Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Pretty Clear GRU's Goal Was To Weaken a Future Clinton Presidency, Former Facebook CSO Says (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt tech conference this week, former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos reflected on his time dealing with fake news and Russian intelligence interference ahead and after the 2016 US presidential election. From a report: The former Facebook security head said "it [was] pretty clear the GRU's goal was to weaken a future Hillary presidency. Putin has a [you know, it's been well-documented] like a personal antipathy towards her and believes that she was behind the protests against him in the 2012 Russian election, and so, the GRU activity was specifically focused on weakening her."

"I think it was less about actually electing Trump," Stamos added. "I find it unlikely that the Russians are better than Nate Silver at predicting elections." What kind of attacks could we expect in the near future? Per Stamos, "Throwing an election one way or another is going to be very difficult for a foreign adversary but throwing any election into chaos is totally doable right now."

24 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Read another way... by Zorro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Install a weak president.

    1. Re:Read another way... by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Read another way... Install a weak president.

      No, help to make sure a weakened president was elected. Hillary Clinton getting elected was a foregone conclusion for everyone but a statistics guy inside the Trump campaign, maybe Ann Coulter, and a few others. Every foreign government was saying it out loud, every media outlet in the US was sure of it, every academic expert was convinced of it. The Russians were taking steps to turn her taking power into something more suited to their taste: make it as awful for her as possible, making her as ineffective (at blunting Putin's aspirations) as possible. Another hint that was the case: the Russian actions altered tone, pace, and targets the moment she lost. They didn't want Trump as president, they wanted known-to-be-corrupt, feckless person like Clinton - someone whose family they had already enriched and who exhibited a taste for cashing in on Russian and similar engagement from other nasty types.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    2. Re: Read another way... by kenh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Think this through - Putin & friends were able to thwart the election for abut $100K in ads, and Hillary with her $1BN budget couldn't overcome that influence/meddling?

      Serious question - what was the last US presidential election the Russians *didn't* meddle in?

      --
      Ken
    3. Re:Read another way... by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't think they wanted Clinton either. A lot of her actions as Secretary of State were quite opposed to what Russia was doing and it's likely that she would have been willing to step that up and increase U.S. intervention in Syria and the other proxy conflicts that the U.S. and Russia are engaged in. That isn't to say they liked Trump or wanted him to win. As you point out, they, like most others, were probably sure that wasn't a real possibility based on the data. I suspect that they were ambivalent about him, or perhaps they were indifferent towards him.

      I think that Trump also fits quite well into the known-to-be-corrupt, feckless category just as well as Clinton (or most other politicians for that matter) so they knew that they wouldn't have a problem dealing with Trump either. He's in real estate and has enough history prior to his foray into politics to leave them comfortable in that assessment.

      My guess is that if Clinton were elected, she would similarly beleaguered at this point in her presidency. As much as you might like to argue that the media would be on her side, they also like blood in the water.

    4. Re:Read another way... by avandesande · · Score: 4, Informative

      no shit- they are getting their money back in spades over the russian meddling hysteria/trump presidency

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    5. Re: Read another way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
      No, more accurately, Trump won because of the majority of people, who disliked both candidates, a small fraction disliked Trump slightly less than they disliked Clinton.

      When elected, Trump was the most disliked president elect in history. If Clinton had been elected, she would also have been the most disliked president elect in history.

    6. Re: Read another way... by XXongo · · Score: 5, Informative

      But if the foreign influence was "pretty clear" before the elections why exactly is this chief security officer not an accomplice of the GRU?

      If you read the actual article, he says that the extent of Russian interference was not clear until after the elections.

      In fact, the article itself is pretty interesting-- the speculation about Russian motivation is the least important part; the talk about what they did and how they did what they did is more interesting.

    7. Re: Read another way... by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, please.

      Firstly, that's the ads that Facebook found. There may be far more that Facebook did not identify.

      But the ads were a tiny part of Russia's campaign. Russia used troll farms to influence people though cost-free posts.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    8. Re: Read another way... by SirSlud · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's why there are laws in electoral advertising.When you don't have to be transparent, advertising can be far more effective/manipulative.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    9. Re:Read another way... by Targon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hillary is universally hated by virtually every Republican, and disliked by a good percentage of the Democrats. Then you have those who are not in either party but tend to vote for one party over the other, and THOSE tended to dislike Hillary a lot as well. The best way to avoid foreign interference is to have candidates who people want to see as president, rather than candidates who are only seen as slightly better than the other(depending on your perspective). Clinton vs. Trump, neither one should have been allowed anywhere near the White House!

    10. Re: Read another way... by AlanObject · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hillary was torpedoed by Comey. Had that not happened the Russian interference would not have mattered except to elect more Republicans to congress perhaps. Which is what they wanted.

    11. Re: Read another way... by Deathlizard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be fair, there was probably a lot more money thrown around for Russian meddling, but thats beside the point.

      The main reason Hillary lost is because she was literally the worst candidate the DNC could've chose. Back when she announced her candidacy in 2015 I posted this which listed all of her past scandals, and that you had better choices, even on the democrat side

      After the Access Hollywood scandal, Trump should've been done. Period. Any other candidate would have been sunk, and Trump would've lost to any other candidate running against him. The difference is that he was running against Hillary, and all he had to do was divert people's attention away from the scandal by addressing the issue once, and then going back to his core voter issues while Hillary spun in circles trying to capitalize on the scandal instead of focusing on her core voter issues.

