What is Russia trying to do?

What we are hearing about Russian interference in the 2020 election is a sham and a shame. I don't know whether to blame the intelligence reports or the news media. Here is what AP reports:

"Just weeks into this year’s election cycle, Russia already is actively interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign in hopes of reelecting President Donald Trump, and is also trying to help the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, intelligence officials have concluded.

The Russian efforts are aimed at undermining public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stirring general chaos in American politics, intelligence experts say" (https://apnews.com/1398cc440971a3f39d95346a875d3726, 21 Feb 2020).

I suspect that the second paragraph is accurate. I am confident that "the Russian efforts are aimed at undermining public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stirring general chaos in American politics." The best way to undermine confidence and to stir chaos is to focus on non-traditional candidates with a core of fervent followers. Therefore putting out disinformation that is favorable to Trump or Sanders is probably the best way to undermine confidence and to stir chaos.

However, I challenge the statements in the first paragraph. No one knows who Russia hopes wins the nominations or elections. To claim otherwise is speculation. Moreover, the first paragraph contradicts itself. It  states that the goal is to help reelect Donald Trump and also to help Bernie Sanders. Unless having Bernie be the Democratic nominee helps Trump win the election, the two goals in the first paragraph are not the same.  

Holman Jenkins of the WSJ makes my point more emphatically. "We are idiots if we think the Russians are asking themselves what they can do to advance Trump’s cause. The Kremlin is asking how to keep American politics roiled and distrustful. ... The real upside of Russia’s meddling comes from keeping Americans unreasonably and unnecessarily poisoned against each other."

I see two possibilities for why the media keeps repeating something they cannot know. The first possibility is that the news media is not thinking. Instead, they are repeating a narrative about Trump and Russia without recognizing that the account is speculative and internally inconsistent. The second possibility is that the news media is repeating phrases from an intelligence briefing or a leak from a briefing and do not want to stray from the language of the source. The first possibility tells me that the news media is being lazy. The second possibility tells me that the intelligence agency or person describing the report is putting "spin" on the facts.

We need truth today. We need facts unvarnished with spin or narrative. We need reporters who say what they know and who refrain from speculating about things they can't know and from repeating mindlessly an what someone leaking a confidential report said was in the report.

Note: Reference to Holman Jenkins is a revision to the original post.

Media Coverage of Russian Interference in the 2016 Election

The media's coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 election is a sham and a shame. I fault the press for not doing more to explain the overlapping goals that the Russians may have had. I also fault the press for not doing more to tell us details about the about number of ads, number in favor of Trump, number against Trump, number neutral, how the intelligence agencies determined the numbers, and how the researchers for the press determined the numbers. 

I see two narratives of the interference, the narrative I think is accurate and the narrative that predominates in the media. My narrative is that the primary goals of the interference Russia was to increase political and social discord in the US and to create mud to throw at us when we claim that their elections are rigged.  The narrative that predominates in the media has three legs. "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goal of (1) harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, (2) boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and (3) increasing political and social discord in the United States" (number for items in list added). My preferred narrative focuses the third leg on for two reasons. First, since achieving the first two goals was the best way to achieve the third goal, the third goal is subsumes the first two. Second, the third goal is consistent with more of the ads run by Russia. 

The best way to sow political and social discord is to appeal to marginalized voters, attack presumptive winners, and foment dissent with the process for people who favor marginalized candidates. Ads that disparage H. Clinton, promote Trump, appeal to far right voters. attempt to suppress votes by African Americans are great ways to sow political and social discord. Ads in favor of Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, and Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, and ads that contradicted ads that people say favored Trump or disparaged H. Clinton can also increase discord by are not consistent with the narrative that the goal of was to harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump. I have trouble understanding how targeting "users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X" helps elect Trump. Ongoing disinformation efforts seem to me to be more consistent with my narrative that a narrative that includes electing Trump as a goal.

My preferred narrative includes a fourth goal. I think that Russia also wanted to throw mud on our election so that they could reply, "Pot, don't call the kettle black", when we complain that their elections are rigged. All of the ads mentioned above and the release of the email messages from the DNC are consistent with this fourth goal. What better way to create discord and evidence of rigged elections that to release emails from the DNC that disparage groups of voters or demonstrate that the DNC had their thumb on the scale in favor of H. Clinton and against Bernie Sanders. 

I fault the press for not doing more to explain the overlapping goals that the Russians may have had. I recognize that a simple story is easier to sell and that, "Russians wanted Trump to win", is simpler that "Russians wanted to sow discord and ads for Trumps and to marginalized groups is a great way to sow discord". However, selling simple stories is not great journalism. Telling a complex story simply is.

I recognize that my preferred narrative differs from summary from US government intelligence agencies. The agencies speak of sabotage and trying to help Trump win the election, not sowing discord and throwing mud. The report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and "produced by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the ODNI, asserted that Russia had carried out a massive cyber operation ordered by Russian President Putin with the goal to sabotage the 2016 U.S. elections. The agencies concluded that Putin and the Russian government tried to help Trump win the election by discrediting Hillary Clinton and portraying her negatively relative to Trump, ... The report contained no information about how the data was collected and provided no evidence underlying its conclusions." Moreover, In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that, "Our staff concluded that the [intelligence community's] conclusions were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton."

I have three possible responses to the summary from the intelligence agencies. The first response is that they may be correct and I may be wrong. Perhaps electing Trump was the real purpose of the Russian interference rather than a means to the real purpose of sowing discord. The second response is that the overlap between the goals is so substantial that figuring out which one is "correct" is pointless. The third response is that the agencies mis-characterized the interference. Intelligence agencies are not infallible; after all, these folks were sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps impartial observers would see so much evidence of interference that is NOT consistent with an attempt to elect Trump that they would conclude that an attempt to sow discord and to create mud is the best explanation for the actions. The Nation reports that the common narrative exaggerates the sophistication and misstates the apparent goal of the Russian disinformation.

I fault the news media for failing to press the intelligence agencies to learn more about how they reached the summary. The report released by the intelligence agencies did NOT present evidence. Why didn't the news media press them to provide evidence Better yet, why didn't a news agency conduct an independent investigation. News agencies studied intensively the votes in Florida after the 2000 election; why not the Russian ads in the 2016 election? No one knows if the ads ran 99 for Trump to 1 for Clinton or 50 for Trump, 20 for Stein, to 20 for Sanders, to 10 for Clinton. No one knows how they counted ads that prompted a rally to protest police violence against African Americans.