We lost a war: Russia’s interference in our election was much more than simple mischief-making.
TIM SNYDER, DAILY NEWS
Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and the author, most recently, of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
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After the election, the Russian parliament gave Trump a standing ovation and a leading talk show host congratulated Russians on their victory in the American elections. And of course, Trump actually called upon Russia to intervene in the election and, for good measure, recited Russian fake news at a rally. He shared his main adviser with Russian oligarchs and solicited foreign policy advice from people with stakes in a Russian gas company.
His first national security adviser took money from a Russian propaganda organ, and his secretary of state was granted the "Order of Friendship" from Vladimir Putin. And, as we have been hearing, other members of the Trump campaign were in touch with Russian diplomats before and after the elections.
Now, the Kremlin is far from unified, and it is hard to believe that the top Russian leadership actually thought it could swing the election. Why should the U.S. prove an easier mark than, say, Ukraine, where Russia tried but failed to hack the presidential election in 2014?
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But the consequences in the real world, once they begin, are not subject to the same tight control as the cyberwar itself. It is one thing to sit in a room thousands of miles away and dream of disrupting the enemy; it is quite another, even for Russian leaders, to actually watch the world-historical bumbling of a Trump. It is perhaps more comfortable to portray the United States as an enemy than to watch it topple.
It is impossible to prove that the disarray in and around the Kremlin is a result of a distressing cyber victory, but there are certainly some coincidences that are more than suggestive. In early December, Russia arrested four of its own leading cybersecurity experts.
On Dec. 26, a former KGB chief was found dead in his car in mysterious circumstances. The suspicion seems to have been that he had something to do with the dossier on Russia and Trump compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Again, it is impossible to be sure, but this certainly looked like blowback from Russia's own meddling.
Meanwhile, Russian diplomats have been dying at an alarming pace since the election. On the morning of election day, a Russian diplomat in New York was found unconscious in the Russian consulate and died on the scene. On Dec. 19 two Russian diplomats were shot dead, one of them the ambassador to Turkey. The Russian consul in Greece was found dead in his apartment on Jan. 9.
Russia's ambassador to India died on Jan. 27 after a "brief illness." Russia's ambassador to the United Nations died suddenly at work in New York on Feb. 20. On March 9, for good measure, Putin fired 10 generals from the security services.
Losing a cyber war is presumably worse than winning one. It would take all the pages of this newspaper to explain how Trump's victory has weakened the United States. Given that our President fails to engage in depth with briefings provided by American intelligence services, who is actually briefing him?
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