And Then There Was One

By Jack Dallas

Our 2016 election was hacked and its outcome was influenced by Russian operatives under the direction of Vladimir Putin.  All of America now knows this to be true.  I say all but I should qualify that with, all but one person.  Yes, Donald J. Trump with his superior brain, his great and unmatched wisdom, his genius-level IQ, his “stable genius” outlook, and the IQ he “guarantees is greater than all” his opponents, doesn’t believe Russia hacked our election.  In fact, he is now trying to shift the blame to Ukraine.  To that end, he has had his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his personal Attorney General, Bill Barr, traveling the world looking for the heinous Deep State that made Russia look guilty of election meddling and was ultimately responsible for the “witch hunt” that brought about the damning Mueller Report.

Rudy is very close to finding the Deep State

The Republican-led Senate has just issued its 85-page second installment of a five-part report of their investigation into Russian meddling into our 2016 election.  That report found that the Russian troll farm, known as the IRA (Internet Research Agency), “was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”   The report further went on to say, “The report confirms the findings of private researchers that African-American voters were targeted by the troll farm more frequently than any other group, in an apparent effort to suppress the vote and help Trump.”  Just a reminder, this is a bi-partisan report supported by both parties. That’s good news. We seem to be very good at investigating and analyzing issues ad nauseam.  What we are not so good at is drawing conclusions that beget reasonable solutions.

The report’s mealy-mouthed “solutions” included:

• educating the public to the dangers of unsubstantiated social media information,
• calling on social media companies to better police their content,
• calling on tech companies to share more information with government agencies, and the executive branch was asked to establish an inter-agency task force to monitor and deter foreign interference.

What the report didn’t suggest was approving the 2017 bill (Honest Ads Act) introduced by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, that would identify who paid for television or radio ads. The report didn’t demand that candidates for office sign a pledge to not accept assistance from a foreign government.  The report didn’t identify who would police misinformation during the upcoming 2020 election cycle.  It would almost seem from their lack of serious demands for reform that Congress is unwilling to give up or restrict their election activities. This almost guarantees that Russia will do it again and that China, North Korea, Iran, and others with nefarious intent, will use our greatest asset, i.e., a free democracy, against us.  We write a report, say we are outraged, and then with a knowing wink and a nod, we do nothing. We have already had one presidential election influenced by foreign cyber-attacks; it looks like we are in for more.

[Footnote]   In doing the research for this article I stumbled on George Washington University’s curriculum for cybersecurity degrees and found the breadth of that offering interesting:

Cybersecurity Training at George Washington University