Item — HN Reader

Of course people can draw incorrect conclusions from true facts. But since neither you nor I know the exact truth, we'll never know for sure which party is the one drawing the incorrect conclusions.

In this case it sounds like the NSA has several assumptions:

A. That Trump winning was worse than Clinton

B. That what Russian state-actors do is somehow more "bad" than what American state-actors do

C. That the people of America should be prevented from knowing certain things that "us smarter people in power" can handle, so that they vote for the person "We know is best."

C is pretty scary when you think about it. And I for one, certainly don't trust the militaristically-minded never-tried-marijuana lets-do-polygraph tap-everything-and-ask-questions-later people at our acronym agencies to be more objective judges of long-term good than the average citizen.

Let's (humans) work on stopping asteroids and climate change rather than fight over lines on maps.

2 comments

> A. That Trump winning was worse than Clinton

If this is the case, why not pull a Comey and release this information before the election?

> B. That what Russian state-actors do is somehow more "bad" than what American state-actors do

Since the NSA is an American agency, it follows that they think themselves less "bad" than the equivalent Russian agency. If they thought themselves worse, why not help Russia?

> C. That the people of America should be prevented from knowing certain things that "us smarter people in power" can handle, so that they vote for the person "We know is best."

Again, if they thought Clinton was the better option (your stated assumption from point A), why wouldn't they release information that appears to show that Russia is sympathetic to Trump before the election?

Let me try to make this simple, because I think you want to, and can, understand what I'm saying.

I'm saying this article quotes the NSA using language condemning what Russia allegedly did.

I'm saying, if we want to condemn this type of behavior we should:

A) Define why it is bad in a general sense (not in the context of a controversial president)

B) Ensure that if we agree it's an morally unacceptable or malicious process, that our acronym agencies do not do this same behavior to other countries (otherwise we are hypocrites and they will quite rightly feel they have justification to retaliate in kind)

And my last paragraph suggests that those in positions of authority are too-close-to-see-it, and that perhaps these distinctions on what is "cyber warfare" and what is "revealing the truth" should be made by congress in unambiguous and neutral fashion.

The fights aren't simply over lines on maps.