Title: How Russia hacked American voters.
Headings: Russia Didn’t Hack the U.S. Election
Russia Didn’t Hack the U.S. Election
It hacked the voters.

Content: No one familiar with Russian operations is particularly surprised by this approach. It’s called information warfare, and its goal is to employ disinformation to manipulate a target population into making choices it might not otherwise make. I spent two decades as an information-warfare officer in the United States Navy, and it’s common knowledge in military and intelligence circles that deception, propaganda, and psychological operations are hallmarks of Russian doctrine. So on Sunday when Sen. Claire McCaskill called Russia’s intervention in the election “ a form of warfare ,” this is exactly what she meant. Advertisement
How’d they do it? Basically, by doxxing the Democrats and unleashing fake news. Russia was behind the stories that dominated our headlines, both real and fabricated, for several weeks leading up to the election. In doing so, it bet that casting further doubt on Clinton’s honesty and character while also polluting the information environment with false stories would affect the decisions of enough voters to increase Trump’s chances. It wagered that in a close election, perhaps it could be the difference. Advertisement
We now know that two Russian intelligence groups hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s email server in the spring and, over time, stole tens of thousands of emails and documents.