The Russia watchThe “Russia Story”; Russia’s meddling was U.S. “intelligence failure”; cyber forensics, and more

What is the “Russia Story”?(Karen Yourish, New York Times)
Confused by all the news about Russia and the 2016 presidential election? We are here to help.

Defending the West from Russian disinformation: The role of institutions(Eriks Selga, Benjamin Rasmussen, FPRI)
While targeted counter-efforts are sprouting up across the West, a comprehensive strategy is still missing. The United States, as a global superpower and key player in the NATO alliance, must take the initiative to lead its Western allies towards a broader long-term strategy for countering foreign information warfare. Washington should learn from past U.S. initiatives to secure the domestic information space as well as from the success of its Baltic allies in building grassroots public resilience by deliberately raising public awareness of the Russian misinformation threat. A robust U.S. strategy would create positive spillovers for the security of NATO allies, creating a united front against Moscow’s subversion.

What Putin really wants (Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic)
Russia’s strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He’s really just a gambler who won big.

Russian bots manipulate online conversation about Olympics, sexual harassment(Francesca Friday, Observer)
In a cyber-invasion of unprecedented proportions, the Kremlin successfully infiltrated American public opinion during the 2016 presidential election through manufactured, right-wing social media profiles, and the ideological warfare by Russian Twitter bots continues at present. After the International Olympic Committee announced on Tuesday that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Games due to mounting evidence of illegal doping, Twitter was almost instantaneously set aglow with retaliation from accounts linked to Russian-backed propaganda.

WikiLeaks faces four U.S. probes into its 2016 election role and CIA leaks(South China Morning Post)
WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing multiple investigations by US authorities, including three congressional probes and a federal criminal inquiry, sources familiar with the investigations said.

Rep. Eric Swalwell breaks down how Russia infected the U.S. election(Brandon Stewart, The Decleration)
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) released a video explaining exactly what happened during the election in an attempt to set the record straight once and for all. Swalwell serves on the House Intelligence Committee and has insight into the most up-to-date information available on the situation.

As Russia subverts missile treaty, U.S. looking at new weapons(Paul McLeary, Foreign Policy)
Since 1987, Europe has been off limits for medium-range missiles. Russia — and now the United States — seems ready to tear up that detente.

Exposing Russian interference – the value of real-time forensics(Daniel Hoffman, Cipher Brief)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to exploit open and free U.S. cyberspace, which serves as a force multiplier for commerce and freedom of expression, with hacking and discoverable influence operations. Conducting all-source forensics following these Russian attacks on our democratic process, U.S. social media networking sites are in the incident response phase — “to the right of boom.” Google, Facebook and Twitter were subjected to highly aggressive questioning during recent Senate hearings, which focused on the results of their forensics as well as technical countermeasures designed to deny Russia’s nefarious use of their sites.

Ex-spy chief: Russia’s election hacking was an “intelligence failure” (Susan B. Glasser, Politico)
Former acting CIA director Michael Morell says the agency missed the meddling until it was too late.

Ex-spy chief: Russia’s election hacking was an “intelligence failure” (Susan B. Glasser, Politico)
Former acting CIA director Michael Morell says the agency missed the meddling until it was too late.

Company that used Russian coders for Pentagon project strikes deal (Joseph Marks, Defense One)
The subcontractor that hired the coders signed a non-prosecution deal to end a criminal investigation.