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The Economics of Hacking an Election

cs.columbia.edu

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Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#21

Post by [deleted] »

textor wrote: post #9
sytelus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are weak arguments. Author basically says hacker doesn't want to hack country A because then he will run out resources to hack country B. Seriously? As mentioned in comment, hacking election is very cheap. On back of the envelop, I think $1 million should buy you enough ads to precisely target handful of swing precincts that will give you just 1-2% of the boost needed to put you over the thin win margin. If US…

Equivocation of ad placement and hacking is a disingenious tactic, especially here.

[deleted]

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#22

Post by ameister14 »

deft wrote: post #3
sytelus wrote: post #2

This is seriously uninformed article with bad assumptions and assertions. The first assertion author makes is that attacker is resource limited which is a pointless assertion for stack sponsored entities unless cost of attack is astronomical. The second point author makes is that US elections are highly decentralize for attacks such as hacking electronic systems, making effective attacks very expensive. Again this is…

Good points. Your last paragraph really shows how easy it would be / is which makes me wonder why is the Russia story such a big deal? There very well could have been similar attacks pulled off in the past with no one noticing (or it being legal all together) Sidenote: politics only seems to have morality as a focus when it is in their favour.

>Your last paragraph really shows how easy it would be / is

His last paragraph is the equivalent of 'I'll create a GUI interface using visual basic; see if I can track the killer's IP' it displays a complete lack of understanding or knowledge of campaign finance, how the electoral system works, and how it's manipulated.

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#23

Post by creaghpatr »

dantheman wrote: post #10
sytelus wrote: post #2

This is seriously uninformed article with bad assumptions and assertions. The first assertion author makes is that attacker is resource limited which is a pointless assertion for stack sponsored entities unless cost of attack is astronomical. The second point author makes is that US elections are highly decentralize for attacks such as hacking electronic systems, making effective attacks very expensive. Again this is…

This is incorrect: You can literally donate just $100K to political candidate and he would pass a law for you that makes your company 10s of millions for many many years. It never ends to surprise me that political donations by commercial entities and ultra-rich is not considered a crime in US. In most other countries they are known as "bribe". Companies cannot give money directly to politicians and individuals are l…

Companies also can lobby which is the more hedged way of influencing policy since an established industry think tank can have more staying power and influence than a single or handful representatives or senators.

Edit: what I mean to say is that legal lobbying lowers the incentive to use campaign donations as a form of influence.

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#24

Post by ryanwaggoner »

sytelus wrote: post #5
dredmorbius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your counterargument misses the point made explicitly within the article: "They may have vast resources, and in particular they may have more resources than the defenders—but they're still limited. Why? They'll throw enough resources at the problem to solve it, i.e., to hack the election, and use anything left over for the next problem, e.g., hacking the Brexit II referendum… There's always another target. " Too: the…

Those are weak arguments. Author basically says hacker doesn't want to hack country A because then he will run out resources to hack country B. Seriously? As mentioned in comment, hacking election is very cheap. On back of the envelop, I think $1 million should buy you enough ads to precisely target handful of swing precincts that will give you just 1-2% of the boost needed to put you over the thin win margin. If US…

This makes it sound like the only people running targeted advertising would be the state-sponsored "hackers", but that isn't the case. Campaigns spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, including digital, and one side still loses, and not always the side who spends less on advertising.

If you think it's so easy to swing elections with a few hundred thousand dollars of ads, you should definitely go into political strategy and prove it. They'll rain money down on you.

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#25

Post by odyssey7 »

rayiner wrote: post #17
sytelus wrote: post #2

This is seriously uninformed article with bad assumptions and assertions. The first assertion author makes is that attacker is resource limited which is a pointless assertion for stack sponsored entities unless cost of attack is astronomical. The second point author makes is that US elections are highly decentralize for attacks such as hacking electronic systems, making effective attacks very expensive. Again this is…

> Overall, hacking political system has shown to have ROI of 10,000% or more and it should make a perfect economic sense to businesses and external governments. This trope amazes me. If this were true, you’d see a lot more campaign donations. Instead, you see a few billion out of an economy of trillions. There isn’t an investment opportunity like that just sitting around without investors jumping on board and bidding…

I don't think hacking and donating should be conflated this way. What is the ROI for a dictator who decides to count their own votes?

