[Originally published in The Voluntaryist, by Will Porter]
President Trump has been under increasing pressure to answer accusations that he, or members of his team, maintains murky relations with the Russian Federation and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin.
The centerpiece of that narrative is the allegation that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in a bid to turn the US presidential election in Trump's favor, a claim bandied about on virtually all major media networks. While a heap of "evidence" has been furnished to back these assertions, there are good reasons to doubt their merit.
The American intelligence community released two reports on the matter in December 2016 and January 2017, neither containing much of substance.
Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi described both documents as "a lot of sometimes wild speculation and judgments based on fragmentary information," and "yet another mish-mash of soft facts combined with plenty of opinion and maybe even a bit of good old Cold War-style politics." A well-seasoned intelligence veteran, Giraldi is certainly in a position to assess the quality of the claims, and finds them wanting.
The first of the two reports, entitled "Grizzly Steppe—Russian Malicious Cyber Activity," contains an abundance of accusations, but offers little in the way of supporting evidence. In what amounts to "take our word for it," the report simply operates on the premise that the Russians are behind the DNC hacks, and proceeds to explain how the hacks were accomplished. This is the very definition of "begging the question," assuming precisely what is supposed to be proven.
According to Jeffrey Carr, cyber security consultant and author of "Inside Cyber Warfare," attributing responsibility to specific actors for cyber attacks is well-nigh impossible. "Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it," Carr wrote in 2016. "It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone."
This means that even if a particular malware program originated in Russia, it says nothing about who may use that malware in the future. The insistence that the hackers must be Russian because the malware may have been created in Russia is tantamount to the claim that a murderer must be Russian because he used a Kalashnikov to commit the crime.
The lengthier second report, equally devoid of evidence, skirts any new proof about the hacking allegation in favor of an assessment of Russian media, to which the report devotes nearly half of its pages. Needless to say, it was no "smoking gun."
It appears that after the intelligence community failed to come up with solid backing for the hack allegation, it broadened its scope to include all manner of attempted Russian influence on the US election. They're throwing us everything but the kitchen sink.
For the sake of argument, however, let us ignore Craig Murray—the WikiLeaks operative and former UK ambassador who said the DNC leaks came from American insiders—and accept that the Russians did hack the DNC. What would it mean? The claim, in short, is that Russia stole and released, via WikiLeaks, damning information about the Hillary Clinton campaign, and this in turn got Trump elected.
This is the most bizarre aspect of the story. The problem for the Clintonistas is not that their party ran a contemptible, lying, war-mongering tyrant, it's that the Russians proved it to American voters. What kind of accusation is that?
Let us also go out on a limb and assume, more broadly, that Trump is actually an agent of the Kremlin, wittingly or otherwise. Given the lack of solid evidence, it's an unlikely worst case scenario, but is it as bad as it sounds?
It would be naïve to think that American politicians never work on behalf of foreign interests, but in the case of Trump and Russia collusion could translate into policy as a reduction in hostilities between our two countries—perhaps rolling back American sanctions or slowing NATO's march eastward. Such developments would be welcome regardless of the motivations behind them.
Detente with Russia is a significant part of Trump's otherwise dismal foreign policy agenda; that is precisely what has the war hawks scrambling. It's likely, in fact, that this policy position is the reason for the "Trump is Putin's puppet" line in the first place. To scuttle such efforts, Russia hawks want to equate a desire for friendlier international relations with treason.
For those interested in combating the American Empire, peace with the hydrogen-bomb-armed Russians is a top priority. Rapprochement certainly isn't guaranteed given Trump's erratic temperament—he's no friend to liberty or peace—but non-interventionists have every reason to reject the dishonest, conflict-engendering narrative about Russian election-tampering currently making the rounds in American media.
