The problem at the moment is that 'we' can't necessarily trust 'ourselves'. Paradoxically, having the Russians audit may make our products more trustworthy for our own use. See also Open Source.
Anyone should be able to request the source code. It doesn't matter if it's someone we trust or not.
You can probably include his network and the oligarchy in there, but the average Russian citizen shouldn't really have a problem with the U.S.
Before Putin started working on actively fear mongering, our relationship was good and trending upward. They have slightly different cultural values than us, but its nothing like it was in the cold war. Our interests are aligned on most significant issues for the average citizen.
If both our countries could get rid of their current leader we could quickly become allies.
I doubt that as a people Russians are any more "proud" than any other nation; such a sentiment reminds me of the age of Romanticism, when such kind of analysis of nations, or of national spirit, was commonplace. It is so very human (and so very superficial, too) to want to feel superior to or at least no worse than others, that states exploit this via propaganda. If people are being systematically told that they belong to a great nation (which defeated the Germans in WWII, or was the first to send a man in space, or has a magnificent cultural legacy in XIXth century writers, or has the second largest nuclear arsenal, or other such stuff intended to boost nationalism), they get "proud". When this propaganda stops, they go back to normal again.
As a people, rather than as individual people, it's quite plausible that one nationality would be prouder than another; strength and centrality of national identity isn't a universal constant.
Being proud as a people means, essentially, that the individual people have (compared to other groups of the same kind, in this case nationalities) the group identity as a strong/central feature of individual identity.
People in Russia, like in the US, frequently criticize the country as well as people. What they don't like, like people in US, is "others" criticizing their country and the people.
Citation needed.
I do it quite often. Daily in fact.
But Russia as a state is pretty much synonymous with Putin as a person, right now. Until that changes, it's splitting hairs.
It's kind of disappointing this isn't widely understood, but I guess politics gets in the way. Anyway, feel free to share this:
2014 report into ATP-28: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a..., presenting pretty compelling (if circumstantial) evidence that group is Russian state backed.
(July) 2016 report into the DNC hacking, showing it was first breached by ATP-29 (The other Russian state backed hacking group), but the leaks almost certainly came from a second breach by ATP-28 later: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
One can of course argue that this is all a conspiracy. However, the fact that this first report was publicly available in 2014 gives some protection against the idea that it is motivated by US internal politics, and the second was also before the election actually occurred.
CIA, FBI and NSA all concur, they all put out unclassified statements with their conclusions, although they obviously kept much of their supporting evidence classified.
Was anything not classified? I have trust issues stemming from an unnecessary war based on false premises when I was a child.
Most of my hesitation stems from a lack of information about it. "Russians hacked Podesta's emails and released them to Wikileaks."
"Russians hacked voting machines."
Those are very targeted statements, and I'd feel better about the whole thing if more questions were answered.
Have the hackers successfully been linked to the Russian Government? How?
How long has this been going on? Since before this election cycle? If so, why is it only now an issue worthy of public attention?
Have other Government entities, China, North Korea, etc, done the same?
Have we seen similar attacks from inside the US?
When we had the march to war in Iraq, suspect intel was being selectively and deceitfully pulled out of context specifically to build a case for war in Iraq. By politicians, not by intel professionals. A bunch of former intel people went on record calling BS on it.
Right now, nobody's making a case for war with Russia. Retaliatory sanctions at best. They mostly just want to harden our election process and systems to prevent it from happening again, or worse.
Yet we see constantly moving goalposts from people who don't want that hardening to happen. What's their motivation?
I don't believe there are any claims Russia successfully hacked voting machines (I may have missed developments in the last week though). I believe there are claims they did successfully attack voter registration databases, but there are no real claims (except by left-wing conspiracy theory people) that they changed those databases - just stole data. I believe there is no non-classified evidence of this though (although I didn't read the document that Reality Winner sent to the Intercept, so that may document some evidence).
China has a well known hacking group (ATP-1) - see [1] for further information. There is no evidence or real claims they are involved in political interference within the US. OTOH they are quite good at industrial espionage and tracking Chinese dissidents.
I'm not very familiar with North Korea's group, but it is widely believed to be responsible for the Sony hack. I found that bizarre, but NK actions often are.
[1] https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/services/pdf...
The Russians foolishly trusted the west. Look up the astonishing policies initiated by 'harvard economists' in association with the usual suspects IMF and World Bank that directly led to the loot of hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian state assets and the rise of the oligarchy to understand how obsessive self interest and sabotage operate. Putin exists for a reason. 'Trust' is a naive to dangerous idea in this context.
No one is a doe eyed innocent upholding some moral high ground in international politics, people who affect that should be treated with extreme suspicion.
WHAT will it take to end this tiresome, counter-productive, primitive tribalism, really?
If you think "untrustworthiness" is part of our fundamental animal instincts, then just look at how most cultures have managed to repress one of the most basic animal instincts – sex – through indoctrination.
Why can't the same be done for violence and maliciousness?
Check out the Green Sky Trilogy (aka Below The Root) books, which depict a world where pacifism has been more or less achieved, through teaching children to abhor violence the same way our world does for sex and stuff.
Transparency is a dependency of trust.