Schneier on Security

Skeptical • January 12, 2017 1:14 PM

@ab: If I may be serious for a moment: Don’t the us-americans get it, how utterly ridiculous they are? That whole bouhaha regarding the election hacking is like a known serial bank-robber complaining about someone who stole 10$ from him.

So in your view, the US deserved it, and therefore should not complain?

Who is being ridiculous again?

Certainly the Russians, who actually are powerful, don’t care a rats ass about the noise from an outgoing administration known to be insane and heinous and criminal. As for the Chinese I’m less well informed but I guess that they don’t care too much neither.

The “noise” isn’t coming from only the outgoing administration – and the Chinese view themselves in a period of natural progress, which a disordered environment can upset.

@Dirk: it is extremely questionable to which extent it caused her to lose the election.

I don’t think it did, and the US Government isn’t claiming that it did.

Given the US’s own sordid history of meddling in other countries’ elections and in much more extreme ways, this entire thing is so totally blown out of proportion even a slightly retarded junior analyst cannot but conclude that there’s other things at play here.

This is akin to someone claiming that given Europe’s own sordid history of violence against persons from the Middle East and North Africa, they ought not be angry when ISIS or other organizations commits acts of violence against them.

One can rip events from historical context in an effort to paper over present wrongs, but it will not be a persuasive argument.

Regardless of anyone’s views of the past sins of the United States, it holds its form of government, and its right of self-determination, at the very core of its interests and values – and, indeed, has more often than not acted to preserve the same for others (much to the displeasure of certain colonial powers post-WW2).

It would be short-sighted to threaten that core, be caught doing so, and expect no reprisal. The Russian operation itself was entirely a mistake. I am almost more concerned by the lack of prudence in its undertaking than I am by the actual operation.

The U.S. Government approaches world affairs from the vantage of enlightened self-interest. In the last 70+ years it has shielded the West from a true Soviet threat and, once that long struggle concluded, continued to attempt the establishment an order in which, via trade, development, and the spread of liberal democratic norms, human rights and welfare might grow and flourish throughout the world.

It is a nation that, throughout its necessarily imperfect history, has been forced internally to find ways of accommodation between groups of different backgrounds and cultures – sometimes failing, sometimes fighting, but ultimately achieving an imperfect progress; and so at the heart of American culture is the belief that the humanity common to us all rises above cultural and national divisions. It is a belief that, in my opinion, influences its foreign policy, which has been conducted quite differently, though not entirely differently, from other great powers in history.

But, there is also a deep theme that freedom and progress are continually threatened, and that ultimately force of arms may be necessary to secure them. The causes of any conflict are complex, but this theme has been a significant factor in many that the US has fought. Such a theme underlay the American Revolution. Such a theme underlay the American Civil War, in which some 750,000 Americans were killed. Such a theme underlay the proponents for intervention in World War 1 and World War 2. And the lessons of the latter carried through the long Cold War, surviving the moral dilemmas, ambiguities, and mistakes that such a complex struggle entailed. It remains today.

So, the United States will genuinely seek peaceful accommodation where feasible, though not if such accommodation appears likely to lead to unacceptable consequences or risks in the future. It will turn to other methods where necessary, and it has more living experience in such methods than any other country. To cement an image of oneself as unable to partner with the United States, as hostile to the United States, as even willing to interfere with American elections… this is unwise and dangerous for everyone.

General Mattis’s reported remarks to Iraqi generals, as the process of rebuilding Iraq began, come to mind:

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f— with me, I’ll kill you all.”

Skeptical • January 12, 2017 6:33 PM

@ab: they shouldn’t complain. They did way, way worse to other countries.

Many nations have committed acts in the past that were wrong, or regrettable. Nothing that the US did justifies Russian interference now; nothing that the US did requires them to sit quietly while foreign governments meddle with their elections.

Also – to be clear – the United States has done more than any nation on earth to preserve democracy in other countries (I write this without disparaging in the least the grave sacrifices other nations have made in common cause).

While the Soviet Union ravaged East Germany and Berlin, while the Soviet soldiers, to quote Patton, “those German women that ran they shot; and those that did not run, they raped,” the US helped construct democratic institutions that have stood the test of time, and sought reconciliation with its vanquished enemies. It did the same in the Pacific.

The spark of the Cold War was Soviet refusal to honor its obligations in Poland and elsewhere. Instead of agreed upon democracies, the Soviet Union dropped an iron curtain, and in the meantime, Stalin encouraged North Korea to attack and unify the peninsula under its own autocratic government. And there too, the US fought and bled. And there too, the US still stands at the ready.

The US has shed blood; it has spent trillions; it has required vast numbers of men and women to serve abroad, in harm’s way, and often away from their families; it bore the burden of deterring Soviet nuclear missiles and it placed military units in Europe to ensure, without qualification, that a Soviet attack on Europe would be a Soviet attack on the United States. It continues to do so today, in Europe, in South Korea, in Japan, and elsewhere.

The Russian influence operation is not something that the United States will tolerate. It is not something that the US needs to tolerate. You may think Russia strong; the US is far stronger. You do not seem to understand the potential consequences of provoking the US on such an issue – the US is completely willing and able to escalate as far as necessary, in my view.

If reprisal is the only language that Putin understands, then he’ll find the US to be fluent.

Ridiculous. He won, that’s it. Respect the outcome and go on with your life – just like it was expected if clinton had won.

The US Intelligence Assessment does not make any judgment on whether the Russian influence operation caused Trump to win. Personally, I don’t think it did.

This is a red herring, so to speak. The question is what to do about Russia’s interference in the election; the question is not whether it caused Trump to be elected (and while I give Trump the benefit of the doubt, and will let events and actions tell the tale, I politely reserve some doubts as to your notion that he enhances US standing in the world; I think it just the opposite).