I linked to the page on the OPM breach. The reason I wrote "or leaked" is because there is no confirmation of who got it or who they might have given it to.

If people are saying it was hacked by country X, it might be strategic to share it with a couple other countries and let them cause chaos. Then, with clean hands, make speeches tut-tutting about the degeneracy of American culture and democracy.

Trying to orchestrate anything, by actually controlling the US government has a lot of potential downside, and what really is the strategic goal?

Presumably all the countries on the list that the US doesn't like want one simple thing - to be treated (as countries) equally to US allies. It's not necessary to make the US do anything, just to make us incapable of doing anything and unable to be trusted by allies. And that's inherently much easier than control. Not only that, but it doesn't require trust and cooperation among themselves to an unrealistic degree.

Pretty sure they were alluding to this with their comment.