The Russian strategy to interfere in our election to bring about the result that occurred and that they wanted to occur clearly involved many parallel strategies operating in tandem, including targeted social media advertising in swing states, but also including possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and foreign agents, some of whose interactions were captured in foreign surveillance.

The surveillance gives us the best chance of stopping something similar in the future. First it does so by letting us know that collusion was happening. Second, because the Obama administration made the surveillance public, the national security apparatus is in a political position to investigate this independently even though our country is under control of a new regime, due to political safeguards put in place designed to protect the independence of our law enforcement apparatus. Not even Nixon could get around being investigated by his own Justice Department. I'm not saying this will happen (Trump is a corrupt individual, after all), but knowing about collusion thanks to surveillance puts it in a better position to happen.