The New York Times reports today on Russia’s efforts to hack into additional groups in the United States, and while the title of the article is “New Russian Hacking Targeted Republican Groups,” that’s more than a little deceptive. As is clear from the contents of the report covered by the article, what Russia is doing is going after Donald Trump’s adversaries in traditional Republican “think tanks” and “institutes,” because Trump’s interests, and Putin’s interests, are inseparable.
The report at the center of the article was created by Microsoft. That company has recently detected a number of websites created by Russian intelligence. These sites mimicked the style of the Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute. Both sites are not just Republican organizations, but heavily conservative. Which makes “Russians go after conservative Republican sites” a convenient talking point.
However, both organizations are notable because they’ve frequently been critical of Trump, and in particular of Trump’s fondness for Vladimir Putin and his desire to build more ties between the U.S. and Russia. So the “Fancy Bear” group of cyberwar operatives went after these Republican organizations not because they’re Republican, but because they are not fully aligned with Trump’s foreign policy.
And as Russia carries out fresh attacks on his opponents, Donald Trump has once again backed away from admitting that Russia has been behind any attacks then or now. As of a Tuesday interview with Reuters, Trump is back to “if.”
He again neglected to blame Russia for interfering in the 2016 election, a conclusion reached by the U.S. intelligence community.
The probe, he said, “played right into the Russians - if it was Russia - they played right into the Russians’ hands.”
The Microsoft report details how the Russians scattered links that went to the false versions of the two Republican sites they created. These false versions reversed the more Russia-cautious policies of these organizations. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and H. R. McMaster area all directly tied to the International Republican Institute
Eric Rosenbach, head of the Defending Digital Democracy project at Harvard University, declared that the Russian actions show they aren’t “pursuing partisan attacks, they are pursuing attacks that they perceive in their own national self-interest.” However, that’s only true if “partisan” is read strictly along lines of party affiliation.
Because when it comes to Trump, Russia clearly feels that his interest is their interest.