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I'm not sure why none of the other replies to your post as of this writing mention this, but "Guccifer 2.0" is not only providing legitimate information. A few days ago they claimed to have hacked the Clinton Foundation, but the documents they released appear to have been recycled from previous breaches of different organizations (DNC and DCCC), and there is reason to believe they may have been modified. Even if they weren't modified, the mere presence of campaign data on servers belonging to the Clinton Foundation would be considered potentially shady and newsworthy in itself, especially in today's political climate; in fact the Guccifer post explicitly calls this out. The story was debunked before it had much chance to spread in the media, but I bet lots of people still believe it's real.

It should go without saying that false information is a negative influence on the presidential campaign. Indeed, there's quite enough of it already without the need for foreign disinformation campaigns...

Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/researchers-find-fak...

Obama administration's approach to conflict has generally been "they are making threats and can escalate them, if they do, we would not be willing to respond in kind, therefore let's do nothing and avoid conflict, and hopefully eventually things will be nice between us again, because somehow magically history is on our side". This is quite a radical departure from the "peace through strength" approach that has kept the US safe for the 60 years before that.

Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

> Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the fatal fault with this line of thinking

Yes. This line of thinking is complacent, and it is how benevolent empires fall to ruthless conquerors.

There's no such thing as a benevolent empire

> Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

Of course, anyone who has grown up around gangs can see the fault in "We must retaliate for all insults or they will quit fearing us and take our territory." Occasionally, you wind up with everybody dead or in the hospital.

Fortunately, our leaders are mostly adults who understand that there is nuance to diplomacy.

"Peace through strength" very nearly turned the Cuban missile crisis into WWIII.

In the real world things aren't black and white, they're often nearly indistinguishable shades of gray and at the nation state level nobody has clean hands. "Peace through strength" is more often than not an excuse to ignore the many reasons one's own side has been escalating conflicts.

If we actually want peace, we need to get serious about deescalation, and the nature of world politics - and endless series of tit-for-tat - means that someone has to go first.

Obama appears to get this. Hillary doesn't. Who fucking knows what goes on in Trump's head...

> If the Obama administration is going to complain to the public about Russia fucking with American elections, they should be just as willing to retaliate for it in some public manner; if that's diplomatic, so be it in the realm of the UN/ICJ.

I suspect this announcement is the first step, actually. You don't call someone out publicly unless you plan to go somewhere with it.

My suspicion is that the announcement was probably timed with some hacking activity of our own so Russia will get the message that they are playing against a dangerous opponent.

Asymmetry. Asymmetry of "transparency" can benefit one side over the other. Not that hard buddy.

Asymmetric information of political operations has no place in a well-functioning democracy.

I see a _lot_ of comments here describing these email leaks as 'facts' or 'not necessarily Russian propaganda'; you've completely missed the narrative here, allow me to correct the record.

These emails were _illegally_ hacked! If you had a _shred_ of dignity you wouldn't even look at them. It should be illegal.

If you take any of the information contained in those emails as 'evidence of wrong-doing' you're only playing right into Russia hands.

This kind of deplorable meddling in another nation's election by leaking 'actual emails' is exactly what we need to be vigilant of.

Such blatant targeting of the most transparent administration in history demands recourse!

With such heated topics, I struggle to detect sarcasm.

> These emails were _illegally_ hacked! If you had a _shred_ of dignity you wouldn't even look at them. It should be illegal.

The bigger point is that you shouldn't regard them as credible without corroboration. It's very easy to make things up.

We accept the truth of the Snowden documents because every time we can cross-check the information, it proves correct.

Yes, the DNC wouldn't have called these out as fake the second they dropped were they actually fake.

C'mon son.