> My issue with this whole WikiLeaks thing is that they are clearly a Russian operation that posed as a "truth seeker" early on and then started to steer their operation 100% at damaging the US
The theory here seems to be that Russia is perfidiously undermining the US by exposing the truth to the cold light of day, by nefariously revealing primary sources with limited editing.
I'm not sure I'd rate that as the most successful strategy in their playbook, but maybe it'll work. If it were me, I'd go with more traditional propaganda. That is not a good theory.
The point of it is being able to choose what truth to publish, with what context, and when.
The instructive case being the Podesta e-mails, being acquired by Russian intelligence (aka Fancy Bear) and released through WikiLeaks in the month before the 2016 election, controlling the news-cycle by staggering the releases.
That would be pretty solid evidence that the Russians are releasing information to the public, but the fact that they used Wikileaks doesn't support anything. There are a lot of ways to release information -particularly if the information happens to be true.
On a strictly irrelevant note, but because I don't like passively accepting premises I disagree with...
And the idea that the Russians extracted and released those emails is still fishy - if the Democrats win a batch of elections then Russia is going to start looking really stupid. It isn't impossible that the US intelligence services are wrong in their accusations, simply because as plots go it is a totally stupid one. It doesn't make any sense unless considered in context of only 1 election cycle.
If Russia had a magic button to decide elections, the DNC and RNC would have found it too by now. It is much more likely the actions of a rogue troublemaker, not acting on specific instructions to do what he did. Even if he was affiliated with the Russians.
Nobody disputed that the emails were genuine. What if Russians had just released them via RT - or indeed the New York Times?
It is still a story even if the source is shady. Even more impressive if the Russians are known to be involved.
Releasing the emails via Wikileaks isn't evidence of anything. Someone as well resourced as the Russian Intelligence service could have released them on The Pirate Bay and had a similar effect.
On my original point, Russia does not have a scary scheme to reveal the truth to unwitting Americans via Wikileaks. The idea is absurd.
There's no "shade" here. It's straight up criminal. He got phished, deliberately, via a targetted human engineering operation. Again I just don't understand the desire to hide the underlying crime here.
It's possible to be very uneasy with the direct prosecution of Assange for this stuff, to view Manning as having been unfairly targetted, but to also recognize that there's a really serious underlying crime here that we need to address.
But no, everyone wants to pick sides here and stand with... Putin. Seriously?
I suspect the difference here is between people old enough to remember the Cold War and those whose political awareness doesn't go beyond the election of Trump. I've been watching NATO expand to Russia borders and hearing US officials pine for the days of the Cold War for decades. I say fuck that. Putin is what he is, but that doesn't mean i want to go back to the days of nuclear brinksmanship and paranoia.
You don't think it's possible to recognize legitimate crimes without... pining for nuclear brinksmanship? The end of the cold war means we need to be OK with random foreign powers phishing our email?
Again, this binary nonsense is just crazy to me. It's possible to view the current geopolitical environment as safer than the 80's and see Putin as a dangerous despot and his actions in the 2016 election as crimes worthy of prosecution. Right?
Phishing our email is extremely low on the scale of “bad” things governments do.
Personally, I am much happier with intelligence agencies collecting information remotely than supplying weapons and overthrowing governments etc. In relative terms releasing accurate information is just not a major issue.
So, my concern is people take issue with this not because of what happened but because of the country that did it. And if that’s what’s going on, it’s the continuation of some very dark times. I have genuine concerns about what’s happening to the in Russia, but I think we need to judge their actions in absolute terms rather than let bias spiral.
Podesta used “Pa$$w0rd” and fell for a spear phish. Let’s not pretend this was some well financed nation state level hack. My mom successfully resists these every week.
Everything revealed about Clinton, Podesta and others was completely true. I’ve never seen a worse case of shoot the messenger than this.
Not only that but it was a phish not a spear phish. They sent the same phishing email to tens of thousands of people. It was just a generic common phishing operation. Only thing notable about Podesta was he asked his tech guy if the phishing email was legit and his tech guy said it was and he should click on it and sign in.
The theory here seems to be that Russia is perfidiously undermining the US by exposing the truth to the cold light of day, by nefariously revealing primary sources with limited editing.
I'm not sure I'd rate that as the most successful strategy in their playbook, but maybe it'll work. If it were me, I'd go with more traditional propaganda. That is not a good theory.