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