trump approaching international negotiations as a win-loss zero-sum game in dealing with China and Iran.

And he makes a useful observation about not assuming that skills from the business world transfer easily to the Presidency:

Notwithstanding Trump’s trumpeting of his skills as a deal-maker, and notwithstanding all that has been said and written about the “transactional” approach this businessman is likely to take toward foreign policy, a man with his mindset is not about to operate in his new job the way he did in his old one. As head of a privately-owned business, profits and losses could be kept private—and with his refusal to make his tax returns public, they are largely staying that way. The public side of the business could be limited to his promotion of himself and his brand, with bragging about having the most luxurious buildings or the best golf courses. Now the game has changed for him. The public perception of gains and losses is different. If Trump really were to approach foreign relations in a pragmatic, businesslike way, that in general would be good for U.S. interests. But probably his need to be seen to “win” will get in the way. When winning is the only thing for the chief executive, that is not so good for the country.

Katz states the dilemma posed by the Russian hacking issue this way:

Since not just the outgoing Obama Administration, but also the U.S. Intelligence Community leadership, has declared that Russia intervened in the 2016 American presidential elections in order to hurt Clinton and help him, any concession by Trump to Putin risks being seen as payback to Russia for this help. Trump can rail all he likes that the Russians did not interfere in the elections, that he wasn’t aware of it, or that it somehow doesn’t matter anyway, but doing so will only increase concerns about his relationship to Moscow.

I'm glad to see him discussing this in terms of the narrative that has been established rather than the supposed certainty of the claims.

Because caution and careful reading of the hacking claims is still very much in order. Marcy Wheeler is continuing her able work at doing just that, as for instance in A Deep Dive on the Obama Response to Russian DNC Hack (and Theft and Harassment) Emptywheel 01/01/2017.

Democrats and journalists would also do well be hold back on dismissing any skepticism about the Russian hacking story as the result of someone being a Russian dupe.

The Nation presents a couple of recent article advising caution. One is James Carden's Is Skepticism Treason? 01/03/2017. Another is by Stephen Cohen, who writes:

Today’s hysteria, suffused with not a little neo-McCarthyism and a witch-hunt- like search for “Putin’s friends” in the US political establishment (first and foremost Trump himself and his nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson), are making any rational, fact-based discourse nearly impossible. Public discussion is urgently needed on NATO’s buildup on Russia’s western borders and on the civil/proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria, and more generally whether or not a new, less confrontational US policy toward Russia is needed. With the New York Times and Washington Post, and their echo chambers on cable TV networks, labeling anyone who rethinks US-Russia policy a “Trump apologist” and “Putin apologist,” civil discourse so vital to democratic resolutions, and to US national security, has become nearly impossible.

One has to wonder how long it will be before the Trump Family Business Administration will be making intelligence claims to justify some reckless foreign policy move and the Democrats will justify their inaction or support this time around by saying we can't dare impugn the omniscience of our Intelligence Agencies.

Still, the Russian hacking narrative will be a factor in US-Russia relations, as Katz observes in his conclusion:

Yet even if Putin is willing to make concessions, Trump cannot make a deal with him just on his own. Other governments (especially those whose countries are the subject of any Russian-American negotiation), the U.S. Congress, and Western public opinion will all seek to constrain Trump from conceding too much and to point out any instance when they see him allowing Putin to concede too little. In short: Russian interference in the recent presidential elections, and Trump’s effort to dismiss concerns about it, will only serve to increase the already considerable obstacles to improving Russian-American relations.

Russian hacking story, Tuesday

Consortium News continues to analyze the facts and the politics of the Russian hacking story, most recently including:

Graham Fuller, Behind the Russia-Hack Allegations 12/20/2016. Fuller also reproduces the text of Robert Hunter's Rex Tillerson and the Russian Problem LobeLog Foreign Policy 12/16/2016. Hunter was US Ambassador to NATO during the Clinton Administration 1993-98.

