With Biden's New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and
Dangerous Than Ever
The U.S. media demands inflammatory claims be accepted with no evidence,
while hacking behavior routinely engaged in by the U.S. is depicted as
aberrational.
Glenn Greenwald
Dec 23
Then-Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Brookings Institute May 27, 2015
in Washington, DC spoke about the Russia-Ukraine conflict (Photo by Mark
Wilson/Getty Images)
To justify Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Donald Trump, leading Democrats
and their key media allies for years competed with one another to depict
what they called "Russia's interference in our elections" in the most
apocalyptic terms possible. They fanatically rejected the view of the
Russian Federation repeatedly expressed by President Obama - that it is a
weak regional power with an economy smaller than Italy's capable of only
threatening its neighbors but not the U.S. - and instead cast Moscow as a
grave, even existential, threat to U.S. democracy, with its actions
tantamount to the worst security breaches in U.S. history.
This post-2016 mania culminated with prominent liberal politicians and
journalists (as well as John McCain) declaring Russia's activities
surrounding the 2016 to be an "act of war" which, many of them insisted, was
comparable to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack - the two most traumatic
attacks in modern U.S. history which both spawned years of savage and
destructive war, among other things.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly demanded that Russia's 2016
"interference" be treated as "an act of war." Hillary Clinton described
Russian hacking as "a cyber 9/11." And here is Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on
MSNBC in early February, 2018, pronouncing Russia "a hostile foreign power"
whose 2016 meddling was the "equivalent" of Pearl Harbor, "very much on par"
with the "seriousness" of the 1941 attack in Hawaii that helped prompt four
years of U.S. involvement in a world war.
With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, just weeks away from assuming control
of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along
with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is
becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow's alleged responsibility
for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies
and various corporate servers is asserted - despite not a shred of evidence,
literally, having yet been presented - as not merely proven fact, but as so
obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.
Any questioning of this claim will be instantly vilified by the Democrats'
extremely militaristic media spokespeople as virtual treason. "Now the
president is not just silent on Russia and the hack. He is deliberately
running defense for the Kremlin by contradicting his own Secretary of State
on Russian responsibility," pronounced CNN's national security reporter Jim
Sciutto, who last week depicted Trump's attempted troop withdrawal from
Syria and Germany as "ceding territory" and furnishing "gifts" to Putin.
More alarmingly, both the rhetoric to describe the hack and the retaliation
being threatened are rapidly spiraling out of control.
Democrats (along with some Republicans long obsessed with The Russian
Threat, such as Mitt Romney) are casting the latest alleged hack by Moscow
in the most melodramatic terms possible, ensuring that Biden will enter the
White House with tensions sky-high with Russia and facing heavy pressure to
retaliate aggressively. Biden's top national security advisers and now Biden
himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened
aggressive retaliation against the country with the world's second-largest
nuclear stockpile.
Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO) - one of the pro-war Democrats on the House
Armed Services Committee who earlier this year joined with Rep. Liz Cheney
(R-WY) to block Trump's plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan -
announced: "this could be our modern day, cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor,"
adding: "Our nation is under assault." The second-ranking Senate Democrat,
Dick Durbin (D-IL), pronounced: "This is virtually a declaration of war by
Russia."
Meanwhile, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has for years been casting Russia as
a grave threat to the U.S. while Democrats mocked him as a relic of the Cold
War (before they copied and then surpassed him), described the latest hack
as "the equivalent of Russian bombers flying undetected over the entire
country." The GOP's 2012 presidential nominee also blasted Trump for his
failure to be "aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive
action," though - like virtually every prominent figure demanding tough
"retaliation" - Romney failed to specify what he had in mind that would be
sufficient retaliation for "the equivalent of Russian bombers flying
undetected over the entire country."
