Here is what writes The Washington Post:
Special Senate Committee on intelligence held a Thursday public hearing, which happens very rarely. It was the first acquaintance with the materials of the investigation, which the Committee holds in the case of intervention of Russia in election 2016…
All the scientific experts present at the hearing on Thursday, stressed that Russia, with the purpose of influencing the other countries a combination of secret methods of work with open. And Director of the program “Russia and Eurasia”, Carnegie endowment Eugene Rumer (Rumer Eugene) said that we need to pay attention to public methods.
“Much more convincing are some of the facts and evidence in cyberspace, namely the set of actions that Russia is committing open, in plain sight — misrepresentation, misinformation, exaggeration. Today an integral part of Russian foreign policy are the RT, Internet trolls, fake news and so on,” said Rumer.
It is difficult to compare these open methods of work with the secret, because we don’t know exactly what these secret methods are. But we can speculate, given what we know about how events unfolded during the elections of 2016.
The hearing was informative, professional, and very late. Moreover, one of the main conclusions is that reasonable and fair Senate intelligence Committee has long had to hold open, unclassified briefings. To dispel any doubts (caused and intensified by President trump and his supporters) that Russia interfered in our elections and uses cyber warfare to weaken the United States and other democratic countries of the West.
As explained by Clint watts (Clint Watts) is another witness who spoke at this meeting of the Committee — during the election campaign 2016 breaking mail servers of the National Committee of the Democratic party and e-mail John Podestà (John Podesta) was only a small part of Russia’s actions. In my previous article, which was based on the performance of watts, he noted that the Russian disinformation campaign started in 2014. “Hooligans, which could be mistaken for English-speaking Europeans and Americans, Troll me for my stance against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (Bashar Assad), he explains. But these users of social networks seemed to be some not so — their aggression, persistence, biography, speech patterns and the timing was unnatural”. Soon, watts found the synchronized bots.
Summer and fall 2014, we analyzed the actions of these Pro-Russian owners of accounts and auto-bots. The number of hackers in the network increased dramatically, and they could detect where recently there have been data leaks and hacking of websites. Tight ring surrounded them accounts-lure — attractive women or ardent supporters of various political parties, which, as it turned out, were recorded in friends to some members of the audience, using the methods of social psychology. First of all, we watched the bullies, synchronized trolls who attacked chosen as the object of politicians using the same discussion topics, and behaviors of subscribers. The owners of these accounts, some of which openly support the Kremlin, he promoted a foreign policy position of Russia, referring to the key English-speaking target audience all over Europe and in North America. After analyzing the scheme, we realized that we are witnessing a focused, well-organized, resourced, well-funded, large-scale activities, which is directed by only one of the possible opponents — Russia.
By 2015, the Russians switched to the “active events”.
Until the end of 2015 and early 2016 described above, the Russian system of influence began to throw up topics and posting messages trying to influence the outcome of U.S. presidential elections. Acting openly, the Russian media and the hidden trolls tried to sideline hostile toward the Kremlin’s opponents on both sides of the political spectrum. To date, the main topic of discussion on the influence of Russia was the last months of preparation for the elections. However “active measures” Russia is actively gathered during the primaries in the Republican and Democratic parties. And it is quite possible that they led to the collapse of the hopes of the candidates, more hostile attitude to Russia, and long before the number of applicants has decreased.
On the final part of the then active measures of Russia it became known in the summer of 2016. It was then (in the most appropriate from a strategic point of view time) were made public the materials stolen by hackers in the previous months. July 22 on the website WikiLeaks published the massive volumes of data about the correspondence of members of the National Committee of the Democratic party, and then — and part of the correspondence of members of the electoral headquarters of the Democrats. During July and August 2016, the hacker who worked under the name Guccifer 2.0, and the site DC Leaks has posted stolen data from the host system former American officials. For the remaining time this dirt has contributed to the strengthening of the system of influence, which Russia has successfully built over the previous two years.
You should pay attention to some aspects of the performances of watts and other witnesses at today’s hearing.
First, the evidence is so compelling and irrefutable that trump statements denying the involvement of Russia, are becoming more and more strange. When he submitted reports during secret briefings, he learned more than we learned today, and yet he insisted that the source of hacker attacks is unknown. He completely ignored conducted a disinformation campaign. In fairness ought to ask whether trump hides all sorts of way this information, or is he just unable to accept reality — even if it is described in great detail. Neither consolatory you will not name.
Secondly, the operation is so extensive and carefully thought out that we should again wonder why the FBI Director James Komi (James Comey) had not informed the Americans about Russia’s intervention in the elections. It was hardly the only “hacking” — rather, it is carefully planned actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at disrupting our elections. We have to admit that the former Vice-President dick Cheney (Dick Cheney) was not exaggerating when he said: “In some quarters, it will be considered an act of war”. In light of all this, the idea that the distant future is expected to ease sanctions — or that trump even the best will offer Putin a deal “for the PR” ahead of “normalizing” the summit needs to confound the Congress, the foreign policy establishment and voters. Nobody talks about how to start a war, but, of course, in response to a large-scale attack on our electoral system, we must react in cyberspace and to take economic and diplomatic measures. Where are those new sanctions, to enter which constantly promises Congress?
Thirdly, against this background and in this context especially notable is the fact that trump was involved in the headquarters of many of the Pro-Russian advisers, some of whom received large cash payments from Russia or related to Russian sources. Was there penetration in the electoral headquarters of the trump and/or manipulated in relation to its members the next “active measures” Russian? How could Michael Flynn (as Michael Flynn), who made a career in intelligence not to understand that it is not lawful to receive a large sum of money from the Russian propaganda channel RT outfit at a time when professional scouts was, of course, it is known that Russia has long been working to undermine democratic elections?
We certainly hope that the Committee will continue to function properly and, moreover, to do their work, if possible, openly. This is the best way to educate and enlighten voters, deny the statements of trump, which denies Russian interference and find out the number of concern of relations between members of the team trump and Russian. In the end we will have to figure out how far Russia is trying to influence our democratic system, and to understand that all presidential candidates should be transparent in regards to their finances. We must make sure that the next elections were not as dirty as the elections of 2016.
