In his new book Facts and Fears former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says what pretty much all of us have been thinking for over a year, but nobody — well, except maybe me — has bother to really document.
In his book, and above with Rachel Maddow Clapper makes the argument that with the Russian Troll farming reaching 127 Million Americans in an election where only 130 Million people voted, it’s pretty likely that they had an impact. He then goes further and says that in the end with less than 80,000 votes in three key states making the final difference, and with the Russians generating ads that linked Hillary to #BlackLivesMatter which were specifically targeted to White conservative voters which were intended to get them really, really pissed off — that was likely enough to make the difference.
Clapper also points out that the joint intelligence assessment about Russia’s attack on our election from 2017 doesn't make the case that “Russia Failed” to have an impact, as Trump repeatedly likes to say. He points out that that assessment didn’t even try to answer that question because it was outside the scope of what the intelligence agencies do.
It’s not exactly like this is a radical idea, but that might be because it’s exactly the Kryptonite that Trump has been running scared of for 18 months. This is the argument he constantly complains about, that Russia basically tipped the election his way and put him in the White House.
Of course Trump says that Putin has denied hacking our election and has said to that Pat Roberson that Putin “wanted Clinton to win because of the Military and Energy” which may be exactly why Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen seems to be completely clueless on the matter, she can’t afford not to be clueless or else Trump will be on yet another warpath.
Following a classified election security briefing for Congress, Nielsen spoke to reporters, including CNN’s Manu Raju.
“Do you have any reason to doubt the Jan. 17th [2017] Intelligence Committee assessment that said it was [Russian President] Vladimir Putin who tried to meddle in this election to help President Trump?” Raju asked.
“I do not believe that I’ve seen that conclusion that specific intent was to help President Trump win,” Nielsen insisted. “I am not aware of that.”
The assessment that Raju referenced actually says the following in it’s Key Findings.
ii Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections ICA 2017
January 2017 Key Judgments Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order , but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
We have high confidence in these judgments.
We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.
All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment ;NSA has moderate confidence.
You don't have to go very far into the report to get to this because this is all on page #7 of a total of 25. So it appears that Neilsen, who’s been on the job for months — hasn’t reached page #7 yet? Can we expect she’ll get there by 2019?
Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s gonna happen either.
Nearly a year ago her predecessor Jeh Johnston testified that that “The Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyber attacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election,” he said. “That is a fact, plain and simple.”
What isn’t true is the claim that Russia actually changed the votes after they were case electronically, however US Intel did inform Obama that voter registration databases and websites for 7 States including Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin had been breached.
The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.
Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.
Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.
Because of the sensitivity of the intelligence sources and methods these states were not informed because they didn't have people with the appropriate clearances in place. However before this happened Johnston himself had reached out to them with warnings and support only to be rebuffed by GOP Secretaries of State who said that his efforts were some sort of “Federal power grab.”
The federal government wants to help states keep hackers from manipulating the November election, amid growing fears that the U.S. political system is vulnerable.
But Georgia’s top election official is balking at the offers of assistance — and accusing the Obama administration of using exaggerated warnings of cyberthreats to intrude on states’ authority.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s objections add to a bumpy start for the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to shore up safeguards for the election, during a summer when cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee have called attention to weaknesses across the electoral system. Cybersecurity experts call tougher protections long overdue for parties, political advocacy groups and voting machinery, but DHS’ efforts risk becoming caught in the same partisan arguments about state sovereignty that have hung up programs such as President Barack Obama’s Medicaid expansion.
“It seems like now it’s just the D.C. media and the bureaucrats, because of the DNC getting hacked — they now think our whole system is on the verge of disaster because some Russian’s going to tap into the voting system,” Kemp, a Republican, told POLITICO in an interview. “And that’s just not — I mean, anything is possible, but it is not probable at all, the way our systems are set up.”
