WaPo reports on Russian attempts to influence, or even usurp, the U.S. citizenry:
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.
The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.
The article goes on to concentrate on the upcoming elections with attention to vulnerabilities in computer election systems as well as the use of filched data to sway voters.
While this is all worrying, I have to wonder if they’re missing the bigger strategy: the use of subtle cyber strategies, people, leaks (including contaminated leaks, by which I mean a leak of filched information is then subtly modified for some end of the criminal, be it individual or state-level). There is a certain level of distrust of government at all levels that is quite beyond what it should be, in my mind. Granted, this is the height of subjectivity, but honestly the paranoia about government, from UFOs to Jade Helm 15 to the paranoid fantasies of the gun lobby has started me wondering whether the Russian (and Chinese?) goals are not so much to disrupt elections and the economy so much as to make us distrust our own institutions, until we’re willing to abandon proven leaders for walking shams (read Clinton and Trump, respectively). The puzzling behaviors of certain institutions, such as the NRA, the GOP, anti-abortion groups, anti-science groups such as the Discovery Institute – are they really just Americans with honestly acquired lunatic fringe opinions, or are they subtly influenced into paranoia and distrust by contaminated information distributed by enemies of liberal democracies?
Given how badly Russia has suffered from the precipitous decline in oil prices over the last few years, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Russia was involved in such an effort. At one time a superpower, no doubt the Russian leadership would prefer to ascend back to the heights of world domination, as illustrated by their recent contention with Ukraine.
But it could be any of a number of actors, requiring subtlety and determination. Or it could be no one but my paranoid imagination.
