With all of the outrage being expressed from those in media and government about the dangers of free speech because of the potential for "disinformation", it would be nice if everyone took a step back and examined how this report is being discussed.
We're under attack by the Russians(again), according to anonymous sources(again) that are purportedly government officials. Where is the skepticism? Are we simply to, yet again, blindly accept evidence-free assertions made by anonymous government officials? As technically literate people know, it can be very difficult, if not impossible to determine who exactly intruded into a network, even in the best of circumstances. As historically literate people know, evidence-free government assertions of attacks by our "enemies" are often baseless, deliberately misleading, or outright fabrications.
The Treasury may very well have been hacked, and the culprits may have been Russians, but its madness to believe any of this without evidence that be scrutinized. There's been a lot of recent outcry for "gatekeepers" that sift through disinformation and decide what people are allowed to see and hear. As illustrated with this article(and the reception it has received), the problem isn't the existence of evidence-free assertions, its the uncritical acceptance of these evidence-free assertions. We need to maintain our skepticism and maintain the same demands for evidence regardless of what assertions are offered or who they are offered by. Lies and unsubstantiated statements are just as bad (if not worse) whether they come stamped with the approval of officially designated gatekeepers or not.