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Comment by Daho0n | Hacker News Reader

As long as they can get everyone to trust them every time they shout "Russia" this won't happen. Step one is to not listen to the propaganda machine, otherwise we'll just exchange one broken system with another. I'm amazed at how almost everyone seems to distrust the government except when it points at Russia. If the government points at Russia, PRC or NK I would take a step back and disregard all information from anyone associated with them and then make up my mind. I don't believe for a second that Russia is behind this unless NSA etc. already knew and did nothing for whatever reason and that's far worse than having Russia access your systems.

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"Russia" has turned into an "airhorn" term, one that when deployed stops all further thought. Others: "terrorist", "white supremacist/racist", "sex trafficker" and the perennial favorite, "What about the children?"

In 2016 I believed the conservative talking point that Russia was just an excuse the Democrats were using for losing the 2016 election.

Then Paul Manafort went on TV and gave the most unconvincing denial in the history of denials (That's what I sai... that's what he sai... that's, uhh, obviously what our position is.) Then Trump Jr preemptively tweeted soon-to-be-leaked emails detailing that they had in fact met with the Russians. Then the Muller investigation turned over a hundred other connections. Then, over the next four years, POTUS lifted the Magnitsky sanctions and turned a stubbornly blind eye every time Russia did something stinky, often directly contradicting public statements made minutes before/after from his own office.

Anyway, point is: there's an extremely powerful propaganda machine dead set on deflecting attention away from Russia, and that's concerning. More proof one way or another is always better, but this whole "there is no amount of evidence that can convince me Russia did it" trend is a problem.

From a WSJ reporter:

> Officials and others w/ knowledge have said the evidence of Russian culpability is overwhelming and that the view in the admin is "pretty unanimous."

https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1347298428804587523

And as we all know, anonymous intel sources are never spinning a yarn for their own purposes ;)

Or anonymous interwebz commenters?

(That's a general comment, not directed at you or any other specific person)

Yeah, definitely, such was my point.

I've always been a big fan of believe only half of what you see and none of what you read.

So exactly like back when Iraq had WMD's.

Given that almost all of the intelligence agencies concluded that Iraq did not have WMDs, it was not at all "exactly like" the attribution to Russia.

But welcome to HN

Any particular reason you don't think it was Russia?

Russia seems to be the go-to nation to be blamed for hacking activity, and so I am by default skeptical. Is there actual evidence of it being a Russian state attack or was Russia blamed out of habit?

Skepticism of course stems from decades of government lies and misrepresentations of truth in order to justify horrendous actions ie. what was done to Iraq, Lybia, Syria.

While I do agree that Russia is use a lot as a scapegoat for the embarrassing failures of our political system; on terms of pure espionage Russia is probably the true culprit. They have been our equals in spycraft through the cold war, and due to the current Russian president being ex-KGB it's safe to say they are probably very favored in their current administration. Espionage is one of Russia's core competencies, it's just how it is.

(Note I'm talking about espionage in the information gathering sense, not the overthrowing of regimes action movie sense)

> . Espionage is one of Russia's core competencies, it's just how it is.

I really question this assessment. Russia is not USSR, not by a long shot. Russia has lost an entire generation of the most educated people it did have, and I see no evidence that it ever recovered or will ever recover. Economically tiny and outright insignificant Russia simply isn't capable of developing serious technological capabilities to rival that of the US.

By focusing on digital warfare, Russia can have a larger impact than their GDP would have you think.

It's not that the USA couldn't match them, it's just that Russia has made it more of a priority. Tactically speaking, it's an excellent force multiplier with (varying degrees of) plausible deniability.

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