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#26

Post by dalbasal »

rayiner wrote: post #17
sytelus wrote: post #2

This is seriously uninformed article with bad assumptions and assertions. The first assertion author makes is that attacker is resource limited which is a pointless assertion for stack sponsored entities unless cost of attack is astronomical. The second point author makes is that US elections are highly decentralize for attacks such as hacking electronic systems, making effective attacks very expensive. Again this is…

> Overall, hacking political system has shown to have ROI of 10,000% or more and it should make a perfect economic sense to businesses and external governments. This trope amazes me. If this were true, you’d see a lot more campaign donations. Instead, you see a few billion out of an economy of trillions. There isn’t an investment opportunity like that just sitting around without investors jumping on board and bidding…

I agree that this is a trope. It a factoid defined/estimated/invented by athink tank or somesuch, published somewhere and then republished lots of times citing earlier publications.

It's inevitaly made up, because no one (sane) publicly acknowledges that contracts won as a result of lobbying.

But, I disagree with this:

"An investment opportunity like that just sitting around without investors jumping on board and bidding up the price"

Economists theorize using "perfect" markets like a stock or bond markets. Real life includes clunkier scenarios. An investment might be worth X to you and Y to me. It may be available to me and not to you, or worthless to you. I might be able to evaluate the value, while you can't.

That doesn't mean that the roi of "investments" that aren't traded investment products will usually be in that 3%-30% range. If Apple decide to develop a new product, that is an "investment." The cost of that investment is not subject to those kinds of market forces, which ensure that high ROI investments don't exist. The ROI could be negative or it could be orders of magnitude above average.

With something like "buying influence," there is no economic theory reason to expect any ROI in particular. It would be unexpected if the value of lobying was less than the cost, but otherwise it's a pretty open field.

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#27

Post by stukh »

The real election hacking come from the fact that people are easy to sway. We succumb to subtle nudges in ways that we aren’t always consciously aware of. We now live in an era where a given nudge can be directed and concentrated to the right group of people and doing this at scale is practical.

The adage in politics has been, “All politics is local.” This appears to be changing in the U.S. Money and influence comes from all over and the issues that rile up people enough to vote are less and less tied to local problems. At least this is how I see things. I don’t know a good solution to the problem. Perhaps Asimov had it right in his story “Franchise”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

Re: The Economics of Hacking an Election

#28

Post by stealthmodeclan »

9712263 wrote: post #11
veridies wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won’t speak to the specific examples in either India or the US, but I will say that when you have extreme support for one candidate by members of minority ethnicities, that typically suggests that the other party is either apathetic or hostile to their interests. If there are enough members of the ethnic majority to reach a plurality, then that party will, and should, win. The fact that they vote en mass for one pa…

In an ideal world where people are intelligent enough to vote for their long term benefit, then what you said is true. But let's say a country have little care to minority ethnicities. I have the many resources to arrange short benefit to them, such as occasional free dinner for those ethnicities, arranging cheap or free traveling trip for them. Essentially bribe those minorities. Now I am elected to become a preside…

> Firstly, minorities have very tough environment and they don't have education and even time to think about their future

I'll add here that even if they've time and education, they might lack proper nutrition if the government deliberately keeps the watchdogs which regulate food supplies, drugs and environment underesorced. This will reduce their IQ and ability to take a better decision.

The end game is whoever manages to keep people desperate and dumb.

Simply letting bad actors contaminate the food with lead will do this job of keeping everyone dumb and winning election next year by throwing breadcrumbs.

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