Joe Lauria, Russia-Hack Story, Another Media Failure 12/19/2016: "The working journalist today is living off the reputation for skepticism and determination to get beyond government pronouncements that was established by their papers decades ago. Rather than add to that reputation, the credibility of the biggest newspapers continues to erode."

Robert Parry, A Spy Coup in America? (It's the headline and a section subhead that use the overblown word "coup," not the article itself) 12/18/2016:

However, over the past few weeks, the U.S. intelligence community, led by CIA Director Brennan and seconded by FBI Director Comey, has tried to delegitimize Trump by using leaks to the mainstream U.S. news media to pin the release of the DNC and Podesta emails on Russia and claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally trying to put Trump into the White House.

Norman Solomon, The Left’s Risk in Blaming Russia 12/20/2016:

Of all the good reasons to "delegitimate" Trump, alleged Kremlin intervention in the election should rank quite low. ... While echoing the anti-Russia themes belted out by Democratic Party officials and loyalists, the chorus on the left may think it’s merely grabbing the low-hanging political fruit of this historical moment. But the fruit is already turning rancid, and apt to become poisonous.

John Whitbeck, The Pre-emptive Anti-Trump Coup 12/17/2016

And Marcy Wheeler continues her careful reading and evaluation of the evidence at Emptywheel:

16 Words: "The British Government Has Learned That Vladimir Puting Recently Sought Significant Quantities of of Votes for Trump" 12/19/2016, which references her New York Times op-ed, I Despise Donald Trump, but He’s Right to Be Skeptical of C.I.A. Leaks 12/19/2016, in which she writes, "Much as we might wish it, we average citizens aren’t going to get to read this intelligence ourselves. We rely on our elected representatives — the current president, Congress and, in a month, Donald Trump — to do that."

Lefties Learn to Love Leaks Again 12/19/2016, on the Rex Tillerson Russian-oil-company director story.

Now the Spooks Are Leaking Criticism of Obama's Sole Use of the "Red Phone" 12/20/2016: "Good things these spooks are so successfully combatting [sic] the inappropriate leak of information by leaking more information."

Marcy Wheeler's good words for Obama's Friday press conference's treatment of the Russian hacking issue

Marcy Wheeler's reaction to Obama's press conference Friday dealing with the Russia hacking issue was similar to mine. But she focuses on the encouraging side of it in Obama's Response to Russia's Hack: An Emphasis on America's More Generalized Vulnerability Emptywheel 12/18/2016.

Here she describes the kind of emphasis people like me gave in our initial evaluations:

I think Democrats were disappointed because Obama declined to promise escalation. The press set Obama up, twice (first Josh Lederman and then Martha Raddatz), with questions inviting him to attack Putin directly. Similarly, a number of reporters asked questions that betrayed an expectation for a big showy response. ...

Again, I get why Democrats are furious about this passage: they wanted and still want the IC to attack Trump for benefitting [sic] from the Russian hack. Or at the very least, they want to legitimize their plan to delegitimize Trump by using his Russian ties with Obama endorsement. From a partisan view, I get that.

And she continues directly, "But I also very much agree with Obama’s larger point: if Russia’s simple hack decided the election, it’s as much a statement about how sick our democracy is, across the board, as it is a big win for Putin."

This is one time that leading Democrats needed to make sure they had Obama on board for a response obviously commensurate with the way they were describing the Russian hacking issue before they made it the central theme of their transition-period positioning against Trump. It comes off looking flat-footed, at best.

She argues that Obama's treatment of the issue in Friday's press conference is appropriate to the threat in the way the Administration has actually described it. And that's a sensible position. You might not know it though, if you weren't paying close attention to the wording of those statements and/or following people like Marcy who were giving them a close reading.

She quotes this portion from Obama's press conference:

What I was concerned about, in particular, was making sure that that wasn’t compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself.

And so in early September, when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn’t. And, in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process.

And she notes, "This is consistent with the anonymous statement the White House released over Thanksgiving weekend, which the press seems unaware of. In it, the White House emphasized that it was aware of no malicious election-related tampering, while admitting they had no idea whether Russia had ever planned any in the first place."

