Glenn Greenwald, in every respect a reputable, diligent and ferociously smart gadfly, continually forgets to remember that few people are as sane and as willing to be led by evidence as he is. It’s his great failing.<\/p>\n
Nowhere is it more visible than in his incredulity toward the CIA and the rest of the US state security apparatus concerning their claims of Russian tampering in the election process. He is dead right to mistrust the CIA’s every utterance. Lying, after all, is a large part of what they do for a living. Likewise, a\u00a0politicised and partisan FBI is not a useful\u00a0source for agenda-free commentary on Russia’s disinformation campaign.<\/p>\n
But none of the above provides a sufficient\u00a0basis to say that Russia has not<\/em> played a direct and active role in the subversion of the American democratic process. Using the\u00a0espionage establishment’s lack of credibility to refute the claim of Russian meddling is completely illogical.<\/p>\n We discount or discard the CIA’s claims precisely because we know that they’ve done far, far worse countless times in the past. We know<\/em> they’ve planted or spun innumerable stories.\u00a0To people living in vulnerable parts of the world,\u00a0it’s simply axiomatic that Voice of America and USAID are\u00a0tools of American influence. We also know they\u00a0regularly use economic leverage to bring about certain policies, and they regularly plant stories to\u00a0tarnish the image of any government that doesn’t toe their line.<\/p>\n Yes, they’re hypocrites and liars. Nobody disputes that. Yes, they’re guilty of exactly the sins of which Russia stand accused. But if anything, that realisation should reinforce<\/em> the suspicion that Russia might be giving back as good as it gets. (Or better, depending on where you stand and how you feel about the success of the campaign to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s reputation.)<\/p>\n The sins of which the Russians stand accused are exactly the things that powerful countries do. They do it continually, shamelessly and cynically. It’s what they do. <\/em><\/p>\n The strong preponderance of evidence points to a multi-pronged, often unmediated Russian campaign\u00a0to subvert faith in American democratic institutions. On the propaganda front, the\u00a0weight of it is irrefutable. Just watch a couple of hours of RT. It’s slick, nicely weighted cynical propaganda that is calculated to seduce young, disaffected liberals.<\/p>\n The use of troll accounts to conduct disinformation campaigns is likewise well documented. There is sufficient circumstantial evidence to assume that, absent evidence directly contradicting\u00a0what we know, that young Russians are being paid by the state to use social media to spread lies, distrust and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n And if there were any\u00a0lingering doubt, we’ve got several on-the-record interviews with Russians claiming to be paid trolls, deriving from independent sources.<\/p>\n There is sufficient circumstantial evidence that Russia was\u00a0behind the DNC hack to\u00a0convince some of the foremost minds in the IT security establishment. Bruce Schneier may not be perfect, but he is trustworthy. And if he says that there’s significant evidence pointing to Russian involvement<\/a> in the interception of Democratic National Congress emails, you should listen. And if you don’t\u00a0possess evidence contradicting his conclusion, you should accept\u00a0that he’s probably right.<\/p>\n This is a bit of an argument to authority, I’ll admit, but having looked at the\u00a0evidence he cites, on this and countless other occasions, I can say that statistically, he’s right most of the time, and when he’s not confident about a conclusion, he says so. But in this particular case, having seen the same evidence he has, I also don’t think he’s wrong.<\/p>\n Julian Assange’s claims that he knows\u00a0his source isn’t Russian is neither credible nor conclusive.\u00a0He’s locked up in an embassy, for heaven’s sake. He simply\u00a0cannot know<\/em> where his source got the data from. Any chain of custody breaks when it reaches him. He’s the weak link in his own argument.<\/p>\n The fact that he is biased, under extreme stress\u00a0and has a history of paranoid persecution complexes that predate his captivity don’t have to come into it to discard him as a reliable source of evidence.<\/p>\n Most of the debunking of these claims consists of people finding logical inconsistencies in various accounts of the hack. That’s pretty weak tea.\u00a0Strong evidence can be weakly presented, and usually is, because\u00a0most reporters just don’t understand tech.<\/p>\n And that ignorance cuts both ways. A lot of the more incredulous posts evince an equal lack of understanding of technology, security and\u00a0intrusion tactics.<\/p>\n