Great-power competition has returned-and with it, so has great-power subversion.
Now, that dominance is beginning to wane. dominance, beginning after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States appeared immune to malicious meddling by peer competitors, in large part because there weren’t any. What stands out as an anomaly is the brief period of extraordinary U.S. Subversion-domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival-has always been a part of great-power politics. Russia’s operation was just the latest instance of a pattern that stretches back in history as far as the eye can see. The 2016 election may have been a rude wake-up call, but no one should have been surprised. In 2018, Congress created an entirely new agency-the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security-to prevent similar intrusions in the future.
In its final months, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats, seized Russian diplomatic property, and pledged that the United States would retaliate at a time and place of its choosing. “All democracies are current or potential future targets.” “This digital ecosystem creates opportunities for manipulation that have exceeded the ability of democratic nations to respond, and sometimes even to grasp the extent of the challenge,” Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution testified before a congressional committee in 2019. Foreign policy experts predicted a coming wave of digital subversion, led by authoritarian states targeting their democratic rivals. A New York Times headline announced that “Russian cyberpower” had “invaded” the United States. intelligence hands such as James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA.
“We have been attacked we are at war,” the actor Morgan Freeman solemnly announced in a video in 2017 released by a group calling itself the Committee to Investigate Russia, which was backed by old U.S. They went on to target election systems in all 50 states and even managed to infiltrate voter databases. State-sponsored hackers stole and leaked her campaign aides’ private emails. Powerful Russians close to the Kremlin sought out contact with Trump and his courtiers, dangling the promise of damaging information about Clinton. On social media, a legion of paid Russian trolls sowed discord, spreading pernicious falsehoods about the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and seeking to boost turnout for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. presidential election, a foreign power managed to exert what seemed like unprecedented influence over the sacred rites of American democracy.
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