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In Soviet Russia, Election Hacks YOU
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
So hey, the CIA and the FBI are getting into a slap fight over whether Russia definitely hacked DNC and RNC servers to get Trump elected and throw our political system into disarray, or whether they probably hacked DNC and RNC servers to get Trump elected and throw our political system into disarray.
Let us talk about our grim, dystopian future in here, instead of in the Trump thread.
Let us talk about our grim, dystopian future in here, instead of in the Trump thread.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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1. Did forign agents interefere in 2016 to any degree? Because if the answer is anything other then 100% no you need to go to point 2:
2. How do you prevent this from occuring ever again?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
It's beautiful.
We now live in a cyberpunk dystopia.
And it sure sucks.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Even if it was rigged are we going to go all take backsies on Trump ripping the bible away from him on inauguration day?
So many questions and horrors to wake up to.
'Backsies', as it were, is an extreme measure. It might be on the table in a Democrat super-majority. We don't have that.
Best guess, some people will talk tough, make some sort of do-nothing bill to 'prevent this in the future', but nothing will really change. There just won't be the political will for it.
Honestly short of a leaked tape where Donald himself declares allegiance to Putin and vows to destroy America... not much could reverse course on the administration. Best use of this revelation is to give opposition politicians (GOP included) something to rally around when resisting the Trump Agenda.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
We've been in one for a while
http://thehill.com/homenews/309897-bolton-questions-if-russian-hacks-were-false-flag
Unfortunately, 2016 is not the year of sanity
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
This is basically the one possible good thing we have going for us wrt to this issue. There's a good number of high-level Republicans who really fucking hate Russia.
"Hate" is not the right word. Rather "aware of the potential dangers that Russia poses, and the path it appears to be headed down" is more apt.
Repubs are fucking cowards. I would not let my hope lie with them.
Nah, many of these guys are basically Cold Warriors who are actively antagonistic to Russia at every turn.
Yet, the silence from them about this is deafening.
Party over country, after all.
Depends on how large and influential Comey's faction is, and since Trump won speaking out would be a poor career move.
Trump likes the FBI, they helped him be president.
That said, Comey must feel awkward since I haven't heard him being up for promotion or face time with Trump. He didn't learn from Chris Christie.
Dude, this isn't even a whole page after someone posted this:
They are speaking up about it.
Speaking up is good, but what are they going to do about this? This is not an event which can be allowed to shake their heads and move on. This has terrible consequences for the country in the short and long term.
The thing is theres no option to prosecute here; if they come out and say "it's reasonable to assume" it doesn't change anything about the election unless they can confirm that russia was actively interfering with the voting process as opposed to shit disturbing for months on end.
Furthermore, my eyebrow is arching so hard it threatens to tear itself free of my skull at the notion that Comey feels he can't make a statement without 100% certainty regarding russia's role.
A foreign country trying to "influence" an election? Papúa New Guinea could issue a press release saying they think Jill Stein should be President and that would also count as a foreign country trying to influence the election.
The fact that hacking was involved? Well, that sucks, but espionage is a fact of life in the world of nation-states. We do this stuff to other countries eight days a week.
The fact that the President has close ties to Russia? I think that is a terrible foreign policy but voters knew what they were getting and enough of them in the right states chose him.
Until you have evidence that actual voting results were changed, you have a story that is only of interest to the intelligence community for the purposes of tightening up our counterespionage.
That said, it's true that Russia colluded with various parties to engage in a propaganda campaign and influence the election. But the question of what to do with that is sketchier. I don't know what we should do about that, but it needs to be a diplomatic solution and not a bunch of rash flailing about.
Russia sought to destabilize our country by fucking with our political process. It's important that, first and foremost, we don't let that happen. We have Trump now, we will for four years, and we need to work with that as best we can.
Which isn't too say we can't undermine him for his entire term, and point out as often as possible that he only won because Russia fucked us. Highlighting Trump as a Russian puppet will also help with the Cold Warrior segment of the electorate.
I think, as I said in the other thread, the bigger news is that the Republican Party all but colluded with them to do it. They were basically AOK with the whole thing. Shit, Trump called for it to be done at one point.
The more dangerous part of all this is the domestic reaction to it.
If that was all Putin was doing nobody would care.
No country lets any espionage go because everyone does it. There's a reason we have agencies like the CIA, they're supposed to be dealing with situations like this.
That America has done it in the past does not give every other country a free pass when they do it to us. It's bad when any country does this.
