Putin's Game

theatlantic.com

20 points·georgecmu··5 comments

The whole premise pf the article is that Russia _hacked_ the US election. But from what I can tell, most people are saying that they "influenced" the election by buying a couple hundred grand of advertising and did some good targeting and that turned the whole election.

That's hardly "hacking". It's like some people have an ambivalent relationship with Russia --they like some of the Soviet anti-capitalist "capital"/cachet, but hate that they are now trying to influence the world in their own little way --something they did more vigorously when they were soviet.

It reminds me of Gore complaining about Nader syphoning "his" votes away. You have to earn votes. They don't "belong" to you. You earn them, just as Clinton earned his (rather than Perot "syphoning" from GHWB".

The title is a bit misleading. Election hacking is maybe 10% of the article and I admit it’s easy to read the first few paragraphs and drop off (it’s quite long).

As a Russian, I think the article does a good job to describe Russia’s foreign (and domestic) policy of the last decade or so and it’s effects and likely outcomes long term (or lack thereof).

TLDR; Russia is/has always tried to stir the pot (especially after it never has regained the title of world power after the fall of USSR) and recently has found clever ways to exploit the naïveté of “the West”, however it seems doubtful it will bring anything good in the long term for Putin mainly because of bigger issues he faces inside Russia.

Loved the part that explains how to prevent your servers from being hacked. You must "defend it" with energy drinks.

What a beautiful piece of propaganda bullshit!

I love the pictures ;-)

tl;dr: Advertisers blame Russia for their failure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com