
UK 'playing catch up' against Russian interference - MindGods
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53484344
======
patrickaljord
I find all these anti-Russia and China articles tiring. Not saying China and
Russia aren't trying to spy and influence the US and UK, but the US and the UK
are doing the same thing to them and many other countries and have a big
documented history of doing so. So these relentless articles on how bad Russia
and China are for doing what everybody is doing seems like they're trying to
push a negative agenda on these two countries to prepare the population for a
possible future more frontal conflict or war which I hope will never happen.

~~~
trabant00
Ofc both sides are doing it, but typically in a conflict you want your side to
win ;)

~~~
asplake
And the irony? They’re using our platforms to do it

------
newforms
If the Russian state can merrily kill people on mainland UK in recent years
(Alexander Litvinenko) and release nerve agent in Salisbury without recourse,
then a sprinkling of election time cyber ops is the last of our worries.

------
roenxi
Articles like this are woeful. Am I to believe that of ~200 countries in the
world, only Russia has means and ability to interfere in foreign elections?

It isn't even obvious why Russia especially would care about the UK electoral
process. Germany, France, Spain and Italy have a lot more to gain and lose
depending on the outcome. America has at least as much at stake as Russia and
has a much more successful history of foreign meddling.

~~~
djaychela
>It isn't even obvious why Russia especially would care about the UK electoral
process

The argument I've seen is that Putin wants a weaker (or even no) EU, and
getting the UK to leave is an important part of this strategy. I'm no
political expert, but on the face of it this makes sense to me.

~~~
roenxi
Every country outside Europe would like to see a weaker EU. China, India,
America and a fair chunk of the middle east and Africa would all be unhappy to
see a new unified superpower emerge with a united military.

The idea that Russia has especial interests in this area is questionable. The
US has more to gain from the EU breaking up than Russia. Current US president
would love to be negotiating with smaller, weaker countries than the EU
bureaucracy.

~~~
Juliate
That's looking at it only from an adversarial lens. There are other lenses.

------
echaozh
When you don't like the results of an election or a referendum, now you can
blame Russia and China. Can you imagine the losing side easily accept the fact
after the POTUS election this year without blaming Russia or China?

------
ClumsyPilot
You miss the forest for thr trees Gentlemen.

The article is about the fact that UK intelligence and government both know
that Russia interfered in referendum on the side of Brexit. Obvious leave won,
and if they were to find any concrete evidence of this interference, it would
damage credebility of UK Leave even further, on top of existing breaches of
electoral law and populism / trumpism.

"There has been no assessment of Russian interference in the EU referendum and
this goes back to nobody wanting to touch the issue with a 10-foot pole" This
is hilarious.

~~~
secondcoming
The original Brexit result was pretty much endorsed when the Tories were re-
elected in the election after the referendum. MPs, largely Labour ones, who
refused to accept the Brexit result were chucked out by their electorate.

Unless you intend to argue that the Russians also swayed that too.

~~~
ed_elliott_asc
They certainly stoked the fireplace that is brexit and kept winding people up
about it

~~~
secondcoming
Of course they did. They stoke issues that already exist, they're not
invented. Just like how the Russians have been stoking race-issues in the US
for decades.

Are Antifa and BLM Russian plots to destabilise the US? They certainly have
that signature [0], that doesn't mean they aren't valid movements.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q)

------
moltar
I always say this. If Russia is so amazing at manipulating opinion in western
progressive countries, then how come they can’t achieve the same in the
neighbouring countries.

Why have a war in Ukraine, if you can just put your own president in charge?
And manipulate everyone’s opinion?

Why not fix issues in Belorussia?

Why not win over all the other ex soviet states back?

~~~
mantas
Coming from ex-soviet-state... Our BS meter for Russian meddling is much much
higher than in West. We probably get a lot of false-positives too. But better
safe than sorry...

Looking from East, West seems terribly naive when it comes to Russian affairs.
And it looks like there're a lot of people who hate their society so much that
they blindly pick Russia as "greener on the other side" or "enemy of the enemy
is my friend".

Westerners seem to trust media and politicians much more too. Over here, the
default is that politicians/activists/whatever (be it opposition or
government) are lying and that media is supporting their lies. Everything is
lies unless proved otherwise. Meanwhile West seems to be much less critical.

------
Synaesthesia
More vague fearmongering which just serves to back the security state.
Apparently the UK spy agencies had, up to now been too "coy" to get involved
in anything political. Oh come on.

------
makomk
So if I'm understanding the article correctly, they didn't find much in the
way of specific evidence that Russia was interfering in (say) the Brexit
referendum and they're blaming it on the government and security services not
looking hard enough? This feels like it's getting worryingly into conspiracy
theory territory, especially given the quality of the publicly available
claims of Russian interference which this appears to be referencing as proof
there must be something there.

Edit: OK, I'm reading through the actual report now and it doesn't reassure.
They literally reference the Buzzfeed "From Russia With Blood" piece which
relies on the idea that Russia are so good at disguising killings that any
death of a Russian-linked person - anything from a heart attack to a suicide
of someone showing signs of depression who had made previous attempts - is in
fact probably an assasination. This is well into conspiracy theory territory;
it's basically unfalsifiable.

Also, it's clear from the report that they know the UK intelligence agencies
had a lot of other work on their hands regarding the terrorist threat, and
this consumed a substantial amount of the resources that would previously have
been dedicated to Russia, so to attribute this to the intelligence services
supposedly not wanting to know about Russian interference seems itself like an
attempt to interfere with the UK political process.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
They didnt find because they avoided looking very hard. Because uk leave vote
is such a sensitive issue politically.

~~~
cameronbrown
That's circular logic.

~~~
Traster
No it's not. "I didn't find my keys, because I didn't look" isn't circular
logic, it's cause and effect. It doesn't mean you'll find your keys if you do
look. Circular logic is when you tell me "I'm not going to look for my keys,
because there's no evidence that I can find them" \- of course you can't find
them if you don't look. Which is the official government line:

>The UK government rejected the committee's call for a full assessment by
intelligence agencies of potential Russian meddling in the 2016 referendum,
saying it had "seen no evidence of successful interference".

They won't investigate, because there's no evidence, and there's no evidence
because they chose to ignore the evidence at the time of the referendum - as
found by this report.

To bring us back to the key analogy - "I've been walking around with my eyes
closed and haven't found my keys, so clearly I shouldn't look for my keys,
because I haven't found my keys"

