More on the Russian Information Warfare Campaign

NBC News claims to have learned that the CIA now believes with a high level of confidence that Putin directed much of the information warfare campaign aimed at the US elections. That of course makes perfect sense: were the United States to direct an effort to alter a democratic election, as it has done from time to time, it would probably be reported to the President on a regular basis (and likely be based on a Presidential Finding).

Of great interest is the insight as to the aims:

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.

Great powers don't do vendettas, but they do punish their enemies in ways that are useful to them. The DNC hack was useful to Putin at home because it defused the force of the Clinton charges against his own electoral system (which he will face again, to whatever degree of peril, in 2018). Showing that Clinton was herself the leader of a deeply manipulative, indeed rigged, primary system would make the presumptive President Clinton less powerful as a Russian critic.

So, in addition to her devotion to a "No Fly Zone" in Syria -- which we've discussed repeatedly -- here was an important enough interest to make this worth doing. If the leaks did nothing else, Putin could point to US media outlets' coverage of the DNC corruption as a defense against American criticism of his re-election campaign.

What is of importance here is that the leaks were anti-Clinton, rather than pro-Trump. Since the leaks began around the time of the DNC, when both primaries were decided, it is easy to become confused about that: the race was binary at that point. But the campaign seems to have been targeted at Clinton and at doing damage to what the Russians probably assumed (like everyone else) would be the incoming administration.

Further evidence along this line comes from a Newsweek report from before the election. The author is sure the Russians are 'favoring Trump,' rather than 'opposing Clinton,' but look at this:

By August, however, fears began to emerge within the Kremlin that the effort was falling apart. Trump’s attacks on the parents of a slain Muslim American soldier following the father’s speech at the Democratic convention created dismay in the Kremlin. Top Russian officials came to believe Trump would be forced to withdraw from the race because of his psychological state and apparent unsuitability for the presidency, according to information obtained by the Western intelligence source. In particular, Kremlin officials feared they could not predict what impact it might have on Russia should Trump step aside. As a result, the Russians decided to stop forwarding material through channels to WikiLeaks...

By October, “buyer’s remorse” had set in at the Kremlin, according to a report obtained by Western counterintelligence. Russia came to see Trump as too unpredictable and feared that, should he win, the Kremlin would not be able to rely on him or even anticipate his actions.

I've cut out a bit in the middle about an alleged Russian attempt to buy one of Trump's advisers, Manafort, who was forced to resign from the Trump campaign over the charges. The truth of the charges is contested, but the Russians wouldn't be trying to buy something they already owned -- and they wouldn't bother buying the adviser if they owned the candidate.

So it looks like Putin started off with the hope of damaging Clinton's credibility as President, and securing his own position. If he could beat her, he had a great deal more to gain in Syria.

However, Trump is just as much a roll-of-the-dice for the Russians as he is for us. He's his own man, for good or ill, and nobody's sure just what he might do. I'm not sure how much of a comfort that is, but it is at least not 'politics as usual' from here on.

UPDATE: An excellent discussion called, "When does a President become a National Security risk?" featuring John McLaughlin. It's a fair-minded look at the whole set of questions.

The Trump voter

A writer for The American Interest realized last spring that neither he nor anyone he knew had personal contact with any Trump supporters. He decided to drive through the American Southeast and talk to Trump supporters:

I learned that people who describe Trump’s supporters as ignorant haven’t talked to them.

I learned that many, possibly a majority, of Trump’s supporters vote for him not because, but despite, his frequently outrageous comments.

I learned that many of Trump’s supporters don’t necessarily trust him.

I learned that, although much of the country today appears to be brimming with anger, very little of that anger seems to take the form of class resentment. Trump’s self-proclaimed status as a billionaire appears to be an unambiguous plus for him as a candidate. Non-affluent Americans seem increasingly to detest and mistrust politicians, but far fewer seem to detest or mistrust rich people, big corporations, or the growing concentration of wealth in the upper tiers of U.S. society.

