The Summit Shell Game

Following the recent summit between the US and Russian Presidents in Finland, the topic of Russian influence on the 2016 US election is once again dominating the news cycle. We’ve written about the Russian “meddling” topic previously, but there are enough new twists in this saga to warrant further commentary.

Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden describes very well in his new book the difference between “knowable” and “unknowable” facts in the business of intelligence. For example, given enough time, resources and access, the US Intelligence Agencies (including the FBI) have the technical ability to know if a computer system has been hacked. They also can know with reasonable certainty the identity of the intruder if the hacking technique conforms to a known profile. In a December 2016 Intelligence report requested by President Obama, the Intelligence Agencies asserted that Russians hacked into the computer systems of both major political parties, with the DNC systems being penetrated as early as July 2015. There is little reason to doubt this occurred since it falls into the category of a “knowable” fact.

Now consider the case of an “unknowable” fact. The same intelligence report mentioned above also asserted that Russians conducted social media propaganda operations. Did the hacking and/or propaganda operations change the outcome of the 2016 election? To determine this, the Intel community would have to know that a person changed their vote solely because of the information from fake Russian personas on social media and/or from what was revealed by the hacking operations. The only way to know for certain is to ask every voter what influenced their vote choice and then link their answer to information that could have only come from Russian cyber operations. This kind of person-by-person analysis on the scale of over 120 million voters does not lie within the technical capability or legal framework of the US Intelligence community (or anyone else for that matter). It is not a knowable fact. Because this is not a knowable fact is the reason that the Intelligence Report also states,” We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election”¹.

The terms “meddling” and “influencing” are vague, and do not directly indicate the action taken was sufficient enough to change an outcome. For example, you can try to “influence” the outcome of a sports event by cheering or booing loudly, but the game may still end the same way if you hadn’t been there at all. On the other hand, the volume and quality of your cheers may so inspire a team that they perform at a higher level than usual (the effect of home field advantage) and win a game they would otherwise have lost without your presence. You attempted to use “influence” in both cases, but in only one case was there an effect on the outcome. With respect to the 2016 election, the media and Trump’s opponents are using the terms “meddling” and “influence” to indicate both that the outcome of the election was affected and that the result would have been different if the meddling had not occurred. That the latter is not a knowable fact doesn’t matter to them, because the ambiguity inherent in the words “meddling” and “influence” are being strategically used to indicate either an affected or unaffected outcome as it suits them². This purposeful confusion invites an equally ambiguous and disorganized response from the President and his supporters.

Adding a new dimension to this topic, Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently issued indictments against twelve Russians for hacking into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee³. The crimes for which these indictments were issued occurred more than two years ago. The US Government has been aware of these crimes since shortly after they occurred. Like many hacking crimes, the perpetrators were not based in the US. In this case they were in Russia, a country from which they are very unlikely to be extradited. Because of that, there is an exceedingly low probability of a trial ever occurring for these hackers, let alone convictions and punishment. This is the probable reason this case had not been aggressively pursued earlier. Despite that, the Special Council chose to issue indictments anyway, just 72 hours before the planned summit between President Trump and President Putin. The purpose for doing so was not to seek justice, but to force the hacking topic “front & center” for the two leaders to comment on after the summit. Both leaders were forced into the uncomfortable position of wanting to emphasize the progress made in other areas during their summit and preserve good will for future meetings, while also needing to directly and assertively address the accusation of “meddling” in light of the indictments. Predictably, the clarity of their responses was less than ideal. President Trump clumsily (but necessarily) dismissed the unknowable aspect of “meddling” (that it affected the election outcome) less he de-legitimize his own Presidency on the world stage. At the same time, he could not avoid the presence of Mueller’s indictments detailing Russian hacking (a knowable fact). In trying to articulate both these positions simultaneously, he provided fodder to his hungry critics who claimed he distrusted information from his own intelligence agencies. Those critics additionally played on confusion they themselves successfully created on four fronts:

1. Meddling/influencing that causes a change in outcome verses that which doesn’t.
2. Motivation and bias of previous leadership in the intelligence community (Comey – FBI, Brennan – CIA, Clapper – DNI) versus that of the new occupants in those positions (Wray – FBI, Haspel – CIA, Coates – DNI).
3. Combining the separate, and thus far unsupported, collusion allegations with the just-released hacking indictments.
4. Hacking of DNC and RNC servers (lots of evidence) verses hacking of actual vote tallying systems (no evidence).

