[sph]

First it was Russia meddling with elections (Trump, Brexit), now it's a team led by an ex Israeli special forces guy — which reminds me a bit of the NSO Group story.

You know what is terrifying? That upon learning about Russia having a major hand in Western election, nothing concrete was done. In Britain we learned the whole Brexit movement was paid for, and manipulated by Russian money (and it was arguably a crucial milestone mentioned in the infamous Foundations of Geopolitics book), yet there was a little noise on printed media that went nowhere. No one investigated, no top politician jailed, just business as usual.

I'm not even sure that what they're selling us in our free Western countries is democracy at all.

[mjfl]

wasn't 'Russia meddling' a planted story by US domestic intelligence, as has come to light in the Twitter files?

[apstls]

Is this sarcasm, or is there a subset of people here who truly believe that the Twitter “files” prove the significant investigative effort, offensive actions by US Cyber Command against the IRA, direct acknowledgement of the activities by Yevgeny Prigozhin, additional investigation and confirmation by private security companies that all echoed the same, highly-believable conclusion were fabricated in a coordinated effort by US intelligence to deceive the people into believing that a nation that has been openly hostile against US cyberspace has… continued to do so, this time in a new way?

If this was indeed a sarcastic comment, I would consider dialing back the subtlety so you don’t inadvertently appear to lend credence to misinformation currently being spread among less scrupulous portions of the population.

[jacquesm]

Unfortunately there are plenty of people who believe this.

[upsidesinclude]

No, the previous comment brought up Trump, which is clearly alluding to "Russian collusion".

I'm fine with distaste for Trump and the realities of disinformation campaigns, but the focus of the Twitter files in this regard is clearly specific to the false Russia Trump connection propagated by Dem polticians and leftists.

[epakai]

There's enough there to remain suspicious. The Trump campaign hid their meetings with Russians (see Flynn's transition meetings). They lied about the purpose of the Trump tower meetings. They have claimed financial ties to Russian financial institutions in the past.

None of these things are "false connections propagated by Dem politicians and leftists". They have made these connections evident through their own admissions, and denials.

There is certainly a narrative that drives beyond what we have evidence for, but it's absurd to pretend these things were only propagated from political rivals trying to attack their rivals.

[upsidesinclude]

Keep your head in the sand all you like.

>There's enough there to remain suspicious.

Honestly, after years of the Democrats throwing everything they can at Trump, still nothing. Yet you persist.

Switch your focus to Biden perhaps, the current corrupt president that mishandled classified documents, has made a fortune off his political position.... see the similarities here? No? Of course not.

[apstls]

  > but the focus of the Twitter files in this regard is clearly specific to the false Russia Trump connection propagated by Dem polticians and leftists.

Which makes the comment I was replying to (which is the comment one level above mine, not two levels above mine) even more incorrect, as it claims that the Twitter files prove that Russian meddling did not occur, which is a claim orders of magnitude broader than the claim that Trump-Russian collusion did not occur.

[cmh89]

The trump crime family is demonstrably highly connected to russian oligarchs and russia generally.

[pfisherman]

“Domestic intelligence”? You mean the FBI? US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.

Did the Russians interfere in the US election? This is unquestionably true. The DNC did not leak their strategy docs by themselves.

Was Russian interference in the 2016 election decisive? Highly unlikely. Imo, it would be generous to say the effect was marginal at best.

In hindsight the whole thing was pretty stupid; and lines with the Russian government’s increasingly erratic and incompetent behavior. They could have achieved the same end with none of the blowback by just doing nothing.

[user3939382]

> US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US

Ever heard of Edward Snowden? I mean that's just for starters https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/05/nsas-v...

[Czarcasm]

> US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.

The NSA (a US intelligence organization) has verifiably been conducting widespread surveillance of US citizens on US soil for decades.

[miguelazo]

“US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.”

This is an extremely naive statement with no basis in history. At least you recognize that Russian election interference had little, if any impact on the 2016 election.

[bavell]

> US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.

Just incredible. Thanks for giving me a hearty laugh. Make sure to refill your pitcher of kool-aid, I see you're running low!

[mjfl]

> US intelligence agencies by law do not operate within the US.

An unbelievably naive statement.

[knewter]

Yes, but people that were duped prefer to keep that info from themselves

[bink]

What's even more scary to me is that there are several groups out there openly advertising the fact that they have exploits that can compromise all major cell phone brands, undetectably.

These groups, some commercial and some governmental inside the US, Israel, Italy, and elsewhere, can hack the phones and mobile devices of Presidents/Prime Ministers, member of Congress/Parliament, Supreme Court justices, and the military. This presents the risk of blackmail/extortion being used to control critical decisions and actions made by these people every day. They are not shy about advertising these capabilities and the rules they put in place to limit damage mostly concern damage to the hacking groups, not to countries or people.

[patrickdavey]

Did you read Mindf*ck? Fascinating book. I'd be so so angry about Brexit after reading it if I'd been affected.

[arealaccount]

Russia didn’t have a “major hand” in western elections.

[olivermarks]

It sounds as though Israel might have though...

[hackerlight]

Given how close the 2016 elections were, even a relatively "non-major" influence (via hacking and releasing the DNC emails and running social media campaigns) was plausibly enough to change the actual outcome.

[r00fus]

Perhaps those who were instrumental in how elections were influenced were afraid that by changing the system, they'd lock themselves out of the existing election-meddling process?

I'm not saying that votes are fixed (though I wouldn't be surprised), but lots of money goes into essentially buying seats of power.

[user3939382]

You missed the update where it was proven that the "Russian meddling" story was fake.

The meddling in our elections was the social media companies suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the election, which the media also claimed was "Russian ops" while Hunter since admitted it was his laptop (full of emails detailing the corruption in his family).