For those keeping track at home: that's two separate "Pearl Harbors" in less
than four years from Moscow (or, if you prefer, one Pearl Harbor and one
9/11). If Democrats actually believe that, it stands to reason that they
will be eager to embrace a policy of belligerence and aggression toward
Russia. Many of them are demanding this outright, mocking Trump for failing
to attack Russia - despite no evidence that they were responsible - while
their well-trained liberal flock is suggesting that the non-response
constitutes some form of "high treason."
Indeed, the Biden team has been signalling that they intend to quickly
fulfill demands for aggressive retaliation. The New York Times reported on
Tuesday that Biden "accused President Trump [] of 'irrational downplaying'"
of the hack while "warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion to
'go unanswered' after he takes office." Biden emphasized that once the
intelligence assessment is complete, "we will respond, and probably respond
in kind."
Threats and retaliation between the U.S. and Russia are always dangerous,
but particularly so now. One of the key nuclear arms agreements between the
two nuclear-armed nations, the New START treaty, will expire in February
unless Putin and Biden can successfully negotiate a renewal: sixteen days
after Biden is scheduled to take office. "That will force Mr. Biden to
strike a deal to prevent one threat - a nuclear arms race - while
simultaneously threatening retaliation on another," observed the Times.
________________________________________
This escalating rhetoric from Washington about Russia, and the resulting
climate of heightened tensions, are dangerous in the extreme. They are also
based in numerous myths, deceits and falsehoods:
First, absolutely no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest, let
alone prove, that Russia is responsible for these hacks. It goes without
saying that it is perfectly plausible that Russia could have done this: it's
the sort of thing that every large power from China and Iran to the U.S. and
Russia have the capability to do and wield against virtually every other
country including one another.
But if we learned nothing else over the last several decades, we should know
that accepting claims that emanate from the U.S. intelligence community
about adversaries without a shred of evidence is madness of the highest
order. We just had a glaring reminder of the importance of this rule: just
weeks before the election, countless mainstream media outlets laundered and
endorsed the utterly false claim that the documents from Hunter Biden's
laptop were "Russian disinformation," only for officials to acknowledge once
the harm was done that there was no evidence - zero - of Russian
involvement.
Yet that is exactly what the overwhelming bulk of media outlets are doing
again: asserting that Russia is behind these hacks despite having no
evidence of its truth. The New York Times' Michael Barbaro, host of the
paper's popular The Daily podcast, asked his colleague, national security
reporter David Sanger, what evidence exists to assert that Russia did this.
As Barbaro put it, even Sanger is "allowing that early conclusions could all
be wrong, but that it's doubtful." Indeed, Sanger acknowledged to Barbaro
that they have no proof, asserting instead that the basis on which he is
relying is that Russia possesses the sophistication to carry out such a hack
(as do several other nation-states), along with claiming that the hack has
what he calls the "markings" of Russian hackers.
But this tactic was exactly the same one used by former intelligence
officials, echoed by these same media outlets, to circulate the false
pre-election claim that the documents from Hunter Biden's laptop were
"Russian disinformation": namely, they pronounced in lockstep, the material
from Hunter's laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian
information." This was also exactly the same tactic used by the U.S.
intelligence community in 2001 to falsely blame Iraq for the anthrax
attacks, claiming that their chemical analysis revealed a substance that was
"a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program."
These media outlets will, if pressed, acknowledge their lack of proof that
Russia did this. Despite this admitted lack of proof, media outlets are
repeatedly stating Russian responsibility as proven fact.
"Scope of Russian Hacking Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S. Agencies Were Hit,"
one New York Times headline proclaimed, and the first line of that article,
co-written by Sanger, stated definitively: "The scope of a hacking
engineered by one of Russia's premier intelligence agencies became clearer
on Monday." The Washington Post deluged the public with identically certain
headlines:
Nobody in the government has been as definitive in asserting Russian
responsibility as corporate media outlets. Even Trump's hawkish Secretary of
State, Mike Pompeo, crafted his accusation against Moscow with caveats and
uncertainty: "I think it's the case that now we can say pretty clearly that
it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."