That anonymous statement to which she links says this (U.S. Statement on Reliability of Election Results New York Times 11/26/2016):

The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian Government-directed compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the President-elect. Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.

The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.

That said, since we do not know if the Russians had planned any malicious cyber activity for election day, we don’t know if they were deterred from further activity by the various warnings the U.S. government conveyed.

But, again, Marcy recognizes the partisan dilemma - or maybe I should say the "bipartisan" dilemma - on display on Friday:

[Progressive Democratic critics of Obama] recognized that his effort to be bipartisan squandered his opportunity, in 2009, to really set up a structure that would make us more resilient. It is, admittedly, infuriating that in his last presser Obama still endorses bipartisanship when the last 8 years (and events rolling out in North Carolina even as he was speaking) prove that the GOP will not play that game unless forced to.

Marcy is interviewed by Al Jazeera in this video, whose first nine minutes or so are devoted to the topic of the title, Secrets and hacks: Reporting Russia's role in the US election - The Listening Post (Full) Al Jazeera English 12/17/2016:

"Too little, too late Obama": the Russian hacking and the current President's sad obsession with "bipartisanship"

Cenk Uygur's verdict on Obama's Friday press conference in which he addressed the Russian hacking issue was that it show the outgoing President as a display of "too little, too late Obama" (Obama Talks Tough On Russian Hacking 12/16/2016):

Leaving aside the nuances for a moment, Obama has openly accused Russia and its President Vladimir Putin of directly interfering in the US Presidential election to prejudice the outcome against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump. And Obama's response?

One way I do believe that the president-elect can approach this that would be unifying is to say that we welcome a bipartisan independent process that gives the American people an assurance not only that votes are counted properly, that the elections are fair and free, but that we have learned lessons about how internet propaganda from foreign countries can be released into the political bloodstream and that we have got strategies to deal with it for the future. [my emphasis]

Obama and the Democrats have made a drastic charge against the Republican President-elect. But the announced response is bizarrely disproportionate to the accusation.

The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, which has a $600 million business contract with the CIA) has a full transcript of Obama's press conference, Transcript: Obama’s end-of-year news conference on Syria, Russian hacking and more 12/16/2016.

I've expressed at some length in earlier posts my reservations about how the Democrats have approached this and about various closely-related issues. But it looks at this point very much like the Democrats struck a position on the Russian hacking issue on which they and President Obama were not prepared to respond in a way that would be obviously commensurate with the accusation. I can't see how this is an especially effective issue for them at this point, whether it should be or not.

The candidate that won the popular vote by a clear margin in the Presidential race also addressed the issue - in a meeting with her donors (David Smith and Julian Borger, Clinton accuses Putin of acting on 'personal beef' in directing email hack Guardian 12/16/206).

George Beebe argues for care on the Russian hacking issue and its implications in Russia’s Role in the US Elections: The Case for Caution The National Interest 12/16/2016:

The stakes are high. The intrusions highlight the importance of addressing broader questions of how we protect the integrity of our political system and deal with other cyber actors who might have an interest in intrusions. Retaliation could preclude working with Moscow against ISIL and other terrorist groups, encourage further cooperation between Russia and China against US interests, and even escalate into kinetic warfare. Failure to draw a tough enough line, on the other hand, might invite even more damaging Russian interference in US affairs. Crafting an effective policy depends to a great degree on a rigorous and objective analytic approach to understanding exactly what occurred and why.

Beebe cites this analysis from immediately after the eleciton by Maxim Trudolyubov, The Paradox of Russia’s Support for Trump Wilson Center Kennan Institute 11/10/2016;

The [Russian] Duma MPs applauded when they heard the news of Trump’s electoral triumph during a plenary session. Russia’s most famous pro-Kremlin politicians (other kinds are not invited to be on the major networks) welcomed the Trump win. The communist Gennady Zyuganov said President Trump would “make life easier for Russia.” The veteran populist Zhirinovsky was reported to have thrown a celebration party in the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.

