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How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers For Its Cyberwar (nypost.com)
Lasrick quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source): For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia's criminal underworld for potential talent. From the New York Post: "Russia's Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakta, the country's most popular social media site, to lure those who were more talented with a keyboard than an AK-47 rifle. 'If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,' the ad promised, according to the Times. The ad went on to assure recruits that they would be part of units called science squadrons based at military installations where they would live in 'comfortable accommodation' and showed an apartment outfitted with a washing machine, the Times reported. The Defense Ministry even dangled the chance to dodge Russia's mandatory draft by allowing university students to join a science squadron instead and then questioned them about their proficiency with programming languages, the report said."
A country that regularly invades other country to force a change in government gets its panties in a twist over a theory that someone might have taken an interest in their election. The US does this all the time.
That's just not true. More often than not, there's no invasion, instead of group of puppet opponents are trained and funded by the USA. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, Zaire/Congo, Cuba, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Uruguay, Guatemala. Probably many others.
lucm, indeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
lucm, indeed.
I have no reason not to believe that the NSA and other government agencies recruit top talent in important fields from college, and I would expect agencies from other countries to recruit top talent in important fields from their colleges.
They certainly try, but there remain a number of factors in the Russian society that make the recruitment offer in Russia more attractive to Russian graduates than similar offers are to American or European graduates:
1. Military service is still mandatory in Russia, even for college graduates. I know this because several teaching assistants in my computer science classes here in the United States were from Russia and told me that a major attraction of studying abroad as graduate students was the opportunity to defer or avoid the mandatory military service back home. In the United States, military service has not been mandatory since the late 1970s and the jobs available to computer science and other STEM graduates are generally much more attractive than anything on offer from the US government or the military. Some of the European countries still have mandatory military service, but European armed forces are generally small and poorly funded which makes them less able and willing to make attractive offers to high skill graduates. So, a chance to satisfy the mandatory service requirement in relative comfort and with higher pay has the potential to be very attractive to a Russian graduate in Russia.
2. The private sector in Russia is nothing like what it is here in the United States or Europe. The opportunities are much poorer and therefore less attractive compared with a government position. Especially one that provides benefits that are hard to get and expensive in Russia, particularly for young people, like decent and affordable housing in and around the Moscow area.
3. The sorts of skills that one learns hacking on behalf of the Russian government are not the sort of things that one can easily learn in school or working for a legitimate American or European business. These skills can be lucrative in the criminal networks and Russia has generally shown a willingness to give the United States and Europe the middle finger when it comes to cooperation in law enforcement among other things. This makes hacking for a living, mostly with impunity, a much more viable career path in Russia than it is in the more law abiding countries of Europe or especially here in the United States where not only is hacking frowned upon, but as Aaron Swartz discovered, severely punished.
Time 1996: Yanks to the rescue. The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win
In the end the Russian people chose--and chose decisively--to reject the past. Voting in the final round of the presidential election last week, they preferred Boris Yeltsin to his Communist rival Gennadi Zyuganov by a margin of 13 percentage points. He is far from the ideal democrat or reformer, and his lieutenants Victor Chernomyrdin and Alexander Lebed are already squabbling over power, but Yeltsin is arguably the best hope Russia has for moving toward pluralism and an open economy. By re-electing him, the Russians defied predictions that they might willingly resubmit themselves to communist rule.
The outcome was by no means inevitable. Last winter Yeltsin's approval ratings were in the single digits. There are many reasons for his change in fortune, but a crucial one has remained a secret. For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign. Here is the inside story of how these advisers helped Yeltsin achieve the victory that will keep reform in Russia alive.
Focus on the bold texts, how nice the good guys Time preferred to describe, compare to:
Time 2016: Russia Wants to Undermine Faith in the US Election Don't Fall for It
Since the spring, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have seen mounting evidence of an active Russian influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential election...., undermining faith in the result and in democracy itself.
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Russia’s interference in the U.S. election is an extraordinary escalation of an already worrying trend.
in Trump, Putin has found an almost perfect, if unwitting, ally for his influence operation.
A country that regularly invades other country to force a change in government gets its panties in a twist over a theory that someone might have taken an interest in their election. The US does this all the time.
Are you seriously pointing at the USA's habit of invading other countries in an attempt to make Russia look like an Boy Scout? Russia has it's own record of invading other countries, installing puppet governments, committing atrocities and imposing a regime of oppression that makes the Americans look like rank amateurs. Just ask the nations of Eastern Europe how much they enjoyed half a century of Russian imposed communism and how much they are looking forward to enjoying a repeat of that experience if Putin succeeds in disassembling NATO and rebuilding the Soviet empire. If I have to choose between living under US Imperial hegemony or Russian kleptocratic tyranny I'll choose the Americans every damn time, even when they, are dumb enough to elect a narcissistic moron with a bad orange comb over and an over active Twitter account who seems to be hell bent on provoking a trade war with China.