Putin’s Infowar on America

The DNC leaks were another Russian victory as the U.S. fails to fight back.

By L. GORDON CROVITZ
July 31, 2016 5:30 p.m. ET

This column recently predicted that Russia would disclose hacked emails just before the presidential election as an “October surprise.” The first surprise came early, with last week’s release of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, whose chairman resigned for rigging the primaries in Hillary Clinton’s favor.

Expect more surprises before the election. Vladimir Putin has an unprecedented trove of hacked communications at his fingertips—and shows canny timing on when to hit “send.” Moscow has an ambitious strategy for information war that goes beyond affecting a presidential election. Israeli analyst Dima Adamsky wrote last year that the Russian “information struggle” entails “technological and psychological components designed to manipulate the adversary’s picture of reality, misinform it, and eventually interfere with the decision-making process of individuals, organizations, governments, and societies.”

Security experts believe Russia hacked all 63,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails as secretary of state, including the 33,000 emails she destroyed, and that Russia supplemented this information by later hacking the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. That would mean Mr. Putin has a trifecta of sources to identify suspicious links between Mrs. Clinton and multi-million dollar donors to her foundation, including authoritarian governments and crony capitalists, and favors granted by the Clinton State Department.

According to Mr. Adamsky, Russia’s goal is to cause “disillusionment and discontent with the government and disorganization of the state and military command and control and management functions.” It’s hard to imagine anything more disillusioning to Americans than the release by Russia of incriminating emails Mrs. Clinton had refused to disclose even under U.S. court order.

In a paper entitled “The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare” written in 2014, Polish analyst Jolanta Darczewska traced Russian information warfare theory to Stalin’s spetspropaganda (special propaganda) program in the 1940s. In recent years Mr. Putin, a KGB veteran, extended infowar to include “information manipulation,” which includes “using authentic information in a way that gives rise to false implications,” disinformation, fabricating information and blackmail.
Russia attacked Estonian government websites and hacked Ukraine’s election commission days before a vote. A German investigator last year concluded there was no evidence behind the WikiLeaks claim that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. It was likely disinformation to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Germany. Russia’s information manipulation is intended both to embarrass people and to inhibit honest communications by demonstrating that governments can’t protect confidential communications.

Liberals who long treated Edward Snowden and Julian Assange as heroes are now offended that WikiLeaks distributed the Russian hacks of the DNC. Journalist Franklin Foer complained in Slate last week that the “breathtaking transgression of privacy” of Democratic Party officials will have a “chilling effect” undermining the ability “to communicate honestly.” That was the exact purpose of the hacks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables distributed by WikiLeaks in 2011 through the New York Times and London’s Guardian.

“It is not our goal to achieve a more transparent society,” Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, told Time in 2010. Instead, the objective is to force U.S. officials to “lock down internally and to balkanize” so they will “cease to be as efficient as they were.”

What can be done about infowar? Donald Trump was criticized last week for encouraging Russia to disclose Mrs. Clinton’s emails, but making them public would be the best way to deprive Mr. Putin of the advantage he gains by holding them. A U.S. ally that spies on Washington as much as Washington spies on it, such as Israel or France, would do Americans a favor by making public its copy of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Otherwise, Moscow can drip the emails out on its schedule with its spin—or hold them back as blackmail against Mrs. Clinton should she reach the White House. American voters should know what Mr. Putin knows.

The Obama administration has been passive in response to Russia’s infowar—even reluctant to admit its existence officially. Washington’s best deterrence would be to reply in kind. The U.S. could hack and release Mr. Putin’s bank accounts detailing how rich he has become in office. U.S. prosecutors could use hacked information to indict Putin business cronies and deny visas to their associates and relatives.

Despite Russia’s audacious hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last week would only go as far as to concede: “It’s fair to say Vladimir Putin feels like he is fighting a low-level, asymmetric war with the U.S.” Because of the Obama administration’s failure to fight back, Mr. Putin is enjoying many victories.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-infowar-on-america-1469996741