The amount of propaganda and lies that is fed to the American public through these corporate media outlets is absolutely astounding.

[apstls]

One minute of googling found these:

- https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

- https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

- https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

- https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

- https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download

Spending some time flipping through these (ignore the last two if you please, one heavily redacted and the other focusing on Trump) after reading your comment makes me wonder if we live in two parallel universes that are in the process of converging.

[user3939382]

It's one universe -- this activity within the government you're citing culminated in the Mueller investigation's final report, which read "insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy". Let me translate that for you: the whole thing was a hoax from day 1, discussed non-stop by our de-facto state media corporate press, and pushed non-stop for years on the American public by the DNC which is the source of those documents.

The dossier that was used as a basis for launching all of this in the first place: "Main Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko was FBI operative: court document" https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/main-steele-dossier-source-igo...

Actually it was discovered that the Clinton campaign paying for "opposition research" was in turn the source of that fake dossier.

The whole thing was made up, that's not even controversial at this point. The fact that you're on here citing those documents as if it wasn't just proves the pervasiveness of the corruption of our system of democracy and media.

Here's coverage on all of this from the journalist that broke the Snowden story and is maligned by our state/corporate/fascist media outlets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-lg5RU8xAI

[chimprich]

Quote from Mueller's report: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion".

...but you seem to have ignored that.

[apstls]

This is effectively a strawman argument. My comment, and the one I was responding to, are discussing Russian meddling (as in election interference efforts) while you are discussing Trump-Russia collusion, a (very, very) small subset of the actual topic we were discussing.

I do not understand your hand-wavey dismissal of the documents I linked to, as I do not understand how you could have checked their contents and came away believing they all discussed Trump-Russia collusion. For example, the indictment I linked to is very clear, direct proof of election interference activities performed by an offensive cyber unit within the Russian military and never makes any implications of involvement by Trump.

Regarding Trump-Russia collusion - since you brought the topic up - the things you are asserting still seem potentially dubious.

A decision to not indict and prosecute is not based on whether it is more likely that the crime was committed than not, but whether or not it can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially in a scenario like this. It is not 50% sure, not 80%, closer to 99% sure. If you read the Mueller report is is most definitely not a conclusive exoneration of Trump. You cannot honestly argue that collusion did not occur because Mueller did not indict.

Opposition research is research funded by opposition. That does not imply that the output of the research must therefore be asserting the opposite of the reality of its subject matter. I don’t understand this point.

Somebody who was a source for Steele, who is ex-Western intelligence, also being a source for other components of Western intelligence like the FBI seems wildly unsuspicious. Of course, the Post tries to spin it anyway, which is unsurprising for media outlets in general today, but particularly unsurprising for this particular outlet.

Basically, I am not saying that collusion did or did not occur, because I do not know. And if we do truly live in the same universe, you do not know either, you just think you do.

[user3939382]

A very very small subset? I don’t think so, they accused the President of being a foreign agent for Moscow and talked about it in the media non stop for years.

The source of the dossier was charged for lying to the FBI. The funds for it were tied back directly to the Clinton campaign. I don’t see any ambiguity here, at all.

I can’t conclude collusion didn’t occur simply because there’s no evidence for it? Do you hear yourself?

Let’s be real dude. You’re an anti-Trump neoliberal whose been gobbling up this media propaganda, you’ve made it part of your identity, and you will twist and say anything to defend it. Your ears and mind is closed. You’re repeating the same line as before this mountain of evidence came out that this whole story line was a hoax. If someone really doesn’t want to be convinced of something they won’t be, that’s what’s going on here. You’re not looking for the truth, you’re trying to defend your tribe.

It’s exactly this type of tribalism that the uniparty in DC uses as a diversion to rob our country blind and it needs to stop.

[creato]

What exactly should have been done? I don't see why a "top politician jailed" is something that should happen unless they committed a crime. Trump benefited from Russian meddling and refused to admit that it happened, which is a gross failure, but its not criminal. That should be a behavior that loses votes from voters, but that's a very different problem.

The only official actions that should have been taken in response were sanctions or other international relations consequences for Russia. Trump's biggest failing on this issue was to not realize he could do this without compromising the legitimacy of his election.

[tomohawk]

Russia Meddling was all sourced from Hamilton 68, which is now completely discredited.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1619029772977455105.html

[epakai]

Seen it with my own eyes, but several people in this thread go all out to completely dismiss it based on twitter files that exist to push a particular narrative.

There were concerted efforts to push messaging via left-wing sub-reddits. I saw how the narrative pushed had little logical basis towards achieving the ends they pretended to push. I watched as the trolls waxed and waned with the war effort. I watched the same spaces push anti-Ukraine messaging when it had nothing whatsoever to do with their claimed political goals. Then I watched most of them disappear after enough people pointed out what they were doing.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/comments/titwwg/fyi_...

[chimprich]

> You know what is terrifying? That upon learning about Russia having a major hand in Western election, nothing concrete was done.

I don't think that's entirely fair. There's been no political route open to prosecuting anyone for the above, but there's been plenty of concrete actions. Western opposition to Russia has increased substantially in recent years.

Would we have been as vigorous in our support for Ukraine and eager to supply weapons and all the other things if Russia hadn't been pulling off all these shenanigans? It probably had an effect and Russia is certainly facing consequences.

Western intelligence has also been a lot more proactive in combatting Russian misinformation.

[igravious]

Eh? Twitter Files is a thing now.

“WASHINGTON (TND) — The latest Twitter files release shows the company knew there was no evidence of Russians spreading disinformation on the platform as Democrats pushed those accusations in the media.”

https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/russian-disinformatio...