With Russia, You Have to Laugh

A serious article today in the Wall Street Journal made me laugh out loud.  Julian Barnes writes that NATO recognizes cyber space as a domain for war, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which manages policies and money for the Democratic Party has been hacked.  There really is not a connection between these two subjects, but one is made anyway.  That is not the funny part.

What is funny about this is NATO taking so long to formally recognize that cyberspace is a domain for war, and the DNC getting hacked is not new, since political parties and candidates have been hacked for at least the last 8 years. The Director of National Intelligence even talked about it at one of the Congressional hearings where he had to testify.

We used to think NATO was a little slow at making policy.  The glaciers moved faster.  I discount that one completely.  The DNC hack is different.

The DNC has already announced that it was hacked, a somewhat unusual event, since political groups rarely announce that kind of thing.  They also made it clear that some of their research on Donald Trump was stolen.  This is a tipoff of what is to come and a trick of information warfare that has come to politics many times.  The DNC could never disclose some of the information on Trump because it was probably come by through channels they would have to explain if discovered.  They still want this information to be out and there are some ways to do that through "leaks" to the press.  This is a slow and painful way to do it and eventurally will be discovered.  Having it stolen is better.

Soon we will see a bunch of stories all coming out in the months before the election.  They will be unsubstantiated, probably the fruits of stolen information two or three levels deep.  They will come from unknown sources, but name names as if authoritative.  The same techniques are described in papers published after the Russia collapse and the opening of files related to the KGB operations in the US.  They were trying to stop Ronald Reagan from being elected President.  That is really funny, since they spent a lot of money and time attacking his staff and advisors only to see him win.