Russia’s midterms interference strategy; What Putin fears; countering Russia, and more

And he’d had a lot of practice at that, Unger writes. Trump’s burgeoning real estate empire was fueled in the 1980s by another privileged class, Russian gangsters who appear to have used Trump properties to launder their ill-gotten gains, Unger alleges.
It is this nexus between Trump, Putin, and wealthy mobsters and oligarchs — often the same people — that is Unger’s fixation in his latest book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia.

Here’s how Russia will try to interfere in the 2018 elections (William Courtney, RAND)
From the Kremlin’s perspective, the 2016 election interference may look successful despite political blowback in Washington and resulting expanded sanctions. Russian President Vladimir Putin may think he helped elect an American president that he favored.
Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says the Russians “actually turned” the election. If Clapper is right, perhaps not since the theft of U.S. atomic bomb secrets in World War II has Moscow been so successful in a covert operation in the U.S.
Russia will again threaten midterm elections in November, although by how much is unclear. On July 14 Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielson said Russia was not targeting the midterms with the same “scale or scope” as the 2016 presidential election. But on Aug. 2 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats pointed to “a pervasive messaging campaign.”
The Kremlin may expect less favorable circumstances this November. To influence elections for the Senate and House, Moscow would have to invest on a wider geographical scale than in 2016.
Many states and localities will likely have hardened their electoral systems. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms will be more resistant to manipulation. And Moscow may assess that few congressional candidates will be as favorably inclined toward Russian interests as the Kremlin likely believes Trump to be.
For these reasons Moscow might be more restrained this year, but it could be wilier.
The Kremlin might try to funnel dark money, possibly though U.S.-based shell corporations, to issue-oriented “social welfare” groups that have divisive goals. Under section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code, such groups are not required to disclose sources of funds.
Using disguised websites and trolls, Moscow may continue exploiting social tensions, as it did after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting by inflaming the gun-control debate.
Some states and localities might still not have high security in their vote-counting systems, and Kremlin hackers may seek to penetrate them to alter results.

At the July 16 summit in Helsinki, Putin made clear his preference for Trump in 2016 because candidate Trump “talked about normalizing” U.S.-Russian relations. The Kremlin may want to protect its investment. It could visibly back some of President Trump’s opponents so as to deflect attention from its support for him. This would seem to validate Trump’s claim that Moscow will favor Democrats in November.
Former senior CIA Russian operations officer Charles Leven thinks the Kremlin may do more to incite violence, such as stoking racist and anti-immigrant passions by hyping alleged links to crime.
The Kremlin also may not overlook “open source” intelligence collection, to learn where races are close and how candidates might be vulnerable. Granular insights can be obtained from regional and local newspapers, as well as expert political reports.
Russian operatives may spot and assess those whose views accord with the Kremlin’s and seek to cultivate them online as unwitting assets. Moscow might ask some to volunteer for campaigns of candidates it opposes, so they can report on or expose inside developments. The Kremlin also can be expected to wine and dine U.S. political figures who visit Russia and seem vulnerable.
Intelligence officers, as Putin once was, know they must adapt and improve their tradecraft to stay ahead of adversaries. So it may be with Kremlin election ploys this year.

Facebook opens up to researchers — but not about 2016 election(David Ingram, NBC News)
Facebook’s decision is a roadblock for experts who want to examine possible factors behind President Donald Trump’s victory.

Four ways to counter Russia’s social-media warfare: The battle of Cressy offers a lesson on fighting the weaponization of Twitter and Facebook. Seriously (James Stavridis, Bloomberg)
The author, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former military commander of NATO, writes that “Americans should recognize that the long history of warfare is largely about the balance between offensive and defensive capabilities. England’s offensive long-range archers were able to overcome the defensive armor of French knights at the Battle of Cressy in 1346, for example. … [T]he use of social networks in conflict is far less understood and the U.S. has struggled to defend itself. We must react. Peter Singer, a noted futurist and military analyst, writes convincingly about this phenomenon in his forthcoming book, ‘LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.’ … Singer and others have made the case that the U.S. has much work to do in order to operate in these shadow zones of the social networks. I would start with four concrete steps. First, we need much better public-private cooperation. Facebook, Twitter and the other major social networks should have government liaisons assigned from the National Security Agency, FBI and Department of Homeland Security to assist them in monitoring and responding to such attacks. Second, we need to develop better technical defenses that can detect bots and propaganda and the work of fake-news mills in real time and stifle them. … Third, we need to be more adept at revealing the nature and extent of such attacks when they occur and publicizing them. … Fourth, we need to be willing to use more aggressive and potentially public responses when we are attacked. … The U.S.,” Stavridis argues, “should be considering using the social networks in a proportional way against Russia if it does not cease and desist—perhaps by revealing corruption and overseas wealth held by senior Russian leaders.  This has been done to an extent, but needs to be deepened to include Putin specifically. It should also be done creatively on social networks with evocative images of villas, yachts and Italian suits. … Americans need to understand and be ready to respond more efficiently and forcefully when the power of the social networks is turned against the U.S. The lights are blinking red indeed.”