I learned that very large proportions of Southern and of blue-collar white people, especially men, hold Hillary Clinton in utter contempt. In all my conversations, I met exactly one woman, and not a single man, who said anything positive about Clinton. . . .

I learned that, in addition to a steadily growing partisan divide—liberals vilifying conservatives and vice versa—the United States is also experiencing a growing governing divide, such that millions of Americans find themselves voting for candidates that they can’t stand and don’t trust. The overwhelming majority of those I interviewed simply do not believe that their elected leaders, including those from their own party, are honest or can be trusted even to try to do the right thing. In my view, this sentiment is toxic, particularly in a democracy, and, probably more than any other factor, explains Trump’s rise. He’s an alluring candidate for the large and growing proportion of Americans who believe that the core problem with our politics is politicians.

I learned that many non-affluent Americans fear that the hour is late and that “we’re losing everything.”

I learned that many decent, sincere people who feel disregarded, disrespected, and left behind—in ways that I do not feel and have never felt—can disproportionately embrace political opinions that I view as bigoted or paranoid. And I wonder, if there is fault here, whose fault is it?

Some of these Mexicans Would Make Good Americans

Headline: "Mexican townsfolk kidnap drug boss' mom, demand loved ones."

Suddenly the Mexican government has found soldiers to dispatch to the region, "in hopes of defusing the situation."

I don't know. Sounds like your citizen militia has got it under control.

It's a tough spot, I feel pretty bad about it

Mark Hemingway offers some campaign advice:

It’s conceivable, per Nate Silver, that the Comey letter in late October gave Trump momentum and possibly swung the election. But my response, like most Americans, is “So what?” If you’re worried about an FBI investigation influencing a presidential election DON’T NOMINATE A CANDIDATE UNDER FBI INVESTIGATION. And you really, really, don’t want to nominate a candidate under investigation whose top aide’s husband is also being investigated by the FBI for child pornography who is also allegedly in possession of emails relevant to the candidate’s FBI investigation that he’s keeping on the same computer as his grody sex pics.

Seriously, stop and read those two previous sentences again, and think about why any normal person would be in any way sympathetic to this predicament.

Good, government jobs

A big factor in my defection from the Democratic Party in the 1990s came when the evening newscasters analyzed the big, scary government-shutdown threat and couldn't find any heartrending stories about vital services not being provided to the citizens.  Instead, the stories were all about poor Betty, who wouldn't be able to draw her paycheck this Friday in exchange for doing some kind of job that the reporter didn't even bother describing, let alone justifying the tax cost of.

They're at it again:  CNBC sniffs and huffs at the "fox guarding the henhouse" quality of Trump's anti-departmental picks for department heads.  It's even worse than that, CNBC complains:

Some people are using the "fox guarding the hen house" metaphor to describe these picks. But that's not exactly right. Remember the fox just wants to eat the chickens, not tear down the hen house and put the chickens out of a job.

But you know, guys, the point of the Department of Energy is not supposed to be to provide bureaucrats at the DOE with a nice paycheck. Rick Perry doesn't want to eat the chickens. He wants them to go get an honest job in the private sector and quit eating the taxpayers out of house and home. Alternatively, the chickens might try persuading someone that they're doing work that's actually worth their chicken feed.  As it is, they're essentially expecting the farmer to keep them as pets.  "You wouldn't eat us, would you?"

Thanks, Jill Stein

How funny would it be if the principal effect of the futile Michigan recount initiative was to spur an audit of the corrupt and incompetent Detroit voting system?

I'll Bet A Lot of Investigations Are Coming

Georgia's Secretary of State asks the Donald to investigate DHS's hacking of our state-level computers.

Over/under on how many other change-of-administration investigations will happen? IRS & Loretta Lynch? ATF "Fast and Furious"? DOJ and the Clinton Investigation Suppressions?

Filling the air with Democratic scandals would be a useful way of going on offense against the constant effort to find new Trump scandals.