If actual evidence ultimately emerges demonstrating Russian responsibility,
it would not alter how dangerous it is that - less than twenty years after
the Iraq WMD debacle and less than a couple of years after media endorsement
of endless Russiagate falsehoods - the most influential media outlets
continue to mindlessly peddle as Truth whatever the intelligence community
feeds them, without the need to see any evidence that what they're claiming
is actually true. Even more alarmingly, large sectors of the public that
venerate these outlets continue to believe that what they hear from them
must be true, no matter how many times they betray that trust. The ease with
which the CIA can disseminate whatever messaging it wants through friendly
media outlets is stunning.
Second, the very idea that this hack could be compared to rogue and wildly
aberrational events such as Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attack is utterly
laughable on its face. One has to be drowning in endless amounts of
jingoistic self-delusion to believe that this hack - or, for that matter,
the 2016 "election interference" - is a radical departure from international
norms as opposed to a perfect reflection of them.
Just as was true of 2016 fake Facebook pages and Twitter bots, it is not an
exaggeration to say that the U.S. Government engages in hacking attacks of
this sort, and ones far more invasive, against virtually every country on
the planet, including Russia, on a weekly basis. That does not mean that
this kind of hacking is either justified or unjustified. It does mean,
however, that depicting it as some particularly dastardly and incomparably
immoral act that requires massive retaliation requires a degree of
irrationality and gullibility that is bewildering to behold.
The NSA reporting enabled by Edward Snowden by itself proved that the NSA
spies on virtually anyone it can. Indeed, after reviewing the archive back
in 2013, I made the decision that I would not report on U.S. hacks of large
adversary countries such as China and Russia because it was so commonplace
for all of these countries to hack one another as aggressively and
intrusively as they could that it was hardly newsworthy to report on this
(the only exception was when there was a substantial reason to view such
spying as independently newsworthy, such as Sweden's partnering with NSA to
spy on Russia in direct violation of the denials Swedish officials voiced to
their public).
Other news outlets who had access to Snowden documents, particularly The New
York Times, were not nearly as circumspect in exposing U.S. spying on large
nation-state adversaries. As a result, there is ample proof published by
those outlets (sometimes provoking Snowden's strong objections) that the
U.S. does exactly what Russia is alleged to have done here - and far worse.
"Even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying
from [China's] Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security
Agency was creating its own back doors - directly into Huawei's networks,"
reported The New York Times' David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth in 2013,
adding that "the agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei's sealed
headquarters in Shenzhen, China's industrial heart."
In 2013, the Guardian revealed "an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian
leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links
to Moscow," and added: "foreign politicians and officials who took part in
two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and
their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British
government hosts." Meanwhile, "Sweden has been a key partner for the United
States in spying on Russia and its leadership, Swedish television said on
Thursday," noted Reuters, citing what one NSA document described as "a
unique collection on high-priority Russian targets, such as leadership,
internal politics."
Other reports revealed that the U.S. had hacked into the Brazilian
telecommunications system to collect data on the whole population, and was
spying on Brazil's key leaders (including then-President Dilma Rousseff) as
well as its most important companies such as its oil giant Petrobras and its
Ministry of Mines and Energy. The Washington Post reported: "The National
Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the
whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret
documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the
agency to track the movements of individuals - and map their relationships -
in ways that would have been previously unimaginable." And on and on.
[One amazing though under-appreciated episode related to all this: the same
New York Times reporter who revealed the details about massive NSA hacking
of Chinese government and industry, Nicole Perlroth, subsequently urged (in
tweets she has now deleted) that Snowden not be pardoned on the ground that,
according to her, he revealed legitimate NSA spying on U.S. adversaries. In
reality, it was actually she, Perlorth, not Snowden, who chose to expose NSA
spying on China, provoking Snowden's angry objections when she did so based
on his view this was a violation of the framework he created for what should
and should not be revealed; in other words, not only did Perlroth urge the
criminal prosecution of a source on which she herself relied, an absolutely
astonishing thing for any reporter to do, but so much worse, she did so by
falsely accusing that source of doing something that she, Perlroth, had done
herself: namely, reveal extensive U.S. hacking of China].
