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Comment by gipp | Hacker News Reader

If you rephrase your hysterical wording as "major bipartisan concern across every intelligence agency and nearly all ranking members of both houses of Congress, including the heads of both Intelligence Committees," then I'm not really sure what more evidence you or I could hope for from such an obviously sensitive, active topic for the time being.

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By mentioning that they are "ranking members" you make an argument from authority that is predicated on the legitimacy of the government alone, effectively saying "kneel and take whatever they say at face value".

In my view, they are all self-serving career politicians and none have shown any particular reason they should be trusted or respected. They were the ones who urged the knee-jerk reaction in Iraq which has cost trillions of dollars and many lives, among many other bad decisions that they all agree on.

Fine. But (assuming you extend this attitude to "the mainstream media" as well) you've created for yourself an ontology of the world in which it is impossible to claim any knowledge of anything outside your direct field of view. I'm not really sure how you intend us to accomplish much of anything without _some_ ability to trust _someone_ else. And bipartisan agreement from bitter enemies who have little or nothing to gain personally from such statements is about the lowest bar of trust I can imagine.

Politicians stand to gain government expansion when they scare the population.

So it's not nearly as low of a bar as you think. It's like you're claiming we must trust pharmaceutical representatives from competing companies when they both agree that we all need more pills.

Who's expanding what part of government here?

Every Democrat and most Republicans?

The issue is not so much authority, the issue is urgency.

Why is there urgency to rush to judgment about alleged Russian election meddling?

If it happened, then unless anyone thinks the outcome of the election should be reversed, we have four years to get to the bottom of it, take action, and prevent it from happening again.

It's very much reminiscent of the blind urgency to invade Iraq on shaky evidence. Note that one tactic used to get people to act is to create urgency. The simplest example is "this offer expires in 5 minutes..."

It's not so much that I give no credit to any officials as having authority, it's that they all agree on the knee-jerk urgency when there is no apparent need to do so, and none feel obligated to offer a point by point probability assessment of whatever information, inference, or intelligence has them 100% convinced, since the information disclosed so far paints a vague, circumstantial picture.

This sort of elitist disregard for the basic rationality of the public is not something I can stomach, so I simply can't take their assurances at face value.

That's not what "ranking members" communicates; rather, it suggests that the conclusion transcends partisan politics. That doesn't mean it doesn't succumb to other biases (though I don't think so), but it is a meaningful statement to make.

I think there is a coalition of peculiarly anti-Russian hawks who have been the most vocal in their opposition to Russia's behavior in Crimea, etc.

This likely transcends party lines in the same way that support for wall street or the oil industry transcends party lines.

So, that's what I'm saying: that the "ranking members" support the conclusion doesn't dispose of all bias, but it does dispose of the Trump vs. Clinton bias. It's up to you how to weight [Trump vs. Clinton] vs. [Russia vs. US].

But my impression is that [Trump vs. Clinton] is way more powerful than any other bias right now.

> But my impression is that [Trump vs. Clinton] is way more powerful than any other bias right now.

I think this is correct, and largely why the Russia meddling has become more an article of faith than a highly concerning possibility.

Was it any different with Iraq WMD?

Yes. Many, many parts of the intelligence community produced reports contradicting any claims of WMD evidence, and were summarily ignored by a very not-bipartisan administration. There is basically total consensus among every intelligence agency that the evidence points to Russia.

Basic sources on the total consensus?

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-departme...

> The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.

This is an official joint statement from the USIC, which is an official body composed of 16 different intelligence organizations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...

My understanding was that they had agreed on the likely Russian origin of at least one system from which emails were obtained, but that they had disagreed on the motivation for the leaks.

That report presents no evidence, comes from political appointees, and generally only says that it might be consistent with something Russia would like to do without explaining why.

Also, not sure how the agency count helps anything. Exactly what did agencies like the NRO and Coast Guard contribute here?

Not just ignored, but specifically worked around.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intel...

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