And yet it was clear yesterday that the Clinton upset was as much of a surprise for the Russian elites as it was for the establishments in many other countries. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, told Russia One that he did not expect Trump to win because he “went against the system.” “And the Americans have taught me that the system always prevails,” Kosachev was quoted as saying.

“The system” is an important term in the Russian political vocabulary. This vague word usually refers to a combination of direct and indirect influence that the government institutions, media, and punditry have over society. A clever system, in the Russian establishment’s view, is the one that can keep its grip on power while holding elections and paying lip service to other democratic institutions. Many in Moscow are convinced that this is how the U.S. system works and that this is what Russia has to learn from the Americans: the system should always prevail.

Paul Pillar reflects on the possible implications for policy toward Russia from the Trump Family Business Administration of the diverse attitudes toward Russia and Putin within the Republican Party in Partisan Tribalism and Attitudes Toward Russia The National Interest 12/16/2016, including:

A farther-reaching explanation portrays admiration for Putin as part of a transnational wave, including Trump’s win and the advances by xenophobic and right-wing European parties, which places high value on “strong” (even if authoritarian) leadership and on “traditional” (even if illiberal and intolerant) values. There may be something to this explanation, although it does not go as far as the other ones. There first is the matter of how to interpret a positive response in a poll about someone perceived as a strong leader. One can admire an adversary for strongly advancing his side’s objectives and interests but still see him very much as an adversary. Moreover, as far as values are concerned, it is unlikely that more than a very few respondents have any knowledge of Putin’s policies on matters such as abortion or LGBT rights or the status of Muslims in Russia.

Marcy Wheeler continues her careful reading of the reports on what intelligence agency and/or anonymous leaks are saying about the Russian hacking story, Just Before Obama Weighs In On the Russian Hack, John Brennan Tells Everyone What He Says Others Said Emptywheel 12/16/2016.

Thomas Wright makes a stab at sorting out the major strains of foreign policy thought in the assembling Trump Family Business Administration foreign policy team in Trump’s team of rivals, riven by distrust Brookings Institute 12/15/2016. "Though Trump’s own foreign-policy views are captured by his “America First” slogan, his administration will be split between three national security factions — the America Firsters, the religious warriors, and the traditionalists — each of which distrusts the others but also needs them to check the third," he writes.

Additional reading and listening:

• David Atkins, What Did Donald Trump Know, and When Did He Know It? Political Animal 12/17/2016 ("If anyone in the Republican firmament had knowledge of Russia’s efforts and aided and abetted them in any way, it would be a scandal orders of magnitude worse than Watergate.")
• Juan Cole, Demonization of Putin as “Personally” behind Clinton Hack is old Propaganda Technique Informed Comment 12/16/2016
• Andrea Germanos, Amid Finger Pointing at Russia, US Brings Tanks Back to Cold War Depot Common Dreams 12/16/2016
• Michelle Goldberg, This Time, Obama’s Calm in a Crisis Isn't Helping Slate 12/16/2016
• Fred Kaplan, How the U.S. Could Respond to Russia’s Hacking Slate 12/12/2016
• David Priess, There's a striking commonality between Trump and Nixon Business Insider 12/17/2016
• Whistleblower John Kiriakou Critiques the CIA’s Behavior Following the 2016 U.S. Election Truthdig 12/16/2016

Trump/Russia, Friday morning

Obama is concentrating a lot of his attention during his last weeks in office on the Russian hacking issue. Julian Borger reports in Barack Obama promises retaliation against Russia over hacking during US election 12/16/2016:

In an interview on National Public Radio on Friday morning, the US president said he is waiting for a final report he has ordered into a range of Russian hacking attacks, but promised there would be a response.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action,” Obama said. “And we will – at a time and place of our own choosing.

“Some of it may be explicit and publicised; some of it may not be.” ...

Obama said he would reserve judgment on Moscow’s intentions pending a final report but he said the impact of the intervention was clear. The debate over motivation, he said “does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately – that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign”.

