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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

It’s probably the fact that Russia tried, succeeded, and continues to do it to the US, the most dangerous country in the world. I haven’t heard anything about real-world Chinese attacks on US election systems, though they may have happened. It certainly doesn’t seem like any succeeded.

Also: China and the US need each other as trading partners. Russia is not as vital a trade partner to us.

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First I'm sorry Hillary Clinton lost, I was a 2008 HRC delegate, so it certainly hurts. But China is definitely a greater strategic rival than Russia. Russia's GDP is very small compared with China; in fact China surpassed the US in 2014 by PPP and if their people become just half as productive as you and I - they will become twice our GDP.

I recommend reading more on this subject. one interesting book is "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?" by Graham Allison. (Recommended by Joe Biden, and Lloyd Blankfein)

https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydide...

> China is definitely a greater strategic rival than Russia

I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment. China's "rivalry" with us might translate into acts of aggression, or it might not. It depends on their leadership.

At this point, I've never seen anything to suggest that China is actively trying to destabilize the US, interfere directly with its elections, or incite culture wars. Russia is doing all of these things.

I have seen evidence[1] that countries including China are trying to maintain access to our utilities as a future weapon, but that's not the same as Russia actually attacking us (digitally).

1. https://www.wired.com/story/triton-hackers-scan-us-power-gri...

They did not hack any election systems. They conducted misinformation campaigns and trolling that helped Trump, but that’s not the same category as directly hacking voting systems.

Robert Mueller and the US intelligence community disagree with your assessment.

> "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion," Mueller wrote in the 448-page document, which lays out new details about a Kremlin-backed plot that compromised Democrats' computer networks and targeted state and local election offices.[1]

The attacks were inexpensive[2] and affected the vote[3]. I'd call that "successful" by any reasonable definition.

1. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/18/mueller-report-rus...

2. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/mueller-report-russia-hack-o...

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/19/actually-...

Larger scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkWqMIqEbo

If the Russians have figured out inexpensive techniques to turn out votes for the Republicans, would it not make sense for the Democrats to try some of those techniques to get their own turnout up too?

Particularly your [3] - that is a puff piece saying that "we can't measure anything but maybe ...". Did you know the Australian Greens gave a ringing denouncement of Trump in the lead up to the 2016 election? maybe that influenced the election too. Everyone was airing strong opinions about Trump in the lead up to 2016 with a wide range of channels used to communicate them.

US politics is a very popular national sport. Any attempt to 'influence' the election short of actual voter fraud is meaningless. There are too many interest groups.

> the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome

I'm going to go full partisan on this comment from [3]. Them and everyone else who is at risk of being on the receiving end of American aggression. Trump is one of the most peaceful and moderate US presidents in recent history when it comes to international affairs and invading/surging countries full of brown people. He's been pretty consistent in talking down overseas spending on aggression and talking smack on twitter. Great strategy; keep up the good work. More businessmen and less lawyers in American leadership would really be a great thing for the world.

> If the Russians have figured out inexpensive techniques to turn out votes for the Republicans, would it not make sense for the Democrats to try some of those techniques to get their own turnout up too?

The Democratic Party doesn't have the expertise that Russia has, no. I don't think the Republican Party does, either.

I'm not sure where you think I suggested that Russia only interfered to turn up votes for Republicans. I think their interference took many forms, including helping Trump, hurting Clinton, stoking racial outrage among blacks, stoking racial outrage among whites, helping Sanders, and many other angles.

Finally... why didn't you address the claims in the Mueller report? Or do you disagree with Mueller, every other national intelligence figure (including many in Trump's admin), and many senators, all of whom have seen evidence that none of us has seen?

Your comment doesn't really contradict the parent comment. In addition to the misinformation and trolling, they did hack something, namely the DNC and John Podesta's email account. And those attacks were successful and affected the vote – but they did not involve hacking election systems.

Actually, they did separately hack election systems [1], putting them in a position to at least alter voter rolls in some counties (though perhaps not votes). But there is no evidence that they actually altered anything.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/us/florida-russia-hacking...

There is no proof of these accusations. Just as much public evidence points got the DNC hacking being a local attack.

Muellers report also didnt add anything new.

“Russia tried, succeeded, and continues to do it to the US“?

Source? Which computer system did they break into, and how is it attributed to the Russian government?

Every time in the past when someone says this to me or I search for it online, the “hack” is that US citizens voted for Donald Trump.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...

Doesn’t show any convincing evidence of hacking into election systems, or what the result of the hack was. At best I can see that people suspect WikiLeaks is connected to Russian intelligence and that the Hillary email leak originated with them, but there’s little evidence to support that. Besides, that’s not hacking any computer systems related to the election.

This is well known.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/russian-hacki...

Were any details on the mechanisms they used released? The article is paywalled for me, but any article I've read only states that it was "concluded". Like, what attack vector did they use, do all states use common voting machines?

EDIT: Was able to read it, and they don't even suggest any evidence. As usual, we have to take it on faith. Sorry, my faith cup has runneth out.

As usual, lots of downvotes, but no one is physically capable of posting an excerpt of actual substantial, detailed, purely fact-based evidence, but rather only narrative based conspiratorial stories and speculation built on top of some relatively minor facts, that relies heavily on the human mind's ability to invisibly fill in the gaps with "common sense" (aka heuristics) where actual factual information is missing.

Reminds me once again of the recent HN article:

Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20976567

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20977196

I can’t read the article. Which computer system was hacked, what was the result of the hack, and how it attributed to Russian intelligence?

Probably the most relevant part:

>It concluded that while there was no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so.

Targeted != hacked

"Which computer system did they break into"

From the NYTimes article:

While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known,

Don't you find it just a little odd that you are so sure of something you can't source?

Good question. But unfortunately evidence, facts, proof, logic etc are all irrelevant. At this stage, the anti-Russia narrative will never die.

Ah, the NYT. Totally just a newspaper /s

https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg

https://gawker.com/here-are-some-top-n-y-times-editors-and-s...

Would you accept a Special Council investigation leading to indictments and sentences, or a joint investigation by the US intelligence community, as a good enough source?

Of course not. You need physical evidence of some kind or something that the public computer experts can verify themselves isn’t faked for political gain.

The US intelligence agencies are known to lie.

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