Conflicts, Part II+

Allahpundit at Hot Air notes a poll showing that most Americans think that Donald Trump's investments will affect his decisions as Presidents, but that a strong majority of Republicans think that's a good thing. Even independents are closely divided, 39/44 good/bad.

Maybe Republicans read the question differently, Allah says, but...

I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that GOPers really did understand this as a question about conflicts of interest and just shrugged it off because they’re willing to let Trump get away with self-enrichment as president. He slayed the Clinton dragon. Giving him a “bonus” by letting special interests shower cash on his properties in hopes of winning the federal government’s favor is really the least we can do to say thanks.

As someone who believes that Trump should definitely do the blind trust option, and get out of the business world entirely, I obviously recognize the downside of these conflicts of interest. Still, there's an upside of a sort that Allah is missing.

Remember the McDonald's Theory of International Relations? It's not quite defunct, although the pure form of the theory ("No two countries both having a McDonald's will ever go to war") is now disproven. But a weaker version of the theory -- and the theory itself was really just a shorthand for a bigger idea about the effect of economic ties on the probability of war -- remains widely held.

I think a close reading of the outbreak of the First World War shows that the theory isn't really solid even in its weaker form. The First World War occurred in spite of very close economic ties, because of a problem associated with the need to mobilize one's forces as early as possible in order to avoid being overrun by an earlier enemy mobilization. Thus, once it seemed likely a potential enemy would mobilize for war, everyone had to do so immediately to avoid being behind the curve, and thus losing everything on the first cast. We have a very similar problem today with regard to the deployment of nuclear forces. (Indeed, if Hillary Clinton is to be believed -- always a chancy proposition! -- a decision has to be made within four minutes. Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared to confirm that timeline, adding that the President's adviser has about three minutes to decide whether to inform the President -- so we're talking about ~10 minutes or less for this set of persons to make its series of decision.)

So I think the theory is wrong, and the same kinds of problems that caused WWI could easily cause a Russian-American war now. But let's ask the question another way: is it ridiculous to think that Trump's business ties in Russia make it less likely that we'll get to the four-minute problem? Or is it likely that his personal cupidity in pursuing Russian business interest lower the probability of a disastrous war? Won't they incline Trump to pursue enriching rather than destructive solutions?

Well, maybe not; so far he seems to be willing to play at brinkmanship with China, which is no wiser than brinkmanship with Russia if avoiding war is your primary goal. There are questions about his temperament (perhaps having a Twitter account will be a satisfying enough revenge for his pricklish pride; perhaps not).

Still, my guess is that Republicans who say his business conflicts are a good thing are thinking of something like the McDonald's Theory. As a statement of probabilities rather than certainties, it's not wholly ridiculous for them to think it. It's just that there's a lot more that the theory doesn't capture.

Antifragility: A Summary

The Art of Manliness has summarized Taleb's new book. I'd like to hear from AVI on how well their understanding of it matches his own, as well as from any of the rest of you who have read it.

This Doesn't Sound Very Russian

Detroit voting machines counted too many votes.

In a set of precincts that went hardcore for the Democrats, that doesn't like the ordinary poor-maintenance issues that trouble Detroit generally, either.

Sexual Objects

Warning: this is an intensely philosophical post that most of you may wish to skip.

A couple of recent articles have touched on the issue of "sexual objectification." The philosophy around right sexuality is something that I've had an interest in for decades, ever since I first encountered Catholic theological arguments in a Comparative Religious Philosophy class. They're very interesting, well-reasoned, but from the beginning they struck me as missing something. This concept of "objectification" has also bothered me for a long time, as it also seems to be missing something.

Before I get into my new thoughts on the matter, let me put the articles in front of you. First, and most important, here is a brief account of Kant's theory of objectification (which goes way beyond sexuality, to embrace the entirety of moral philosophy). It's a longer piece, but I can't usefully excerpt it as the whole argument is needed for the following discussion.