He added: “There’s no doubt that it contributed to an atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time were Hillary’s emails, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC.”

That last claim highlights the excuse-making value for the Democratic establishment that the Russian hacking provides.

It's also notable that Obama's new comment makes Biden's November statement on retaliation look somewhat less definitive than it sounded at the time.

George Beebe cautions about facile conclusions in Russia’s Role in the US Elections: The Case for Caution The National Interest 12/16/2016:

On the surface, the case against Moscow is intuitively obvious. Information detrimental to Hillary Clinton was clearly stolen from Democratic National Committee and other sensitive computer servers and then leaked to the media. Forensic data traceable to Russia were found in the intrusions. The operations were consistent with cyber techniques that Russia has used repeatedly in the past against both the US and other countries, and Moscow had an undeniable preference for one candidate over the other in the election.

The conclusion that Russia hacked its way toward a Trump victory is no slam dunk, however, despite its plausibility. Although the Intelligence Community has not published its evidence or analysis regarding this case, the analytic lessons learned from post-mortem reviews of the Iraq WMD failure argue for approaching the matter with a great deal of caution. Applying these lessons to the case of the election intrusions – an analytic “pre-mortem,” so to speak – is one of the best means of ensuring that we do not fall into the same cognitive traps.

Among his cautionary reminders is, "Cyber operations rarely feature the equivalent of fingerprints or DNA evidence." And, "Attempting to understand – not justify – the perspectives of the Russians is particularly important in light of press reports that the US is considering possible retaliatory steps against Moscow."

Robert Perry makes a point that, it's important to recognize, is nevertheless compatabile with the view that Russia intervened in the American Presidential election in a way that indicates the need for some sort of reltaliatory action by the US (Making Russia ‘The Enemy’ Consortium News 12/16/2016):

The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex’s transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment.

By hyping the Russian “threat,” the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, who include much of the mainstream U.S. news media, can guarantee bigger military budgets from Congress. The hype also sets in motion a blocking maneuver to impinge on any significant change in direction for U.S. foreign policy under Trump.

This is also a reasonable observation by Perry:

All of this maneuvering also is delaying the Democratic Party’s self-examination into why it lost so many white working-class voters in normally Democratic strongholds, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Rather than national party leaders taking the blame for pre-selecting a very flawed candidate and ignoring all the warning signs about the public’s resistance to this establishment choice, Democrats have pointed fingers at almost everyone else – from FBI Director James Comey for briefly reviving Clinton’s email investigation, to third-party candidates who siphoned off votes, to the archaic Electoral College which negates the fact that Clinton did win the national popular vote – and now to the Russians.

While there may be some validity to these various complaints, the excessive frenzy that has surrounded the still-unproven claims that the Russian government surreptitiously tilted the election in Trump’s favor creates an especially dangerous dynamic.

He further formulates the point like this, "Democrats now are excitedly joining the bash-Russia movement, making it harder to envision how the party can transition back into its more recent role as the 'peace party' (at least relative to the extremely hawkish Republicans)."

There is a tendency in some of the left commentary I've seen and heard to assume that Trump will try to improve relations with Moscow. I think that's highly likely. And it's a given that the Trump Family Business Administration's decision-making on Russia and elsewhere will be heavily influenced by considerations of further enriching Trump's private business and brand. But between contradictory impulses and lack of governmental competence on the part of the Trump team, it's hard to guess what their Russia policy will turn out to be at this point. And, of course, it also depends on how the Russian government acts and reacts in the coming months and years.

And, on the use of the Russian hacking issues to slime critics of US foreign policy: Russia Expert Stephen Cohen: New York Times Stokes a New McCarthyism Against Critics of U.S. Policy Truthdig 12/15/2016; What's Next for U.S.-Russia Relations? Stephen Cohen & Ken Roth on Trump, Hacking & Tillerson Democracy Now! 12/14/2016; Bill Boyarsky, Investigation Into ‘PropOrNot Blacklist Case’ Finds Shoddy Methods and an Ominous Potential Truthdig 12/15/2016