CIA says Russia influenced US election to help Trump win

That's very true, I misphrased what I meant. I'm mostly annoyed that Trump has passed this off as propaganda from the Clinton campaign - even though its just from a Russian IP address there is still clearly cause for investigation. Trump needs to set aside his ego and look into this.

I may have missed more recent developments in this btw so feel free to ignore me.

 

It's hard to take any information seriously that the CIA or FBI gives us anymore, we all know they are in the pocket of Hilary and have been for a while.

 

I think it's perfectly healthy to distrust presented evidence. I could easily talk about how how expert/official 'facts' an prediction is biased and misrepresented. But, to then inflict your own bias on it as - this is Hilary, this is the left, seems like you are playing into the same game.


I don't think this is a matter of right and left (is and them) and you should look beyond that.

 

My thoughts:

The left stages protests, calls for recounts, wants to do away with the electoral college, wants the electors to not vote the way their state voted, and accuses Trump of working with the Russians to rig the election. Why on earth would trump and co be in campaign mode?

 

I KNEW IT.

 

More or less used that as an example as to why I don't trust them, everyone has their own reasons.

 

I don't know why, but this seemed appropriate:

 

you mean they want the electoral college to vote in proportion to the way their state voted?

You see red voters in blue states and blue voters in red states and have decided they should not have equal say, that is horrible, but then you are a horrible person.

 

Anyway, to take this thread a bit more seriously, much as I love seeing people post pictures of dogs...

To answer Sok's original post:

First:

The content of the influence isn't "bad" I don't think, and more transparency* is good. The issue is with the method. The UN (for the first time ever) stated a preference, many in the EU stated their preferences, all of these are attempts to influence the election. But, so far as I know, none of them have broken laws or compromised US or a private citizens' security to access private data to do so. That is, of course, not counting the possible donations to the Clinton campaign that some of the Wikileaks emails have allegedly referenced, but those aren't yet verified to my knowledge.

Depending on whether you view Soros as a foreigner acting from "outside" of the US, you could argue his attempts at influence are suspect, with Project Veritas showing people admitting to inciting to riot (though not necessarily directly under DNC or Soros' orders, Soros did proclaim it a "victory" when "protests" got so out of hand at least one of Trump's planned rallies needed to be canceled).

They've stated their opinion, as Putin has irrespective of whether or not Russia was actually behind the hacks.

Second:

I don't know. I left my time machine in my other pants, and anyway the timey-wimey bits are inert.

Yes, I just crossed a Dr. Who and a DBZ references. Deal with it.

I think at the very least it impacted the Clinton campaign strategy for timing. It seems clear to me that various releases, such as the "kitty-cat" grab remark video were issued mostly just after a new email dump release by Wikileaks, likely to serve as distractions. In the long term, it hurt what little credibility CNN still had as well, with them having their reporters claiming it was "illegal" to look at the Wikileaks documents yourself but they could because they are "special" since they are "journalists." Granted, the much later "did CNN broadcast porn?" hoax probably did far more damage, among other issues, so this is relatively minor.

Still, it's relevant to the campaign since it seemed that CNN was pulling to the left rather hard with much of it's commentary (though certainly not all).

I'm not sure if the Wikileaks documents really convinced anyone, or if it just made people that much more inclined to believe she was bad news if they already believed it, on the other side people (understandably) dismissed it as unverified and possibly manipulated at least in part (I'm sure Clinton and Podesta heartily agree that all the parts that make them look bad were clearly fabrications and all the parts that make them look good were just put in their to lead credence to the fabrications).


Third:

There are a couple of reasons that Russia would want Trump in office over HRC.

1. Trump is advocating peaceful cooperation in hunting down a common enemy: ISIS. The current administration, and Clinton, have been pushing for much more aggressive action against Russia and Syria, supporting a one-sided "no-fly" zone in Syria for example, which essentially means that NATO/US would have complete control of the air-space in that nation, something considered an act of war against both Russia and Syria.

2. Trump is advocating an "America first" agenda, and more importantly to refocus inward on building up the US rather than spending resources trying to make nice with other nations or force nations to make nice with us via regime change. This doesn't mean necessarily stepping down military actions, but it could mean not further expanding them. This could allow Russia to operate abroad more freely, acting as the world police in place of the US or NATO.

