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Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

nytimes.com

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Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

toehead2000 wrote: post #59
mejari wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What action has Obama done that can be seen as "sabotaging the next guy"?

Haha I can't believe Im getting downvoted for the comment. Classic hacker news. Anyway, did you read the article? He's kicking out a bunch of ambassadors and closing down diplomatic outposts in a way that will be hard to undo.

Russians only one ambassador in the US and rarely more than two in the US (the ambassador to the US and the permanent representative to the UN.)

Zero ambassadors have been expelled.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#132

Post by tracker1 »

vkazanov wrote: post #3

So, Clinton was corrupted, and somebody noticed it, and it is Russians who are to blame? Huh.

TBH, I'd just assume see more stuff come to light... however, in this case, the Russians didn't want Clinton in office (for whatever reasosn) and allowed, encouraged or outright paid for as much negative information as possible to come to light... the timing was a bit odd though, as it's likely this could have happened during the primaries and brought in a Sanders win.

The Obama (big D) administration doesn't like the outcome, or interference, so are stepping in now that they have some evidence of the origins of said attacks.

Of course they didn't step in when it was one of several large corporations which have heavy economic ties with the US... Boeing, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc... but hey, they messed with their political party and the elections this time.

I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing to be honest. If the news media had done their job instead of pumping Trump's visibility we wouldn't have had to worry about Hillary or Trump being their respective party's nominees in the first place.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#133

Post by ZenoArrow »

etchalon wrote: post #121
etchalon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I believe they did not specifically help him. I have not seen evidence they went out of their way to hurt him. The most "damning" thing you could point to would be the debate schedule, which was scheduled before anyone knew Sanders would be a nominee.

The link below showed something which was talked about, but never executed. It can be chalked up to proof that the DNC preferred Clinton (they absolutely did) but not that they actively did something to harm them. As I noted above, you can argue the emails "hinted at" the potential they did, but you cannot prove they actually did.

Here's another...

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351

>"Yes, Super PAC paying young voters to push back online on Sanders supporters"

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#134

Post by mcphage »

toehead2000 wrote: post #29
hehheh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm mistaken GWB didn't have to deal with a foreign government interfering with our elections. Besides, this sort of thing will only be relevant a few times in the President's career and the odds are pretty good that if it were to happen it would happen in their "lame duck" phase. So what?

Well there's this and the UN Israel resolution, both of which are things Trump would have been unlikely to do. Then there's the raft of executive orders..

Whether or not Trump would do those things is immaterial; he's not yet president, so what he would have done if he was already doesn't matter. Executive orders, that's pretty common.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#135

Post by chokolad »

chokolad wrote: post #30
finid wrote: post #19

So 35 Russian diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave the country, and 2 of their properties will be closed - one in DC and the other in San Francisco. Well, if history is any guide, expect Russia to return the favor. Question is, how long will they wait before announcing that 35 American diplomats have 72 hours to leave Russia?

> Question is, how long will they wait before announcing that 35 American diplomats have 72 hours to leave Russia? I've read somewhere that it will happen on Dec 30.

Can anyone explain why this reasonably benign statement was downvoted ?

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#136

Post by TenOhms »

jsmith0295 wrote: post #48
etchalon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's missing the point. Russia, a state-actor, coordinated an cyber-attack on an American political party. The results of that attack (which weren't particular interesting) are secondary to the attack itself. The Russians are "to blame" because they're the ones who committed the action.

I think it's also worth noting that this was not a particularly sophisticated attack. Podesta fell for a simple phishing attack. A lot of media attention around this has made it sound like something out of an action movie, but the attack itself was actually quite simple. People who have access to so much important information need more training about this sort of thing so they don't just give their password away. It…

Exactly, it could have been a Russian national, or it could have been someone from the USA, Nigeria or Spain, with enough VPN tunnels and botnets at an attacker's disposal it might take years, if ever, that they could attribute the event back to the true source.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#137

Post by etchalon »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #133
etchalon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link below showed something which was talked about, but never executed. It can be chalked up to proof that the DNC preferred Clinton (they absolutely did) but not that they actively did something to harm them. As I noted above, you can argue the emails "hinted at" the potential they did, but you cannot prove they actually did.

Here's another... https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351 >"Yes, Super PAC paying young voters to push back online on Sanders supporters"

I'm not sure what the context of that is, and I hadn't seen that before. I'll do some reading.

Still, a Super PAC is not the DNC. I'm sure pro-Hillary Super PACs were doing (or at least considered doing) quite a few worst things than that.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#138

Post by etchalon »

lotsoflumens wrote: post #130
etchalon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagining motives and then working backwards is, in general, a terrible way to parse the world.

Terrible or not, it's the correct way.

It's literally the complete wrong way. You're inventing potential motivations, convincing yourself those are the motivations of the people involved, and then likely searching for evidence that proves your speculation correct.

Re: Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking

#139

Post by jhanschoo »

golergka wrote: post #89
rakoo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the basis for any conflict resolution is dialogue ?

It's the side who stands to lose from the conflict which usually tries to solve it. US is losing almost nothing from it strained relationship with Russia — why should it bother with it?

It's naive to think that a strained relationship means that the US has nothing to gain from continued diplomatic contact. A country has many dimensions, and there are always multiple dimensions of cooperation to pursue.

And even if there are no grounds on cooperation, such a situation does not obviate the benefit of good communication. Be it businesses in competition or states with rivalries, such relationships can be modeled by a game of competitive strategy. You still want the diplomatic contact to make things clear to your rival when you have committed to something, and also know when your rival has committed to something. And on many issues, a less noisy channel (good diplomatic communication) actually benefits the more powerful entity.

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