Trump, Putin and the Hidden History of Russian Election influence…
Hopefully everyone has had their laughs regarding the more salacious allegations in the CNN, Buzzfeed intel disclosure.
Newsweek has just published a follow-up that details (again, unverified) Russia’s alleged goals sought via their participation, and the far more grave consequences should any of this prove to be true.
One of the more illuminating sections:
The hacking campaign, according to this analysis, was designed to split the Democratic Party so that as president, Clinton would have to spend enormous amounts of time dealing with domestic discord driven by Republicans and progressives tricked into believing that the Democratic National Committee had rigged her nomination. For example, as part of the campaign, Russian hackers obtained emails from the DNC that were then sliced into small bits and put out on the internet through participants in the propaganda effort. In many of these instances, the real documents were misrepresented. For example, WikiLeaks released a number of May 2016 emails on the eve of the Democratic convention that made it appear as if the DNC was solely pulling for Clinton; in many online postings, the date was removed so readers would have no idea unless they searched for the original document that was written at a time when Sanders could not possibly have won the nomination.
Either way, some Western European intelligence agencies have concluded, Putin’s larger goal is to damage NATO so the allied nations would be less likely to interfere either in Russia’s domestic affairs and less capable of responding to the Kremlin’s military campaigns or cyberattacks on neighboring nations.
Read the entire piece. Again, if proven to be true, this is the pinnacle of effective espionage and political willpower — and a mortal crack in the crystal shroud of our perceived exceptionalism.