Second, here is an account by Dennis Prager on why sexual objectification is perfectly normal in human males.

It's really the Kantian argument I'm concerned with here, but I think it has much broader application.

So, Kant makes exactly one exception to sex as being morally wrong -- and not just wrong, but intensely wicked because it leads to the objectification of the self as well as the other. That one exception is marriage. Here's the argument on why marriage is permissable:

Does any of this pass the laugh test?

Even if we assume that not only Russians but official Russians were behind the DNC hack, I'm having a hard time understand the compelling nature of an argument that they did it to put Trump over the finish line.  As HotAir comments, "A DNC hack would be a really indirect way of electing any Republican, let alone Trump."  It's like something out of The DaVinci Code.  For once, Julian Assange is sounding more credible; he claims the source of the leak was a disgruntled Bernie supporter at the DNC.

That Russians, official or otherwise, wanted to jack with public confidence in our institutions seems reasonable enough, but the rest of it is a bit Rube Goldberg for my taste.  In any case, if all it takes to undermine confidence in our institutions is the publication of completely genuine and true information about the inner workings of the DNC, bring it on.

An anti-Cabinet

I can really get behind the appointment of cabinet secretaries whose primary aim is to get their departments to quit exceeding their authority and screwing everything up for everybody.

The Russian candidate

From HotAir:

Weirdly, the Russian government is doing Tillerson no favors. If Putin and his loyalists want Tillerson at State, the obvious play right now is to lie low and not say anything too encouraging, especially with anti-Trumpers of all stripes aggravated by the CIA news about Russia interfering in the campaign. Instead you’ve got excited quotes from Russian apparatchiks showing up in English-language media today. “The choice of Tillerson is sensational. Trump continues to amaze,” said one Russian senator. “This is a fantastic team. These are people that Russia can do business with,” a consultant to Putin’s staff agreed. Um, okay. John Bolton it is, then.

One interesting question for Trump’s first year, regardless of who ends up at State: What sort of face-saving “victories” will Putin hand to him to encourage entente between the two countries? Trump’s not going to lift sanctions or pull back from eastern Europe for nothing; he’ll be flogged by hawks for “weakness,” which will irritate him to no end and could sway public opinion unless he has concessions from Russia to point at. Putin must be prepared to do something to make America’s strongman look superficially “strong,” but what? He could lend the U.S. some help in reining in China, but he needs to be careful about making too much of an enemy of a much, much more populous nuclear power on his border. The U.S. can pull back internationally; there’s no place Putin can “pull back to” to avoid China. Perhaps Russia will suddenly discover that it’s badly understocked on luxury hotels? The new Trump International in Vladivostok will be the classiest of all Trump properties, that I can tell you.

The whole thing may have been worth the silly hoopla if it gets the press back into the habit of evaluating U.S. officials in terms of their loyalty to this country's interests instead of how cool they sound holding forth in the faculty lounge.

Get Out Of Your Defensive Crouch

So, yesterday, Instapundit linked a piece entitled "Abandoning Defensive Crouch Conservatism." The phrase (by Randy Barnett, who led the fight against Obamacare all the way to the Supreme Court) struck me because I've heard it several times lately from others. One of those others has been asked to join the new administration.

I'd like to propose that you take stock of some of your recent reactions, to see how much of them entail a defensive crouch. Do you find yourself thinking or saying things like these?

* There's no point in working with the left, because they always change the rules.

* No part of government can be trusted.

* We can't afford to compromise or we'll get rolled.

Those are defensive reactions, which are understandable given eight years out of power. What you have in front of you is the opportunity to change these things.

* You won't have to work with the left, because Republicans will control the whole government. They have to decide whether to work with you. Are there things they want that you also want? Those things can now be used to your advantage, as reasons to get them to go along with your larger program.

* The broken parts of the government can be fixed -- or better yet, insofar as they conflict with the 10th Amendment, reduced or eliminated. The government will work a lot better if it is a lot smaller, for the reasons we've so often discussed regarding Schumpeter and ossification. It also happens to be the Constitutional thing to do.

