Nicholas Grossman
1 min readSep 7, 2017

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You have to decide because the United States must determine what, if anything, to do in response.

What “Russian hackers” means in this case is “Fancy Bear,” which is a cyber espionage unit in the GRU (the Main Intelligence Directorate, AKA Russian military intelligence).

If, as the U.S. intelligence community believes, Fancy Bear was behind the DNC hack, and the same unit or other cyber espionage arms of the Russian government conducted additional interference in the 2016 election — such as stealing voter roll information from multiple states — then the United States was attacked by a hostile foreign power. Not a physical attack, but still something requiring a response.

What that response should be is an important question. Of course, if you doubt Russia was behind it, then the main task is tracking down whoever was responsible. And if you’re like the leak theorists, then you believe the United States should do nothing.

Since you wrote “I am tired of hearing about Russian Hackers,” it seems like you’ve chosen to dismiss it, rather than take it seriously.

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Nicholas Grossman
Nicholas Grossman

Written by Nicholas Grossman

Senior Editor at Arc Digital. Poli Sci prof (IR) at U. Illinois. Author of “Drones and Terrorism.” Politics, national security, and occasional nerdery.

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