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mburnamfink 's review for:
Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
by David Corn, Michael Isikoff
Trying to make sense of the l'affaire Russe is enough to make anyone a conspiracy theorist, and this book should come with a skein of red yarn to help readers connect the dots.
The basic facts are clear enough: in 2016, as part of a longstanding intelligence operation against the United States, Russia hacked into servers controlled by the DNC and the gmail account of longtime Clinton staffer John Podesta. The hacked documents trickled out to the media through the twitter persona Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks, and on Nov 9, 2016, we woke up and Donald Trump was President. Welcome to the darkest timeline.
The story is complex, and there are a lot moving parts. One part is Putin's campaign against the United States, and the nature of Russian intelligence operations and hybrid warfare. The authors point to the "Gerasimov doctrine", and longstanding animus between Putin and Clinton personally, but don't have the space to make a really good case about the nature of Russia's foreign policy, it's strategies of ambiguity and tension, and the role of Putin.
The second story is the hacks and the leaks. Isikoff reveals a decidedly lackluster cybersecurity effort at the DNC and in the Federal government. The DNC cyber people didn't take FBI warnings seriously. The Federal government dragged its feet on coordinating a response, done in by a belief that this could be resolved once Hilary was inevitably elected, Obama's desire to appear non-partisan, and the absolute refusal of Senate Major Leader Mitch McConnell to be part of a response (Turtle Mitch is dirty as fuck). This story matters, and a bunch of people in charge of state level election security need to be doing much better than they currently are, but the story of the leaks has an almost impossible job to do. We have to understand the weirdness of the race, both as it felt in fall of 2016, and knowing what we know now.
The third and final story can be summed up by that phrase from Watergate. "What did the President know? And when did he know it?" Collusion, the actions of Paul Manafort, who showed up after a decade long career repping pro-Russian plutocrats to work for Trump for free, Roger Stone and his history of dirty tricks, the idea that Russians have had compromat on Trump for years if not decades, linked to his desire to build a hotel in Moscow, along with the Steele dossier and The Pee Tape. This is the part of the story that is evolving the fastest, with the Mueller investigation ongoing, and Trump shitting himself in public constantly. And it's also the part where nothing is yet proven.
I think about who should read this book. Political junkies probably know all this already, and the material isn't organized, or linked with enough value insight to be really worth it. My Left-skeptic friends would dismiss the whole thing as CIA CYA. And as for the C.H.U.Ds, well, nothing will convince a C.H.U.D.
Wait for the final verdict.
The basic facts are clear enough: in 2016, as part of a longstanding intelligence operation against the United States, Russia hacked into servers controlled by the DNC and the gmail account of longtime Clinton staffer John Podesta. The hacked documents trickled out to the media through the twitter persona Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks, and on Nov 9, 2016, we woke up and Donald Trump was President. Welcome to the darkest timeline.
The story is complex, and there are a lot moving parts. One part is Putin's campaign against the United States, and the nature of Russian intelligence operations and hybrid warfare. The authors point to the "Gerasimov doctrine", and longstanding animus between Putin and Clinton personally, but don't have the space to make a really good case about the nature of Russia's foreign policy, it's strategies of ambiguity and tension, and the role of Putin.
The second story is the hacks and the leaks. Isikoff reveals a decidedly lackluster cybersecurity effort at the DNC and in the Federal government. The DNC cyber people didn't take FBI warnings seriously. The Federal government dragged its feet on coordinating a response, done in by a belief that this could be resolved once Hilary was inevitably elected, Obama's desire to appear non-partisan, and the absolute refusal of Senate Major Leader Mitch McConnell to be part of a response (Turtle Mitch is dirty as fuck). This story matters, and a bunch of people in charge of state level election security need to be doing much better than they currently are, but the story of the leaks has an almost impossible job to do. We have to understand the weirdness of the race, both as it felt in fall of 2016, and knowing what we know now.
The third and final story can be summed up by that phrase from Watergate. "What did the President know? And when did he know it?" Collusion, the actions of Paul Manafort, who showed up after a decade long career repping pro-Russian plutocrats to work for Trump for free, Roger Stone and his history of dirty tricks, the idea that Russians have had compromat on Trump for years if not decades, linked to his desire to build a hotel in Moscow, along with the Steele dossier and The Pee Tape. This is the part of the story that is evolving the fastest, with the Mueller investigation ongoing, and Trump shitting himself in public constantly. And it's also the part where nothing is yet proven.
I think about who should read this book. Political junkies probably know all this already, and the material isn't organized, or linked with enough value insight to be really worth it. My Left-skeptic friends would dismiss the whole thing as CIA CYA. And as for the C.H.U.Ds, well, nothing will convince a C.H.U.D.
Wait for the final verdict.