[MechEStudent]

China has more. They have enough that this is a drop in the bucket. While they might be as blatant and ineffective as Russia by interfering with an election, they want a low profile and to maximize capture of revenue, so they are more about making money than trying to put feces on the face of the American political process.

You people should pick your battles. It would help if you knew the battlefield first.

[threeseed]

> You people should pick your battles. It would help if you knew the battlefield first.

I am so glad you know more than the UK, EU, US etc governments who have identified Russia as the primary source of instability for elections.

And since when has this been an either/or scenario. You can focus on both Russia and China.

[mistermann]

How about this idea: what if the Russian bots aren't actually Russian? How has no one considered this possibility?

[threeseed]

Yes they have considered it. And they have identified they are Russian.

You really think governments wouldn't have checked this ?

[mistermann]

I thought the public might be a bit more skeptical.

How did they identify with certainty that they are Russian? Is there any way for someone without top secret clearance to verify this?

[stevenwoo]

How - the special counsel Mueller has subpoena authority. First link from indictments in list form. The one I saw on TV was that guy with Hillary in a cage in parades - he was paid by Russians to make it. I also remember reading about the pro and anti gun rallies at that Texas state park - the Russians made the Facebook page for both sides in that little incident. https://mashable.com/2018/02/16/indictment-russian-trolls-in...

Presumably Mueller used that subpoena on Facebook and internet providers and the Russians didn't try to hide very hard and used mostly Russian ip addresses.

There's also the fact Facebook admitted it sold ads and post promotion to Russian agencies and told Congress the reach of those ads and posts. Recently Facebook revealed to all users in North America whether or not they had interacted with those ads/posts. Several news organizations have independently found the data from other sources including actual interviews with the people working in Russia.

One technique the Russians used was to impersonate Americans of some extreme view to stow discord and inflame the other side of some debate. https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russians-impersonate...

There was also several different Facebook campaigns where they got Africans with pidgin English to pretend to be Americans and try to inflame white nationalists and latent racists fears.

[mistermann]

I've heard all sorts of the juicy details, it makes a great story there's no doubt. What I'm looking for is some substantial, verifiable evidence to overcome my suspicions at how perfect of a story it is, as well as some of the inconsistencies.

For example:

> Presumably Mueller used that subpoena on Facebook and internet providers and the Russians didn't try to hide very hard and used mostly Russian ip addresses.

So on one hand, article after article tells us how sophisticated these hackers are, yet these very same hackers didn't hide their ip addresses, and also openly posted links on twitter that were supportive of Russia. Doesn't something about that seem a little off to you? If it does, you'll be the first person I've encountered who think it does, everyone else is completely confident that this is an open and shut case. Yet, none of these same people can point to any specific evidence that could convince me. Sure, everyone has some articles full of juicy stories, usually containing confident statements from high ranking government officials assuring us crimes have been committed and they have proof, but I've never been able to find a person who could point me directly to any proof.

1/3 of the way through https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download, rather than having my mind changed, my skepticism is stronger than before.

This feels a bit like some things we've experienced in the past, where the "facts" about an enemy, that we're are assured are 100% completely true and verified, trust us turn out to not be true several years down the road. But by then, we've already spent trillions of dollars and waged a war killing thousands of innocent people.

I'd rather not go down that path again, so I'm sorry if I can't join in the party vilifying the evil Russians, because based on the information I have so far, it seems like classic misdirection with the primary beneficiary once again being military budgets, and everyone is just a bit too enthusiastic to believe anything they're told.

EDIT: There is no shortage of internet downvotes for people like me who aren't willing to go along with this story, but there is a severe shortage of people who will put me in my place with actual content. You can probably imagine the effect this might have on the certainty I feel in the correctness of my stance. Unlike others, I'm open to having my mind change, but for some reason no one can muster any effort beyond a condescending and intellectually lazy "let me google that for you".

[stevenwoo]

The leader of Cambridge Analytica bragged about breaking US and UK law by reporters posing as prospective clients. I guess that could be faked ala deepfakes or whatever but it looks pretty definitive. https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...

[stevenwoo]

They have some of the Russians who worked for the RIA interviewed for newspapers and admitting what they did, which kind of blew my mind. I guess one could claim those were faked, like the moon landing conspiracy theorists.

From your own example which I presume is about the Iraq war, there is nothing that an ordinary citizen can do to prove that powers in the US, UK, and Kuwaiti governments (and Iraqi agents working in favor of an attack on Iraq) falsified the evidence they presented to the public for a compelling argument for invading Iraq without relying on sources that cannot be verified by an ordinary citizen without access to the journalists/non proliferation experts/government agents responsible and nothing an ordinary citizen can do to prove US claims that Iraq had an active WMD program and mistreated Kuwaiti babies as claimed at the time (by what we know now was a state actor who lied for Kuwait) in congressional testimony after the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. Even the New York Times and that one reporter famously lied flat out about Iraqi weapons programs and abuses in the build up to the war. But there were plenty of people who were investigating the claims of Iraqi WMD who said there was nothing there and that led to a lot of people protesting against the war. I don't see any investigators for the FBI or NSA coming out and being a whistle blower and saying this Russian thing is faked, on the contrary, the only whistle blower who came out so far, actually showed the internal NSA documents that said the USA elections was under cyberattack by Russia. The most reputable guy who came out for the Iraq WMD was possibly Colin Powell. Less well know is that he was also the first US Army investigator who looked into the My Lai massacre and he found that nothing was done wrong, so he was kind of used to this type of thing by then. It took a second Army investigator to reveal what happened there.

Or more contemporaneously there is nothing a citizen can do to prove that the recent Russian spy who was released to the UK and attacked was poisoned with a Russian only sourced nerve agent. And if it was the Russian nerve agent (that the Russians offically proclaimed to have destroyed all stockpiles of), there's no way for a citizen to prove it was Russian government behind it or that some other power was responsible for usage of it. I didn't vote either way on your comment, it just seems like an impossible standard.

[willstrafach]

> Russians didn't try to hide very hard and used mostly Russian ip addresses.

This is incorrect. The indictment explains it. They routed their connections through US-based VPNs to appear as if they were American users.