This is an understatement. Didn't one guy in Trump's team quit because he was getting investigated for being a Russian plant or something?
How much do we need for the government or intelligence community to investigate and find that evidence if it's there? This needs to happen while Obama's still in office, Trump isn't going to allow that to go forward once he's officially president. Every day is a day less to do this.
edit: The CIA aren't police, and their work is usually covert. If they did have evidence, would they really go to the press about this before going ahead? I'm curious what the CIA leadership thinks about this.
How are we supposed to be able to learn from this, when Trump becomes president it's going to be forgotten and the Dems don't have the influence needed to move on this in government? The Dems are also very bad at reminding the public about bad events like this in the future. They act like they only have one chance to move against the GOP, and when that window closes they shrug and never bring it up again.
Who would've thought Willard "Mitt" Romney was right back in 20-fucking-12 about this. We live on the most bonkers of timelines.
1) Trump is compromised by Russia. This implies he possesses the capacity for shame, which is admittedly a stretch.
2) Comey is compromised. No evidence for this, but it wouldn't be the first time Russian/Soviet intelligence got an agent highly placed in the FBI.
Major concerns, somewhat realistic division:
The RNC is compromised. The reports we're seeing this week say that both the DNC and RNC were hacked by Russian intelligence, but only material from the DNC was leaked. Which means there's stuff Russian intelligence could threaten to leak. How damaging? Can't be sure, but I'm willing to bet there's some gross stuff about race, gender, and sexuality on there. Probably frank discussions of voter suppression. And almost definitely some harsh words about Trump that would piss him off.
Major concerns, we have to deal with this shit divisions:
1) Comey intentionally staged a soft coup by part of the intelligence community by emphasizing the emails and downplaying Russian involvement in the hacks.
2) The media allowed #1 to happen
3) Trump fundamentally lacks legitimacy (not just because of this, but more fuel for the fire), but is going to ignore that and aim for authoritarianism.
4) Trump owes Russia, with all kinds of policy implications
I do actually think the electoral college should vote for some non-Trump Republican at this point. I know they won't, but they should.
To be fair to democrats though. What Romney said was that Russia was our number 1 adversary. Which while that might be a proper way to characterize that now was not then. Romney hedged by saying "well they do stuff against us in the UN" and well yea they do. But so does/did China and probably to the same amount(though I will admit that with our European news and cultural focus we notice a lot less of China's international actions).
This is before Ukraine and Syria and before we properly understood wikileaks.
Which is probably their aim in this, in the first place?
Pretty much. Something I'm seeing referred to a lot in certain areas is a text written by Aleksandr Dugin in the late 90s called "The Foundations of Geopolitics", which has apparently been guiding Russian foreign policy to some extent. Goal highlights supposedly include
This is also the same Dugin;
I really want to sit down and read that book at some point, because it's looking pretty significant at a glance.
The more I think about this...
The most plausible scenario with current evidence is that Russian agents broke into the DNC's servers ('broke into' is probably being far too generous in terms of the DNC's security measures if we're honest, but whatever) and then probably sold that information to WikiLeaks. Neither the agents themselves nor WikiLeaks were directly interested in the outcome of what played out; they just wanted to either get paid (the agents) and/or get political cheddar (WikiLeaks) while acting as willful pawns for larger power brokers (the Russian state & the Trump campaign).
That is some Shadowrun shit!
Did Trump cut a deal with a dragon? Cuz I hope he cut a deal with a dragon.
Nothing short of a change to the constitution. And as loathsome as I find the consequences it needs to stay that way. That said if some sort of smoking gun is discovered impeachment is always an option once he's president.
Real life isn't like Shadowrun because governments are still more powerful than corporations, so motives beyond profit still drive events.
Then Democratic nominees winning the popular vote and losing to Republican candidates has become the new normal.
I'm very skeptical about this, it was a long shot with the Dems in control of the government. This is putting the country's fate in the Never Trump's, and they have a history of losing. Assuming they haven't all surrendered to their new king.
Huh. That is kind of scary.
Then again, he might just be someone blowing it out of his ass & pretending to take credit for random things, like a Russian Michael Moore.
I do wonder what he means by 'draining the swamp at home', though? That doesn't make any sense for a Putin supporter to say.
@Synthesis, are you familiar with this guy?
...DID YOU STEAL THE AMERICAN ELECTION?
WAS IT YOU!?
There is no 'swamp' of opposition that Putin even pretends to deal with.