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Were Russian Hackers Deterred From Interfering In America's Election? (omaha.com)
"Despite probing and trolling, a Russian cyberattack is the dog that did not bark in Tuesday's midterm elections," writes national security columnist Eli Lake.
This is the assessment of the Department of Homeland Security, which says there were no signs of a coordinated campaign to disrupt U.S. voting. This welcome news raises a relevant and important question: Were cyber adversaries actually deterred from infiltrating voter databases and changing election results...?
In September the White House unveiled a new policy aimed at deterring Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from hacking U.S. computer networks in general and the midterms in particular. National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms. U.S. officials tell me much more is going on that remains classified. It is part of a new approach from the Trump administration that purports to unleash U.S. Cyber Command to hack the hackers back, to fight them in their networks as opposed to America's.
Bolton has said the policy reverses previous restrictions on military hackers to disrupt the networks from which rival powers attack the U.S. Sometimes this is called "persistent engagement" or "defend forward." And it represents a shift in the broader U.S. approach to engaging adversaries in cyberspace.... The difference now is that America's cyber warriors will routinely try to disrupt cyberattacks before they begin... The object of cyberdeterrence is not to get an adversary to never use cyberweapons. It's to prevent attacks of certain critical systems such as voter registration databases, electrical grids and missile command-and-control systems. The theory, at least, is to force adversaries to devote resources they would otherwise use to attack the U.S. to better secure their own networks.
Jason Healey, a historian of cyber conflicts at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs, asks "How much of cyberspace will survive the war?" warning that "persistent engagement" could lead to a dangerous miscalculation by an adversarial nation-state -- or even worse, a spiral of escalation, with other state's following America's lead, changing the open Internet into more of a battleground.
In September the White House unveiled a new policy aimed at deterring Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from hacking U.S. computer networks in general and the midterms in particular. National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms. U.S. officials tell me much more is going on that remains classified. It is part of a new approach from the Trump administration that purports to unleash U.S. Cyber Command to hack the hackers back, to fight them in their networks as opposed to America's.
Bolton has said the policy reverses previous restrictions on military hackers to disrupt the networks from which rival powers attack the U.S. Sometimes this is called "persistent engagement" or "defend forward." And it represents a shift in the broader U.S. approach to engaging adversaries in cyberspace.... The difference now is that America's cyber warriors will routinely try to disrupt cyberattacks before they begin... The object of cyberdeterrence is not to get an adversary to never use cyberweapons. It's to prevent attacks of certain critical systems such as voter registration databases, electrical grids and missile command-and-control systems. The theory, at least, is to force adversaries to devote resources they would otherwise use to attack the U.S. to better secure their own networks.
Jason Healey, a historian of cyber conflicts at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs, asks "How much of cyberspace will survive the war?" warning that "persistent engagement" could lead to a dangerous miscalculation by an adversarial nation-state -- or even worse, a spiral of escalation, with other state's following America's lead, changing the open Internet into more of a battleground.
National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms.
Clearly, Russian trolls' and military hackers' personal kryptonite is US government pop-ups and direct warning messages.... Just the one question: why did we wait until this election cycle to break out the big guns?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Russia had no significant motivation to hack the midterm elections. They're not republicans. They supported Trump to a degree as a practical matter because they have a degree of hold over him. Their ad buys have mostly been centered around stirring up hatred between Americans via conspiracy theories, not about supporting one party or the other. A split government is really the best for them. All that matters is that we keep attacking each other until we're not longer a threat to them.
To be clear, I don't begrudge Russia for it considering how much worse the CIA has done around the world. It's not like they're going after an innocent nation. What Russia is doing is simply trying to weaken a nation which has insisted on making a mission of prying satellite states out of Russia's sphere of influence and promoting democracy to Russia itself. If the USA didn't make a career of threatening Russia, it wouldn't be targeted.
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First we are said without proof that Russians made the 2016 presidential elections. Then we are told without proof that they were stopped from influencing the 2018 midterm elections.
Alternative explanation: Russians try to influence all US elections with negligible impact, and democrats lost in 2016 because they chose the wrong candidate.