* Don't get rolled, get involved. This is your chance -- and it may be the last chance -- to change the course of the American nation for something healthier and better.

Trump can't do it alone, and frankly he may not be up to the task. He lacks the experience we'd have looked for by preference, he does have some conflicts of interest that will dog him, and he may not have the proper temperament or mindset for the job he's undertaking. But all of you have something to offer to the things you care about most. Each of you has a certain expertise that could help in the monumental task of reform that stands ahead of us. It won't happen if we don't find ways to help make it happen.

I'm not suggesting that you should all rush off to join the Trump administration. It may be that more important things exist to be done at the state or local level, or that your own expertise better fits something closer to home. Nor am I suggesting that we should all pull together to support Trump, right or wrong. I think he'll be wrong a lot of the time, and one of the most important things we should be doing is pulling in the right direction when he tries to go in the wrong one.

I am suggesting it's time to stop thinking defensively about the government, and start thinking offensively. It's time to start hitting, making reforms, devising strategies and then implementing them. Do it wherever you can, wherever you are. This is a chance, but it's only a chance, it's no more than a chance, and it'll likely come to little good without you. Find a place to push.

A Brief Guide to Russian Hacking of the US Election

Over at RCP, Charles Lipson provides a useful summary of the issue and makes a reasonable suggestion for how to proceed.

He summarizes what we know, including the fact that no credible source gives any evidence for the idea that Trump didn't win, and then states that this is a matter of election integrity which everyone should be concerned about. He proposes something like the 9/11 commission to investigate and highlight areas of vulnerability.

Overall, I think he's on the right track. One problem for me is that I increasingly don't trust any part of the US government to conduct a reasonable, non-partisan investigation. The failure to indict Clinton was a big blow to that confidence.

Is there any part of the government we can really trust to do the right thing anymore? Or am I being uncharitable?

All Hat and No Cattle, Prof

Maybe substance is overrated. In an article titled "How fascist is Donald Trump? There's actually a formula for that", Prof. John McNeill at Georgetown U. measures Trump's level of fascism on "the 11 attributes of fascism". Those are:

Ideological Attributes

1. Hyper-nationalism
2. Militarism
3. Glorification of violence and willingness to use it in politics
4. Fetishization of youth
5. Fetishization of masculinity
6. Leader cult
7. Lost-golden-age syndrome
8. Self-definition by opposition

Attributes as a Political Movement

1. Mass mobilization and mass party
2. Hierarchical party structures and tendency to purge the disloyal
3. Theatricality

Isn't something missing? Maybe, totalitarianism? Corporatism? You know, fundamental stuff that's a lot more central to defining fascism than fetishization of youth or theatricality? Maybe?

Of course, the WaPo also recently published Donald Trump is actually a fascist and Don't compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler, so there you are.

Update: To be fair to McNeill, he does give Trump only 26 of a possible 44 Benitos (the standard unit of fascism?) on those 11 attributes, each rated from 0-4.

Also, has the WaPo just gone nuts? I've exceeded my free article limit, but if Stephen Green is right, here's another: New York should seize Trump Tower.

Conflicts of Interest

Vox has been compiling a list of all of Trump's known conflicts of interest. It prompted me to a thought experiment wondering if corporate involvement in foreign economies doesn't cancel out at some point.

Consider a President who was secretly completely motivated by personal greed. If that President had 1 foreign investment, that 1 investment would determine his actions whenever they were threatened (or, inversely, could be grown). That's an obvious problem for us as Americans.

If he has more than one, however, there might be at least some cases when there are opportunity costs. Taking this action would benefit that investment, whereas the alternative action would benefit another. There might be important facts about the size of the investment that would rule, but the overall effect of multiple conflicts of interest is to reduce the power of each on his decision-making process if (and only if) they conflict.