3. Trump is far less likely to willingly support Turkey, which has also had issues with Russia, and recently declared a de facto war against Assad in Syria. Turkey is still part of NATO (at least for now, it's been having political issues with many in the EU and has had internal issues with an attempted coup, etc.), but at the very least a Trump administration is less likely to commit resources to support an offensive war waged by Turkey (or other NATO members) against Syria and/or Russia.


Fourth:

I don't know. All we have at present is the word of whomever the Washington Post allegedly spoke with that was there for the briefing.

The way I see it, there are four possibility:

1. The CIA is blaming Russia because it has proper evidence beyond a mere IP adress that can't be publicly shown due to reasons of national security, at least at this time. I've always hated that excuse, but it would probably be legit.

2. The CIA is blaming Russia because it doesn't know whom else to blame, and others already pointed the finger at them. Sort of like what happened with Iraq's WMDs. "They say they have them? Uh, yeah, sure, I guess so." Rather than "They say they have them? We still don't have any way to verify that one way or another." A means of covering, ostensibly, their own incompetence.

3. The CIA is blaming Russia because it DOES know whom is to blame, but doesn't want to blame them. Especially if, as many foreign ambassadors, several retired ("retired"?) intelligence officers have claimed, the source is internal to US intelligence. It would make less sense to blame Russia to the President and those present at the secret briefing, but if they had counted on it being "leaked" to the public it could still fit. It covers any potential governmental instability (if members of US intel are leaking DNC emails for the purpose of shaping the election, that could be considered a soft coup in it's own way); it would also slighly raise credibility of the documents in question if it were an internal leak rather than any other option. In the case of foreign powers shifting blame can still allow for responses from behind the scenes while not overly harming relations publicly (except with Russia of course). In the case of a "lone" hacker blaming a national power covers up the weakness in security that would allow for that.

4. The Post is fabricating the story. That seems unlikely, even compared to the CIA fabricating the story, at least to me. Too risky, too easy for it to get blown out of the water. The last thing a newspaper really wants to do is piss off its readers, Russia, and the federal government.


In all cases, blaming Russia can do several things.

It pushes the narrative of the need to censor "fake new" and "foreign propaganda" (which the Republican Congress, which has ostensibly benefited from so-called "fake news" in this election, seems more than happy to try and censor, because really, who needs a 1st Amendment?) Something that parts of the EUC, China (which incidentally has at least made an attempt at buying Hollywood, all of it, recently), and others have also been pushing for... in-spite of (where applicable) their own censorship programs they seem to feel the need to force everyone else to abide by them.

It can potentially justify further attempts to overturn the election results. Even if the impact of the Wikileaks documents can't be measured, it can be an excuse. Even if, thus far, the recount efforts in Wisconsin and other states have actually favored Trump, people believed strongly enough in the effort and the possibility of fraud in Trump's favor to try and get them done, so people might wish to jump back onto this as another excuse to reject the election results.

It could also push for cyber or other intelligence-based attacks on Russia itself; or provide the groundwork for the makings of another cold or even, in the worst case (IMO*), physical war.

Though whether any or all of these are intentional effects is a separate issue.


*(There may be a time where war with Russia is needed, but I'd hope, if that time every has the misfortune of arriving, it would not be off the back of something like this.)


Just my loosely disorganized thoughts on the matter.

 

you should probably pace yourself Gressen. 8 years is a long time and if you don't slow down your tears will run out of salt.

 

I am not crying I am laughing hard
it's telling that you are still crying about it though.

 

BTW, still have not heard a single Dem operative focus her/his energy on claiming that the emails contained false information. Further tidbits to follow.

 

@DarkJello It's called "Ignore and hope it goes away". I used to use this to great effect when I was supposed to wash dishes at home.

 

Your "loosely disorganized thoughts" are at least a few light years ahead of almost every MuriKan journalist now living. I could NOT have summed it up better.

 

Last I heard there were found to be no ties between Trump's campaign and the Russian government. I'm not sure if that includes the banks or not (in other words, whether that potential connection was thrown out or not); but that's what FBI investigations came forward with. This was from several weeks ago however so I don't know if new stuff came up from the investigations after that.

In any event, there being a split in the opinions of the FBI and CIA seems to me to support the idea that the DNC "hack" was actually an internal intelligence leak, though obviously it's not conclusive. It's entirely possible that the CIA and/or FBI have evidence to support one way or another and aren't sharing intelligence on the matter, and thus have legitimate disagreements due to different information pools.