Nearly every narrative about this year's election has defied expectations. For starters, it wasn't a Bush-Clinton coronation, but an insurgent season resulting in Donald Trump's triumph over Jeb Bush and other Republican rivals, as well as Bernie Sanders' challenge to Hillary Clinton up to the final primary. And despite its being the Citizens United era, throughout the race the most meaningful media story wasn't about campaign ads, but e-mail.
And, most recently, even the e-mail focus has morphed from Clinton's private server to the public release of cynical Democratic National Committee correspondence. (And as of late Friday, a reported hack on both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.)
Fittingly, the scope of this scandal has shifted quickly. Sure, the WikiLeaks release made unity elusive at this week's Democratic National Convention. But by far the more enduring impact may be that Russia is allegedly attempting to alter a U.S. presidential election.
"Presidential campaigns are really natural targets for espionage," said Patrik Maldre, managing partner at Retel Partners, an Estonia-based consulting firm focusing on cybersecurity. "To send these documents or this information to media outlets or to publish them publicly really signals an intent not just to know and understand things about the political process, but crucially to play an active role in it. With this disclosure, the DNC hack really transitioned from espionage into the realm of influence operations."
If so, it fits into an expanding pattern of Moscow meddling in international political processes. And it's not just in neighbors such as Ukraine, but in Western Europe, where Russia allegedly backs right-wing movements in France, Hungary and beyond.
"Russia really aims to weaken and destabilize the U.S., and divide the transatlantic institutions and alliances that bind North America and Europe together, and so it's really no secret that Russia has incorporated signals intelligence and cybercapabilities into the broader arsenal it uses to achieve these goals," said Maldre.
Among Russia's motives is creating a moral equivalency, however false, said Hannah Thoburn, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute who focuses on Eastern Europe and transatlantic alliances. "They see the United States and any activities of democracy promotion, any activities of supporting civil societies, civil rights, rule of law — those are the things that they see as undermining the authoritarian nature of the Russian system."
If Russians were behind the attack, it's uncertain if they triggered the timing. Either way, "it seems very clear that WikiLeaks has been used as a kind of conduit for these documents," said Thoburn, who labeled it a "use of a second party to essentially do the dirty work."