So is it really a surprise that didn't work out all that well? If the Russians didn’t actually go so far as to try and flip votes, rather than manipulate the voters, it was probably because Obama warned Putin to “Stop” face-to-face, CIA Director Brennen did the same thing with his Russian counterpart Alexander Bortinov the Director of the FSB and then the White House got on the Nuclear War Bat Phone and did it again nearly threatening a war if they didn’t stop.
A month later, the U.S. used the latest incarnation of an old Cold War communications system — the so-called "Red Phone" that connects Moscow to Washington — to reinforce Obama’s September warning that the U.S. would consider any interference on Election Day a grave matter.
This time Obama used the phrase "armed conflict."
"International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," said part of a message sent over the Red Phone on Oct. 31, according to a senior U.S. official. "We will hold Russia to those standards.”
…
Did the message work? "Look at the results," said an Obama administration official. "There was nothing done on Election Day, so it must have worked."
He meant that the nightmare scenario officials feared didn’t occur: An attempt by Russia to manipulate the voting results or throw them into question
So they didn’t change the votes, but then again they'd so twisted the voters around their finger by that point — it really didn’t matter.
When I did my previous analysis of this issue looking at the potential correlations between the polls and the various strategic drops of negative information from Wikileaks, one of the commenters on that post made this point.
For actual data from the Guide to the 21016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, 16% of those who voted for Sanders in the PA primary voted for Trump in the general. In WI and MI, it was 9% and 8% respectively. To put this into raw numbers, Sanders-to-Trump voters ultimately gave Trump the margin he needed to win in each of those states:
- In Wisconsin, roughly 51K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 22K votes.
- In Michigan, roughly 47K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 10K votes.
- In Pennsylvania, roughly 116K Sanders voters backed Trump in a state he won by just 44K votes.
Keep in mind that a Sanders-to-Trump vote is doubly painful because it likely represents a net +2 for Trump (absolute +1 vote for Trump and likely -1 vote for Clinton). Also, the above analysis in these three states is before you even get to Sanders voters who protest voted for Stein/other or didn't vote at all. And these folks were not Rs. They were generally ideologically progressive and voted for Dems in the past.
It just so happens that this final result, where the GOP votes was hyperfocused on Trump while the Democratic vote was suppressed and split between Stein and lingering and frustrated Sanders supporters was exactly according to the plan which was outlined by a Russia Thinktank in early 2016.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.
They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [en.riss.ru/], after the election.
The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office.
The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals.
It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.
What a coincidence that pretty what they planned to due — use social media to swing the election for Trump — is exactly what happened, isn’t it?
One last thing, last November Former Kremlin “political technologist” Gleb Pavlovsky told PBS Frontline that Putin believes that he was responsible for Trump winning the election.
PBS: So information war, lots of control of media, the Internet happening, motivation by President Putin, doesn’t like Hillary Clinton, doesn’t like the United States of America, doesn’t like Europe. Feels that they're all kind of after him. Turns also the troll factories, the cyberwar elements of the military and others, to what some people call the Gerasimov Strategy of hybrid war, all of it available to the president. Does he use it on the United States in the 2016 election campaign?
Pavlovsky: I think the latter is quite unprobable. Putin would not throw too many resources, throw too much strength at this questionable game where he does not see an opportunity of winning. He has not thought that American system was especially vulnerable. I think it’s more likely that hackers kept talking and showing that this was not a wall, that there are no more walls in the world; there are no more borders in the world. Putin did not believe in that for a long time. For sure he has allowed something to be done. He most probably thought that Clinton would be the winning candidate, and he tried to build his propaganda accordingly. Why not help her adversaries? They will be helpful most probably if he gives them a helping hand.
It’s really difficult to understand what was the level of Putin’s involvement or blessing in that. After November, after Trump was elected, the situation changed. Now Putin understands, or he believed at least, that he was strong. I don’t know who believed in America that Putin elected Trump, but Putin believed that. Putin believed that, and that has become a political factor.
So that’s a thing there isn’t it?