Yes, Russian hackers probably hacked the emails of some of
the Democratic party operatives. So, probably, did Chinese hackers, perhaps
North Korean hackers, perhaps the hackers of a mafia ring or two, and even
perhaps a few teenagers around the world. It was apparently so easy. Why do I say this? Because hackers have been
breaking into everything from corporate databases to the Pentagon computers
over the past decade. Even the venerable
NSA, whom we trust to do our most invasive hacking of other nations, had some
of their prize hacking tools stolen last year by hackers and put up for auction
in the internet.
And no doubt, despite the desperate denials by her team, one
or more hackers had a good look at all Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails,
classified and unclassified, on her unsecured server.
Is this news? No. We know this sort of hacking has been
going on for at least a decade. And we ourselves
do a great deal of it.
Yes, no doubt Russia tried to influence the election. Why
not? America has tried to influence elections in Russia and in Russian border
States. Indeed, over the past 50 years the CIA, among others, has actively
tried to influence elections all around the globe, and even instigated some
outright coups. Next to that record,
just releasing some embarrassing emails is hardly very serious, though it
certainly showed the seamy side of Democratic operations. But there seems to be
no evidence that the Russian meddling had any significant effect on the election, despite
the media hysteria. After all, the only real effect was to give voters some more information about the candidates.
The real scandal under all of this is that government
and Democratic Party computers apparently are so easy to hack into.
The Obama administration had eight years to do something practical about
this, but apparently, from the available evidence, they either didn’t bother or
were so incompetent that whatever they did was ineffective.
Let’s get real. Hacking is spying. Nations have always spied
on each other, even on other friendly nations. We do it just like everyone else
does it, and in fact we do a lot of it and put a lot of money into the effort. So let’s stop all this hypocritical theatrical
outrage about Russian hacking. This is the real world. It goes on. A competent
government would do something practical to better protect its computers.
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