The media’s obsession with covering the meddling topic overshadowed other aspects of the summit, some of which were glaring by their absence. No one knows exactly what was discussed during the longest interval of the summit when the two leaders were alone. Of all the things both leaders mentioned afterwards, there was the curious omission of anything regarding Edward Snowden. While fanatical Trump critics, including Obama’s former CIA Director John Brennan, were calling President Trump a traitor to the US, there is a real traitor to the US who committed real crimes that carry the death penalty living under the protection of Russia. The extradition of Snowden to the US to stand trial for his crimes is infinitely more valuable than extraditing twelve Russian hackers in the Mueller indictment. The latter’s crimes are child’s play compared to Snowden’s treasonous betrayal of his country. Not a single journalist asked about this in the post summit press conference.

Despite all the confusion and protestations of both the media and Trump critics, the most likely scenario by far is that the outcome of the 2016 election was unaffected by Russian meddling or influence. Any propaganda the Russians spread during 2016 had to compete with and would have needed to stand out from all the other political information juggernauts both foreign and domestic that flooded social media at the time. Also, because of how the electoral college works, propaganda from Russia would have had to have a disproportionate effect in just the right “swing” states to change the outcome. And, since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, this supposedly powerful mind-changing propaganda must have been kept hidden from the millions of voters in states bordering the targeted swing states (else Trump should have had enough “Russian-influenced” votes win the popular vote as well).

Finally, it is noteworthy that all the information exposed from the hacking operations outlined in the Mueller indictments was real – actual emails and documents copied from DNC servers and email accounts – and not propaganda. While there’s no excusing illegal cyber operations by hackers, any voter who saw this information now knew the DNC was being deceitful and unfair to candidate Bernie Sanders. The DNC’s own venality put them into the bizarre position of having to argue that voters would be better informed by not knowing about their own party’s malfeasance.

With the media and Trump critics fixated on a highly dramatic and complex result-changing meddling operation by the Russians, the much more plausible and simpler scenario of what likely occurred in the election is barely mentioned. Namely, the mundane likelihood that the electorate had just become fed-up with the status quo and wanted a new Administration with much less control over their lives, that took less of their money, and communicated much more genuinely and plainly. And while Russians did try to “influence” the US electorate in 2016, what’s to say those efforts were any more fruitful or more effective than their numerous failed attempts at election meddling since the cold war?

The unlikely scenario of a Hollywood movie-style Russian “influencing” operation as the only explanation for why President Trump won the election appears in direct conflict with his rock-solid and historically high approval ratings from those in his own party. If millions of people were “fooled” by the Russians into voting for Trump instead of Clinton, and are now aware of that deception, why are they all still supporting President Trump and his policies? Is it just pure luck that an artificially-elected President has been able to amass the necessary backing of the other branches of government and achieve the majority of his campaign promises in only 18 months?

The elitist attitude of some former and current government officials in concert with the media, and their combined attempt to de-legitimize our duly-elected President disrespects the number one core tenant of the US form of government – that the people themselves determine its leaders and direction. It is the height of arrogance for these officials to continue professing the “wrong” outcome occurred in the election just because the winner’s bombastic and impolitic personality annoys them. Our present administration is not an aberration, it is the true will of the people. They are the ones in control.

¹ This report was characterized in the media as coming from the Intelligence “community” and “unanimous” in its findings. In fact, only three of the seventeen intelligence agencies participated in the report (FBI, CIA, NSA) and only two of those three (FBI, CIA) had “high confidence” in the reports main assessment.

² After several recounts and examinations of voting machinery, it has been consistently reported by individual states and the federal government that the 2016 vote count was unaffected by Russian meddling and other foreign influence. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the following as part of his July 13th statement about the Mueller indictments – “There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result”. Further, the Intelligence Report on election meddling requested by President Obama in December 2016 stated the following: “DHS assesses that the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying.”

³ The intelligence community report stated that Republican National Committee systems were also hacked by the Russians, however this was not highlighted in the Mueller indictments or in any subsequent media reporting.