With a small enough set of foreign investments, such conflicts should be rare. However, as the set grows, conflicts become more frequent. An adequately diversified President, even the totally corrupt one of the thought experiment, might eventually be as unmoved by his conflicts of interest as a president with no foreign investments at all.

This isn't to defend Trump, whom I think really should take seriously the conflicts-of-interest problem. It's just interesting to realize that adding many new ones doesn't make the situation worse: arguably, it makes the situation better.

A Major Opportunity

Potentially a huge upside to Trump's victory is that the left will start taking Federalism and State's Rights seriously again. If we get as far as reinvigorating the 10th Amendment, we may attain an America that doesn't have to wrap itself in hatred for each other constantly (and especially on even-numbered Novemembers).

That's hopeful, at least.

You're Probably Not Going to "See the Evidence," Baer

A former CIA officer should know that the evidence he's asking for, to be of use in evaluating the truth of the claim, would have to reveal the sources and methods of collection. Otherwise, you'd have stuff that reads like, "We assess with high confidence that Russia had the goal of electing Donald Trump, and here's the evidence: [Redacted] and on [Redacted] date [Redacted] [Redacted] [Redacted]..."

All you'd end up with evidence of is that the CIA had produced an assessment.

Now, one of the immediate and pressing problems facing American intelligence is these Russian information warfare programs. Giving up our sources and methods would cripple our ability to address these programs. We would have to start all over from zero.

Of course, President Obama could choose to do that anyway. Or he could reveal only part of the evidence, sacrificing only part of our collection efforts in order to make what he thought was the strongest aspect of the case.

The bipartisan group of Senators speaking to this issue, by the way, are talking more sense.

'While protecting classified material, we have an obligation to inform the public about recent cyberattacks that have cut to the heart of our free society.

'Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks.

'This cannot become a partisan issue. The stakes are too high for our country.

'We are committed to working in this bipartisan manner, and we will seek to unify our colleagues around the goal of investigating and stopping the grave threats that cyberattacks conducted by foreign governments pose to our national security.'

Richard Fernandez recommends a two-step solution as an initial measure to prevent future concerns:

1) Go back to paper ballots,

2) Require a secure ID to vote on Election Day.

If you do those two things, the concerns about the vote being hacked largely disappear. You still have the Tammany Hall concerns, but not the computer hacking issues. Nobody would be able to electronically alter vote totals: you'd have to get physical access to the election sites, and the ballots themselves.

UPDATE:

Apparently Baer is not the only former CIA officer who has not thought through the ramifications of publicizing our sources and methods, on the very topic we are most sensitive about right now. This one does, at least, know who is at fault for the information not being public already.

Obama knew before any other policy maker that the Russian government attempted — and possibly succeeded — in altering the outcome of an American presidential election to Russia’s (at least theoretical) advantage. So, the obvious and deeply troubling question is this: why did Obama not make the CIA assessment, and all supporting raw intelligence used in its production, public within a day of receiving it? It’s possible he believes the CIA’s case is not as strong as the CIA asserts....

The mistake the seven Senators made in their declassification request letter to Obama was in not giving him a deadline to make the information public. They should do so now and tell him that if he has not made the information public by close of business on December 12 — one week before the Electoral College meets — they will take to the Senate floor during Tuesday’s pro forma session and read into the record everything in their possession on Russian interference in our election.

I’m not holding my breath that they will do this, but if these same Senators truly believe the CIA’s evidence of Russian interference — or even steering — of our 2016 presidential election is credible, they have a duty to communicate that evidence to American voters, and now.

You want highly classified information touching on how we know about Russia's efforts to influence our election systems read into the public record? Leaving aside the legal questions related to intentionally exposing Top Secret information -- after the continued support of the Democratic Party for Hillary Clinton, I have to assume that we just don't care about the laws pertaining to handling classified information any more -- are you sure that's really the best way to proceed here? At least Nancy Pelosi's daughter is calling for "temporary security clearances" for Electors, although I doubt she has any idea what would be involved in cranking out 535 of those in a week.