Russian Cyberwarfare Is Much Worse Than You Think | Hacker News Reader

Russian Cyberwarfare Is Much Worse Than You Think

motherjones.com

42 pointscurtis20 comments

It seems like Russia has found that unconventional forms of warfare like cyberwarfare, political espionage, and active measures are much more cost effective than pure might. Its really concerning especially because Democratic nations seem to be especially susceptible. Europe and the United States should be condemning these attacks.

>Its really concerning especially because Democratic nations seem to be especially susceptible. Europe and the United States should be condemning these attacks.

Once the American people stand up to their own government's foreign election & democratic interference, we have no basis to talk about other countries doing what we've done in mass forever. USA is the biggest threat to democracy worldwide.

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

We're talking about Russia, not about other entities. What USA, Ghana or your local grocery store does or does not do is entirely irrelevant in the context of this discussion.

It's extremely relevant. Russia is not the only one doing this and it's continuing propaganda to not talk about the others. These are common arguments among people who believe these conspiracies, to shut down any dissent or information that could hamper the conspiracy's 'legitimacy'.

I don't understand. Which point are you making: that it is a "conspiracy" that Russia is doing it, or that Russia is not the only one doing it?

All I can think when reading this is, so what? Israel and America were likely responsible for Stuxnet. I'm sure if I were a russian citizen, I'd be angry if my government wasn't doing things like this.

>All I can think when reading this is, so what?

Democrats wanted a cop-out to never talk about the reasons why they actually lost, and they sure created that cop-out and never went back and looked at why they actually lost.

"In the meantime, the big question is: Why doesn’t Trump care? And why does the Republican Party allow him to get away with not caring?"

oh sweetie, you might want to read up on asymetric warfare and the Gerasimov doctrine ...

Okay then:

> Herein lies the real power of the Gerasimov-style shadow war: It’s hard to muster resistance to an enemy you can’t see, or aren’t even sure is there. But it’s not an all-powerful approach; the shadowy puppeteering at the heart of the Gerasimov Doctrine also makes it inherently fragile. Its tactics begin to fail when light is thrown onto how they work and what they aim to achieve. This requires leadership and clarity about the threat — which we saw briefly in France, when the government rallied to warn voters about Russian info ops in advance of the presidential election. For now, though, America is still in the dark — not even on defense, let alone offense.

So then, why does Trump not care about it? This article indicates that his shining a light on Russian activities could be effective. I think I know the answer but your reply doesn't actually answer the question.

https://www.politico.eu/article/new-battles-cyberwarfare-rus...

>So then, why does Trump not care about it?

Everyone does it. It's impossible to stop and having him care about it more is just going to implement further censorship, further surveillance, and further privacy rights removed from Americans. It's two+ years in and they haven't found anything linking Trump or his associates to Russian interference, only your normal everyday domestic fraud of all sorts. I don't like Trump, but this is the Benghazi of the liberals. It's a distraction from real substantive issues that effect real working Americans.

are you indicating he might be a Russian asset ?? (gasp) not after he has built a whole business network over there and had no scruples to hire a man who was directly responsibly for installing Yanukovich (in Ukraine) as his campaign manager?

I do not think Trump is even capable of caring because that would imply he has some kind of intelligence. Considering he isn't able to write a tweet that isn't all CAPS-LOCK and riddled with grammar/spelling errors, no I don't think he cares.

The actual reason Trump doesn't care is because Trump thrives on chaos. He doesn't shine with intelligence or making good arguments. He feeds of disarray and chaos. I don't mean to say he does a good job bringing structure to chaos. But he knows that as long as everyone is up in arms over every tweet they're not thinking clearly and that is (as far as "Trump the man" is concerned) his only advantage. It's a huge one though.

He (Trump) certainly has no interest on shining a light on the Russian activities. At least not if it concerns him or his crooked son/family.

Is it though? This information certainly doesn't surprise me, nor do I think at this point that it surprises many folks that are tuned in to international news. Even so, this type of behavior is not out of the ordinary for many technologically-advanced countries. Let me be clear -- I am _not_ condoning this type of behavior, and I certainly am not defending Russia or President Trump, but this article feels like a poor attempt at making a jab at Trump and suggesting being a criminal.

It's very poor tabloid style reporting. Whether Trump is or is not a criminal future will tell, but from what we know today he has risen to power thanks to an international network of criminal enterprise.

>what we know today he has risen to power thanks to an international network of criminal enterprise.

Are you excusing domestic criminal enterprise networks, or are you claiming the extremely narrow viewpoint that Russia was entirely responsible for Trump?

USA alone is responsible for Trump not Russia. Russia is background noise. Yes they set the stage, but in the current climate they are overrated. All they had to do is push the dominos already lined up. They did the same thing in Europe - yet none of the far-right camps made it yet (apart from Austria).

Amercia got exactly the president it deserves.

How did Russia set that stage in a manner that $6.5 billion [1] (publicly known at least!) along with thousands and thousands of hours of free & corporate biased advertising via mainstream media couldn't defeat? $100,000 in mixed republican/liberal ads surely had nothing on $6.5 billion.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/14/someb...

These are all red scare-like neomccarthyist Trump jabs (I am not defending Trump) that sound more like tabloid articles than anything. The whole world does this stuff day in, day out, and it's no secret that Russia does it too, but recently it's been entirely focused on Russia.

I don't even trust the upvotes and downvotes in these Russian hacking threads as it seems the most logical get downvoted into oblivion, while the most emotional arguments are upvoted.

> The whole world does this stuff day in

Afaik Russia is the only state actor in the world that has directly done stuff that affects other countries' civilian population directly and in a negative way, I'm talking about things like these (taken TFA):

> ….Across Ukraine that day, cash registers suddenly shut down. People trying to withdraw money saw ransom demands appear on ATM screens.

and

> In 2015, hackers went after the electrical grid and shut off power to 225,000 Ukrainians.

and

> Turnstiles in Kiev’s subway stopped working, and departure boards at the airport went down

What exactly do you mean by "whole world does this?". Has China done it? Has the US done it to other countries' civilian population (i.e. ignoring Stuxnet, which afaik didn't affect civilians directly)?

This is nonsense and willfully ignorant. Look at Libya, it's a failed state with an open slave trade [1]. USA did that. Iraq war is ~200,000 dead civilians [2]. USA and its allies are directly responsible for that. Every single time USA interfered in elections it effected hundreds of thousands to millions of civilians in their respective countries. There are even reports that USA meddled in Ukraine [3]. USA was instrumental in implementing Yeltsin [4]. You're ignoring literally every event in US history that effects foreign civilians, and frankly you're decieving others. Not to mention, you're ignoring all of the domestic issues that organically led to Trump that $100,000 in bipartisan Russian Facebook ads can't account for.

[1] http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/

[2] https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26068994

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americ...

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

I know about the many times the US has interfered in other countries’ internal matters, all I was saying is that I’m not aware (at least not yet) of them doing that by cyber means, i.e. what the article is all about.

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