Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Links: Russiagate edition

1. Politico's What we know about Russia's election hacking is a good primer.

2. It's time for a little perspective on Russia. Because the U.S. has totally never interfered with the elections of other nations.

3. Is Russiagate a worse scandal than Watergate? Anyways, the left may not be paying enough attention to the controversy.

4. Russia not ranked a high priority problem by Americans. But immigration, current leadership, and non-economic issues were ranked high. Also notice gun/control was an important issue for about a month. I wonder why.

5. Some people have read Russian "interference" "meddling" and "hacking" to mean that actual voting systems were hacked such that votes were miscounted in a Jack Bauer-esk conspiracy. It should be noted that that's not what happened, and by exaggerating an already serious issue to 100, you're making the issue easily dismissed as a vague and unbelievable conspiracy theory.

It's important to be clear about what exactly we mean when we say Russia "hacked" the election. Russia persuaded and influenced through highly funded social media campaigns and Democrat e-mail leaks. That isn't trying to minimize the issue, it's simply not trying to exaggerate it.