"why not hack a wider range of targets?"
They need to have 'plausible deniability' so it's hard to do without fully leaving your tracks and showing your hand.
They need to have 'plausible deniability' so it's hard to do without fully leaving your tracks and showing your hand.
In all honesty, can you imagine what's sitting in Bill's email? Or worse, browser history?
Further, why just drop Podesta's email? While he's important in political circles, the average American has no clue who he is.
I think if you really wanted to take down Hillary, you'd release all the nasty, snarky, etc email that you know she sent to people. Not just the nasty things she said about Republicans but other Democrats. Convince her colleagues that she'll insult and sell them out in a heartbeat and enthusiasm dips from both them and their supporters. With enthusiasm goes funding, rally attendance, and turns into a loss.
Also, while I get that the Russians have always been way better at HUMINT than the West is at SIGINT (or better at playing dirty?), it doesn't seem quite as successful any more. I accept there is definitely an element of "known unknowns" but the quality of access obtained by the past few Russian spies who have been uncovered has been pretty poor.
As for showing the world that Bill allegedly gets off to some freaky stuff or that Hillary is mean: Nobody cares. Hell, Supergirl (CW show), with their episode where Cat Grant gets hacked, summed it up pretty well with (paraphrased) "Oh whatever. I've said worse than that to her face"
Posting that would just get downplayed with genuine interviews with the wounded parties where they say "Okay. I am a professional adult. It hurts me that Hillary would accuse me of wetting the bed, but that doesn't really influence anything professionally"
Because once you become a "grown up", you kind of acknowledge that even your friends, let alone just your coworkers, might be jerks at times. It hurts, but you move on. Maybe you stop hanging out after work, but you don't let it impact work.
Whereas, stuff like the Podesta emails and the "anti-Sanders" campaign plays to a large portion of the Dem base as well as independents and lets them confirmation bias their way to the conclusion they made months ago. Sanders didn't lose because his appeal was very limited and even a lot of his supporters felt he was better as a senator than POTUS. He lost because of a conspiracy against him and bullying by people he thought were his friends.
All of which hurts the dems a lot, plays well to the news media, and motivates the trump-base by showing "she stole one election, don't let her steal ours"
Russia's goal was to create the perception that they're meddling in this election, so as to delegitimize the electoral process itself.
Quote:
A third element in the Soviet (and now Russian) toolkit is “active measures” — direct intervention by clandestine means in the politics of another country. Active measures may entail the following:
* Influencing the policies of another government;
* Undermining confidence in its leaders and institutions;
* Disrupting its relations with other nations;
* Discrediting and weakening governmental and nongovernmental opponents.