Fake Russians - Fake News…
Chiselin’ Trump: “The Deep State hired these people to pose as Russians who posed as Americans in order to spread propaganda.”
I was a little surprised at the headline, but you read that one person basically saying “It’s a fair cop” and you have to chuckle because pace President Shitgibbon, even the hoaxers admit the hoax was not a hoax. Oh yeah, they say, I’d totally indict me. 
“I’m not at all upset that I’m on this list,” Prigozhin said of the indictment in comments carried by Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency. “If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”
Oh, puh-leeze. At best you’d be Corkscrewtape, demon in charge of sticky winter boogers.
Social engineering is the easiest way hacking is done. So yes, the election was hacked, and how successfully? This is probably is not even measurable, since as the article notes, people end up internalizing the propaganda as their own thoughts. It all ends with plausible deniability for the end result for the Russians.
However, as some noted, this leaves Trump even less legitimate as a President (he lost the popular vote by a significant number so he never had as much as others). The Refs were tainted, and now even more there will always be two asterisks by his candidacy and presidency.
Marat Mindiyarov, a former commenter at the innocuously named Internet Research Agency, says the organization’s Facebook department hired people with excellent English skills to sway U.S. public opinion through an elaborate social media campaign.
…he said, immediately before being poisoned.
While the U.S. indictment mentioned 13 people, many more must have been involved in the effort, according to Savchuk. Russian media reports said the troll farm employed hundreds of bloggers and commentators working in shifts.
“Here they laugh about the news that 13 people could influence the elections in the U.S., but there were many more people doing that,” she said. “These technologies are unbelievably effective.”
“The American voter is unbelievably gullible to Fake News.”
It was more than just social engineering.
The Elections commissioner for Dallas County, Texas, released a public statement last year, that our voting machines’ software had 17 hacking signatures in it.
“Here they laugh about the news that 13 people could influence the elections in the U.S., but there were many more people doing that,” she said. “These technologies are unbelievably effective.”
13 people is the tip of a very large iceberg.
Now I know why ukky changed his screen name. Poor boy was cut from the team. So sad.
And, of course, propaganda never works. Neither does advertising. Neither do lies (well, most lies do have an expiration date). Hoax! Witch Hunt!
But I had to laugh because he wanted us to know he was Ukie, even if he also knew he wouldn’t last long. Sort of like Hamlet’s father if Hamlet’s father were a derp-spewing troll.
Wait… is he gone already???
Edit
Looked at his page just now.
Poor ukky can’t hold a job
Sad
Always remember, the Russians wanted to be caught. The fact that Trump is easily manipulated and/or blackmailed is just gravy. He’ll be out of office someday, voted out or impeached or dead. What they really need is for Americans’ faith in their own democracy to be permanently eroded.
And for that to happen, they have to get caught. Which is why these worker drones are free to confirm it, even though the official Russian stance is a paper-thin denial.
Sticking strictly to your statement, yes, some voting machines in fact were touched by hackers, most probably Russian and it is extremely worrisome. That said, it is not the easiest way to hack to create an actual successful change in outcome. People are more hackable than those machines, and Russians have considerable experience at this with their own people, a core expertise refined over many years.
The problem with hacking machines that no one points out is that to get a certain outcome, having physical access to an identical machine to test is likely needed. I say that because in the case hacking by the US of Iranian centrifuges, we did indeed need physical access to one to be successful in developing adequate hacking software, Stuxnet. And that would be for multiple type voting machines, since there are various types used in the country. I am doubtful the Russians had/have that. And, as the article points out, humans are so easy to reach and successfully hack.
So, if the Russians hacked votes in actual voting machines in such a way that the method was left undetected (although perhaps we could still detect that the machine was touched), they would really need inside help. Now someone at this point will speculate that Republicans or a particular supporter may have been an actual party to such an event. The problem here is that the speculation requires blowing up the conspiracy up much larger, and I believe that it would become difficult to hide. And, for the Russians, it has the potential for discoverability with fewer doors for plausible deniability. That was the problem for the US, Stuxnet was eventually traced back. So my take is that if this is so, we will eventually find out.
Regardless, that hackers gained any perch into the voting system apparatus should be taken very seriously. We need paper trail vote casting in addition to optically-read electronic votes, random audits, certification of software, adequate funding for security with acknowledgment that voting system is part of our critical infrastructure, etc.
In the mean time, I think it much more likely that Russians would try a disruption campaign than outright vote changes. This is similar to the Ukrainian power grid disruptions. Of course, now that our IC and the SC is confronting them, we probably have a better chance of making them reconsider this option. But, I think this is what they are working towards, because sometimes they simply want to sow confusion and our democracy could face considerable dangers just from such an event, like in perhaps 2018? Just speculating, but now would the time with Trump sowing chaos of his own.
Comey needs to explain why he obsessed over Hillary and gave Trump a free pass.
And yet, at the end of the day, Trump is still afraid of Vladimir Putin.
In the meantime, I want my democracy back, flawed though it be.
You can always count on American politicians to undermine faith in the U.S. political system. Russian troll farms and factories don’t enact voter ID laws, draw gerrymandered congressional districts, appoint super-delegates to political conventions, or engage in voter suppression.
Is there anything sadder than a failed Ukrainian troll?
I asked Ukky if he was in St Petersburg in this recent iteration and his old one and never got a come back on the question. Another poster, I forget who got him cornered one day and he did respond “Ya got me”. So, that’s why I thought he was a paid worker at IRA. And his assignment was TPM among others. But he found out this is a savvy bunch.