What Game Is Russia Playing?

Reports Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign to tilt the election in favor of Donald Trump have sown precisely the kind of confusion that American adversaries must have hoped for with their actions. In an effort to reach some sort of clarity, let's break the matter down into two separate questions—Was it Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers? Did the culprits hack the servers in order to secure a Trump victory?

Of course it's vital to defend our political institutions against cyber-attacks, which should perhaps be best understood as military campaigns. As House Speaker Paul Ryan explained in a statement released earlier today, "any foreign intervention in our elections is entirely unacceptable. And any intervention by Russia is especially problematic because, under President Putin, Russia has been an aggressor that consistently undermines American interests."

Some commentators have argued there's no evidence Russia is behind the attack, and that the New York Times and Washington Post articles that broke the story Friday have failed to make a convincing case. The sources in the two articles are anonymous and described not as members of the intelligence community, but as senior U.S. officials, or senior administration officials who were briefed on the matter.

As far as the first question, it's hardly a stretch of the imagination to believe that Moscow is behind the hack. Russia has a long history of interfering in the political processes of foreign countries, especially throughout Europe where it has reportedly supported various parties, left and right, and has funded France's National Front and perhaps other parties as well. The American intelligence community has believed for some time now that Moscow was responsible for the DNC hacks but, as the Post reports, was "cautious for months in characterizing Russia's motivations, reflecting the United States' long-standing struggle to collect reliable intelligence on President Vladimir Putin and those closest to him."

So what changed? Or, to move to the second issue, how is it that, according to the Post and the Times, the intelligence community now believes Russia was trying to get Trump elected? The problem with the assessment is not just in collecting intelligence on targets like Putin but is rather about the nature of information operations. These are blunt instruments. Competent intelligence services know not to task information operations with too much detail because they take on a life of their own regardless of what their authors intended. For instance, if the purpose of leaking Clinton's emails was to embarrass her and throw the presidency to Trump, the follow-on effect has served the opposite purpose.