To Russia with love: Trump’s precarious path on hacking and intelligence

This has relied on a sweeping and misplaced revival of past controversies in U.S. espionage operations to cast doubt on the work of intelligence agencies. The abrupt message, in an unsigned statement, highlighted that “these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

At the heart of such a debate is whether intelligence shapes policy, or policy shapes intelligence, or both. While mistakes have been made, the intelligence community can likewise serve as a convenient scapegoat for the biased preferences of policymakers.

Secondly, in the search for a more generous assessment of Trump’s rationale, the downplaying of consistent and numerous intelligence reports could be linked to a preference for a less robust assessment by the only dissenting voice in the intelligence sector – the FBI. But with a slight variation. The FBI is not sold on the view that Russian cyber-attacks had a particular intention outside an ad hoc effort to disrupt the election. A senior FBI official has stated: “There’s no question that [Russian] efforts went one way, but it’s not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of related goals.”

However, this line of defense still has plenty of holes. Again, the FBI does not deny that a covert Russian hacking and disinformation strategy attempted to influence the U.S. election. This remains in stark contrast to Trump, who continues to downplay Russia’s espionage, mainly via his Twitter feed.

The FBI’s departure from other agencies in its avoidance of making any hard and fast statement about the specific purpose of Russian ambitions is most likely connected to its organizational culture. This is founded on criminal standards and court proceedings – the notion of demonstrating proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Yet intelligence is often not akin to legal standard evidence. It can be speculative and draw inferences from incomplete information.

The inherently imprecise and uncertain nature of intelligence can work in a government’s favor. A government can therefore justify policy actions (“we trusted the intelligence in good faith”) or dismiss intelligence outright (“we could not trust the intelligence because it was too thin”).

In this instance, despite the fluidity of what intelligence can and cannot do, the high confidence of the CIA should not be automatically ignored or discredited. The fact that Trump has continued to belittle the agency and its widely echoed findings indicates a president-elect who either does not pay attention to the intelligence product, or does not understand how intelligence operates.

Daniel Baldino is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame Australia. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).