What all of this makes demonstrably clear is that only the most deluded and
uninformed person could believe that Russian hacking of U.S. agencies and
corporations - if it happened - is anything other than totally normal and
common behavior between these countries. Harvard Law Professor and former
Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith, reviewing growing demands for retaliation,
wrote in an excellent article last week entitled "Self-Delusion on the
Russia Hack: The U.S. regularly hacks foreign governmental computer systems
on a massive scale":
The lack of self-awareness in these and similar reactions to the Russia
breach is astounding. The U.S. government has no principled basis to
complain about the Russia hack, much less retaliate for it with military
means, since the U.S. government hacks foreign government networks on a huge
scale every day. Indeed, a military response to the Russian hack would
violate international law . . . .
As the revelations from leaks of information from Edward Snowden made plain,
the United States regularly penetrates foreign governmental computer systems
on a massive scale, often (as in the Russia hack) with the unwitting
assistance of the private sector, for purposes of spying. It is almost
certainly the world's leader in this practice, probably by a lot. The
Snowden documents suggested as much, as does the NSA's probable budget. In
2016, after noting "problems with cyber intrusions from Russia," Obama
boasted that the United States has "more capacity than anybody .
offensively" . . . .
Because of its own practices, the U.S. government has traditionally accepted
the legitimacy of foreign governmental electronic spying in U.S. government
networks. After the notorious Chinese hack of the Office of Personnel
Management database, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
said: "You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did. If we had
the opportunity to do that, I don't think we'd hesitate for a minute." The
same Russian agency that appears to have carried out the hack revealed this
week also hacked into unclassified emails in the White House and Defense and
State Departments in 2014-2015. The Obama administration deemed it
traditional espionage and did not retaliate. "It was information collection,
which is what nation states-including the United States-do," said Obama
administration cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel this week.
But over the last four years, Americans, particularly those who feed on
liberal media outlets, have been drowned in so much mythology about the U.S.
and Russia that they have no capacity to critically assess the claims being
made, and - just as they were led to believe about "Russia's 2016
interference in Our Sacred Elections" - are easily convinced that what
Russia did is some shocking and extreme crime the likes of which are rarely
seen in international relations. In reality, their own government is the
undisputed world champion in perpetrating these acts, and has been for years
if not decades.
Third, these demands for "retaliation" are so reckless because they are
almost always unaccompanied by any specifics. Even if Moscow's
responsibility is demonstrated, what is the U.S. supposed to do in response?
If your answer is that they should hack Russia back, rest assured the NSA
and CIA are always trying to hack Russia as much as it possibly can, long
before this event.
If the answer is more sanctions, that would be just performative and
pointless, aside from wildly hypocritical. Any reprisals more severe than
that would be beyond reckless, particularly with the need to renew nuclear
arms control agreements looming. And if you are someone demanding
retaliation, do you believe that Russia, China, Brazil and all the other
countries invaded by NSA hackers have the same right of retaliation against
the U.S., or does the U.S. occupy a special place with special entitlements
that all other countries lack?
What we have here, yet again, is the classic operation of the intelligence
community feeding serious accusations about a nuclear-armed power to an
eagerly gullible corporate media, with the media mindlessly disseminating it
without evidence, all toward ratcheting up tensions between these two
nuclear-armed powers and fortifying a mythology of the U.S. as grand victim
but never perpetrator.
If you ever find yourself wondering how massive military budgets and a
posture of Endless War are seemingly invulnerable to challenge, this
pathological behavior - from a now-enduring union of the intelligence
community, corporate media outlets, and the Democratic Party - provides one
key piece of the puzzle.