      From my experience in this election, I can tell you that Trump was resonating with voters. I live in the rust belt (More Specifically North East Ohio, Western PA) where there is a ton of Democrat support. Almost all of the people I knew that traditionally voted Democrat were voting Trump, including my Grandfather, who was a WWII vet, a Retired Union leader who worked in the Railroad Business, and Voted straight Democrat except for Eisenhower. When I asked him why, he said he was the first Candidate he saw in decades that gets that Free Trade and especially Steel Dumping is killing heavy industry in this country and he felt he was the only candidate to actually fix it instead of talking about fixing it. Most of the other voters had similar reasons. Here on Slashdot, it was the H1B issue drawing voters since he was against it (but as of this post still hasn't done anything about it, which is going to hurt him come November)

      Surprisingly, Almost no one I asked that went from voting Democrat to Trump voted for him because of Hillary Scandals or "Crooked Hillary" or any anti Hillary message that you commonly saw with these Russian troll ads. They voted for Trump cause They liked Trump's stance on issues (particularly anti free trade) vs Hillary. Many of them also like Sanders over Hillary because of the same issues and reasons, since many of Sanders issues were similar to Trump when it came to Jobs. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that Sanders would be in the White House if he won the nomination.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
    12. Re: Read another way... by DamnOregonian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't appear that way at all. Putin says it happened. He says it because there were protests, and because the US Government's media mouthpieces supported those protests.

      There were protests this year too. Did Trump cause them? Or better, Trump's secretary of state?

      A dictator who runs rigged elections blames popular protests on old-timey mortal enemy. News at fucking 11.

  2. chaos? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    but throwing any election into chaos is totally doable right now."

    "Chaos"?

    First of all, we would know that how, lol? Aren't they all chaos?

    In any case, real elections are "chaos" ... in real elections there's real potential for the voters to actually choose something different, whether the elites like it or not.

    That feels like "chaos" to the people who think that only one party should rule and that any other parties are to be kept around only for appearances sake.

  3. 2 years later... by TimMD909 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... And there's still a ridiculous amount of derangement. Hilldog was a bad candidate who few outside the far left liked. She was caught meddling in her own party's process to boot Bernie. She tried pretending that destroying evidence on her personal email server was an innocent mistake. Worst of all, she pretended to be a saint when she is definitely not. That wolf in sheeps clothing never sat well with me. Look up Hitchens thoughts on her for more things to be unsettled about. Now 2 years later, uncountable hours have gone into trying to shift the blame. When will the Dems admit it was a mistake to have her as the candidate?

    1. Re:2 years later... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hilldog was a bad candidate who few outside the far left liked.

      What on Earth are you talking about? Clinton was loved by Centrists and the Establishment Right. It was everyone to the left of that, moderate to "far" (is there such a thing in the US?) left, that wanted a better candidate.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  4. Re:Clinton Meddling by avandesande · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does the concept of 'blowback' matter, ie that the USA might actually be responsible for some of the bad things that happen to it? Would Hillary have been a stronger candidate if she had not taken part in globalist 'nation-building' activities?

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  5. Re:Clinton Meddling by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because when you fuck with people, they often have the desire to fuck with you right back. Preferably in the exact same way you did to them. This is typically known as "the cycle of violence".

    For example, did you know the US meddled in the 1996 Russian election to get Yeltsin re-elected? It's absolutely true, a lot of people were proud of it at the time and it wasn't a secret. He was in fifth place with ratings in the single digits before the Americans got involved. This was disastrous for Russia, as the oligarchs and Western neo-liberal economists made a mess of things. This started the chain of events that led directly to Putin seizing power four years later. Action, reaction.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  6. A campaign to damage America, not to elect Trump by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Both sides spent roughly a billion dollars on their campaigns.

    The closer an election is, the more a small effect will tip the result. The 2016 election turned out to tilt on 80,000 votes in three states, a very small margin in an election in which 57.6 million people voted.

    The Russian campaign contributions had a significant advantage; they didn't even have a need to pretend to truth or accuracy or morality. They were aiming for disruption of America by any means necessary, with no concern for collateral damage.

    (and note that your figure of "$100K in ads" is the documented part of the advertising budget for their interference-- we don't have any idea of the full extent of it, but that is only the barest tip of the iceberg, not even including the money spent on trolls and fake grass-roots organizations. The full extent was a lot higher than that, and we have no idea how much higher.)

  7. Re:Clinton Meddling by KalvinB · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

    Yes, she did.

    --
    Work Safe Porn
  8. National turmoil by MikeMo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're not only creating election turmoil, they're amplifying and exploiting the issues we have in this country. I believe they are partly to blame for all the left-right anger and hate.

  9. Re:A campaign to damage America, not to elect Trum by sexconker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Both sides spent roughly a billion dollars on their campaigns.

    False. Hillary's campaign cost about double what Trump's did. And that ignores all the backdoor bullshit with the media, the DNC, and the Clinton Foundation.

  10. Re:A campaign to damage America, not to elect Trum by merky1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So the callousness in which you treat the general population is quite amazing. If the two candidates where identical, you might be right. But this was black vs. white. There was no common ground between the two. If you are saying that 100K of advertising is all it takes to tip someone from black to white, then our "election" process is beyond repair. Really, people made the opinion early on, and disregarded information based on their bias.

    This fantasy world that people live in where obviously the Russians are the ONLY reason Trump is president is amazing. Admitting Hillary was a flawed candidate would really help the democrats swing centrists, but instead they prefer to go off the rails.

    --
    --WooooHoooo--
  11. Re: A campaign to damage America, not to elect Tru by ilguido · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On top of that the vast majority of the media companies endorsed Hillary Clinton. 500 newspapers endorsed Hillary Clinton, while only 28 endorsed Trump and an additional 30 newspapers, including USA Today, were outright against Trump.

    But the big question is: why did the GRU know where to spend their (up to) $100,000 (including post electoral expenditures), while Hillary Clinton and her staff did not? Probably because it is all an excuse for a very poor performance, after all the money she spent and all the media support she gained.