The allegation that Russian government sponsored hacking influenced the last election is baseless and is a fraud.
The fraud is being propagated for political purposes with the aim being to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump.
I will give you the basics of how we can know this is a fraud and expand on it in the coming days/weeks/months as the story falls apart.
The basic points are these:
1) There is a lack of specific evidence pointing to the Russian government. No IP addresses, no physical names or physical addresses. The technology supposedly used is not limited to Russia much less the Russian government. Some of the programs/methods that were (supposedly) used were originally created by Russian programmers. That means nothing. I'm running Kaspersky security on my computer as I write this, does that mean I'm in kahoots with the Russians?
2) The case is overwhelmingly "social". Everybody Knows. Today it was reported that all the major US intelligence agencies are united in their assessment that the Russian government was behind the hacking during the election and that their aim was to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.
When the "social truth" starts to coalesce around something and physical facts are missing that is a red flag. Generally the "social truth" turns out to be wrong. As it will in this case. Remember WMD in 2002?
Think of this: will any of these senior intelligence officials suffer reputational or professional harm if they are wrong about their allegation of Russian government hacking? History shows they probably won't. They will be able to say "everybody thought so". But if any one of them crossed up the others and said "I don't think Russia was involved" and he turned out to be wrong, his career and reputation would likely be destroyed. Each and every one of these senior intelligence officials are in fact human beings and they are all likely ambitions and probably care a lot about their reputations. "Herding behavior" is very common in such situations.
Not only am I not swayed by the unanimity of US intel (at the present time as presented by top politically appointed officials), it makes me doubt the case even more because there is pretty much zero physical evidence to back it up.
Let me repeat: there is zero physical evidence of Russian government involvement.
The point that was stressed today by US intelligence agencies was that the activity observed had the "unique signature" of Russian government hacking. It was a "pattern of behavior" thing. That is essentially the logic used at the Salem Witch trials. It's "we know because we are the experts and we are telling you so."
I will end here by presenting the exact moment when I came to the conclusion that this is a fraud. Last night a story ran on CNN with the headline "US identifies go-betweens who gave emails to WikiLeaks" and needless to say I read it. No "go-betweens" were discussed in the story at all, what was discussed was "intercepted conversations of Russian officials expressing happiness at Trump's win." And "another official described some of the messages as congratulatory."
At that point the case was sealed to me.
This thing is politically motivated fraud.
Russian officials being happy about Trump winning does not mean the Russian government hacked the DNC. Russian officials "congratulating each other" does not mean the Russian government hacked Podesta. Anyone who knows a foreign language will understand how easy it is for a non native speaker to take something out of context in a foreign language. Russian officials "congratulating themselves" means absolutely nothing. The fact that this was presented is ironically evidence of social hacking on the part of the US news media. Social hacking is what you try to do when you don't have the facts on your side. This story indicated to me that they don't have facts but are desperate to make their case.
I have more reasons for knowing this is a fraud but it will take time to present them. I will enjoy presenting my analysis as this story is debunked.
Hopefully it will serve as a guide to critical thinking in such matters.
The fraud is being propagated for political purposes with the aim being to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump.
I will give you the basics of how we can know this is a fraud and expand on it in the coming days/weeks/months as the story falls apart.
The basic points are these:
1) There is a lack of specific evidence pointing to the Russian government. No IP addresses, no physical names or physical addresses. The technology supposedly used is not limited to Russia much less the Russian government. Some of the programs/methods that were (supposedly) used were originally created by Russian programmers. That means nothing. I'm running Kaspersky security on my computer as I write this, does that mean I'm in kahoots with the Russians?
2) The case is overwhelmingly "social". Everybody Knows. Today it was reported that all the major US intelligence agencies are united in their assessment that the Russian government was behind the hacking during the election and that their aim was to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.
When the "social truth" starts to coalesce around something and physical facts are missing that is a red flag. Generally the "social truth" turns out to be wrong. As it will in this case. Remember WMD in 2002?
Think of this: will any of these senior intelligence officials suffer reputational or professional harm if they are wrong about their allegation of Russian government hacking? History shows they probably won't. They will be able to say "everybody thought so". But if any one of them crossed up the others and said "I don't think Russia was involved" and he turned out to be wrong, his career and reputation would likely be destroyed. Each and every one of these senior intelligence officials are in fact human beings and they are all likely ambitions and probably care a lot about their reputations. "Herding behavior" is very common in such situations.
Not only am I not swayed by the unanimity of US intel (at the present time as presented by top politically appointed officials), it makes me doubt the case even more because there is pretty much zero physical evidence to back it up.
Let me repeat: there is zero physical evidence of Russian government involvement.
The point that was stressed today by US intelligence agencies was that the activity observed had the "unique signature" of Russian government hacking. It was a "pattern of behavior" thing. That is essentially the logic used at the Salem Witch trials. It's "we know because we are the experts and we are telling you so."
I will end here by presenting the exact moment when I came to the conclusion that this is a fraud. Last night a story ran on CNN with the headline "US identifies go-betweens who gave emails to WikiLeaks" and needless to say I read it. No "go-betweens" were discussed in the story at all, what was discussed was "intercepted conversations of Russian officials expressing happiness at Trump's win." And "another official described some of the messages as congratulatory."
At that point the case was sealed to me.
This thing is politically motivated fraud.
Russian officials being happy about Trump winning does not mean the Russian government hacked the DNC. Russian officials "congratulating each other" does not mean the Russian government hacked Podesta. Anyone who knows a foreign language will understand how easy it is for a non native speaker to take something out of context in a foreign language. Russian officials "congratulating themselves" means absolutely nothing. The fact that this was presented is ironically evidence of social hacking on the part of the US news media. Social hacking is what you try to do when you don't have the facts on your side. This story indicated to me that they don't have facts but are desperate to make their case.
I have more reasons for knowing this is a fraud but it will take time to present them. I will enjoy presenting my analysis as this story is debunked.
Hopefully it will serve as a guide to critical thinking in such matters.