Here we go again with Russia sanctions that will do nothing (Eugene Rumer, The Hill)
The author, head of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that “American foreign policy toward Russia is stuck in a seemingly endless pattern of doing the same thing over and over again with an unsatisfactory result, but expecting a different outcome each time. The latest bipartisan bill, called the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, championed by six U.S. senators fits this pattern. … The bill may be good politics in an election year, but it is just as unlikely to accomplish its stated goal as the long list of its predecessors that have not worked. Take the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the Magnitsky Act, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act and sanctions related to the illegal annexation of Crimea. What do all of these legislative and executive actions have in common? All were introduced to make Russia stop doing something, whether it is violating the rights of its citizens, returning Crimea to Ukraine, [or] interfering in our elections. They all failed,” Rumer writes. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sponsor of the new legislation, “himself has admitted that the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act has failed. The new bill, if it passes Congress in the short amount of time left in this legislative session, is destined to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. The combination of so many aspects of our global migration to the online domain and poor cyber defenses means that our elections will be threatened not just by Russia, but by many other actors, both foreign and domestic. Focusing on Russia is misleading and potentially harmful, for the problem requires a comprehensive solution, not just a ‘whack a mole’ type campaign against one country or another. Some aspects of the bill make one admire the sense of humor of its drafters. The bill calls for a report, presumably from the intelligence community, on the ‘net worth and assets of Vladimir Putin.’ This is coming at a time when our own president refuses to come clean about his finances. … Moreover, the proposed sanctions bill could actually benefit Putin. The Kremlin has been using Western sanctions in its propaganda to convince Russians that the West is their enemy and that the nation has to unite around its leadership in this hour of confrontation. … Instead of more ‘crushing’ sanctions bills, we need a crash effort in the near term to boost our cyber defenses and resilience of our electoral systems… In the long term, as our adversarial relationship with Moscow is likely here to stay, … we need to devote more resources to understanding the drivers of Russian policy, Kremlin priorities and vulnerabilities, and what is likely to deter it. Our ability to understand Russia has unfortunately been a victim of our preoccupation with China, North Korea and the Middle East. The Russia challenge is here to stay, and we need to get serious about it. Doing more of what has not worked in the past will get us nowhere.”

Putin is afraid of one thing. Make him think it could happen (Michael Morell, Washington Post)
The author, a career intelligence officer and former deputy director of the CIA, addresses the problem of Russian interference in American affairs and argues that “[t]he U.S. answer to Russia, so far, has been ineffective because Washington has targeted only the entities and individuals actually involved in the Russian information operations.” At the start of the piece, Morell writes that “Facebook revealed on July 31 that it had discovered a 17-month-long influence campaign to sow political divisiveness on its network, an effort that bore the hallmarks of the Kremlin-connected Internet Research Agency. Two days later at the White House, the nation’s top national security officials said Russia is conducting a pervasive campaign to weaken our democracy and influence this year’s midterm elections. Taken together, these announcements leave no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political assault on the United States continues unabated. The most important question the Trump administration and Congress should be asking is: How can we make Putin stop? … Here is what the United States needs to do. In terms of self-defense, it must secure the nation’s elections system, especially the software that holds data on registered voters. … As for imposing costs on those who attack the United States: Fully implement sanctions already on the books. That is still not happening. But then move beyond targeted sanctions to broad-based sanctions that are designed to hurt the Russian economy—just as the Obama administration’s sanctions against Iran were designed to do, as are the Trump administration’s. … What would such sanctions look like? A Senate bill introduced on Aug. 2, again with sponsors from both parties, is a good start: Prohibit any transaction related to Russian energy projects and bar the purchase of new Russian sovereign debt. Washington should encourage its allies to join in these efforts. Putin is afraid of one thing. He is afraid that one day the Russian middle class will finally rebel against his regime and rush into the streets demanding change. …. Sanctions that bite at the heart of the Russian economy—sanctions that increase the risk that Russia’s middle class will become restive—will get Putin’s attention.”

Fears of voting machine hacking erupts as an issue in U.S. election (Coda Story)
The potential for Russian hacking of election systems in the 2018 midterm elections has emerged as an urgent and destabilizing issue in the run-up to the U.S. elections. State and local election officials are accused of mismanagement and a lack of focus on the dangers of election systems hacking.

The Russian threat you’re not hearing about (Kathleen Hicks, Cipher Bried)
The United States is reawakening to the Russia threat. Indeed, it would be hard to sleep through Vladimir Putin’s brazen tactics. Although American media has shined a spotlight on Russia’s active interference with U.S. elections, its aggression in other areas has received less notice. Russian out-of-area military activity, including near the U.S. and Canadian border, is a challenge as formidable and active as it has been since the end of the Cold War.