Editorials: Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States | Michael Morell and Mike Rogers/The Washington Post

Every first-year international-relations student learns about the importance of deterrence: It prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe during the height of the Cold War. It prevented North Korea from invading South Korea in the same time frame. Today, it keeps Iran from starting a hot war in the Middle East or other nations from initiating cyberattacks against our infrastructure. And yet, the United States has failed to establish deterrence in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. We know we failed because Russia continues to aggressively employ the most significant aspect of its 2016 tool kit: the use of social media as a platform to disseminate propaganda designed to weaken our nation. There is a perception among the media and general public that Russia ended its social-media operations following last year’s election and that we need worry only about future elections. But that perception is wrong. Russia’s information operations in the United States continued after the election and they continue to this day. This should alarm everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents alike. Foreign governments, overtly or covertly, should not be allowed to play with our democracy.

Editorials: Russia is going to attack our next election. The Trump administration may not even try to stop it. | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

The Russians are coming for our elections — to disrupt them, to discredit them, and even to affect their outcome. They’ll be coming in 2018, and in 2020. The trouble is that even if we figure out what they’re up to, our own government may be unable or unwilling to stop it. That’s the conclusion one has to come to upon reading reports like this new one from Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Jaffe, which describes how powerless the federal government has been and continues to be in the face of an ongoing war that Vladimir Putin is waging against U.S. democracy. It was hard enough to resist when the executive branch wanted to resist it; who knows how hard it will become as President Trump feels more politically threatened by upcoming elections and Robert S. Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in 2016.

National: Trump received FBI warning that Russians would try to infiltrate campaign: report | The Hill

The FBI reportedly warned then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the months before the election that Russia and other foreign adversaries would probably try to infiltrate his presidential campaign. Multiple government officials told NBC News that senior FBI officials briefed both Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about the threats, which it said are commonly offered to major party nominees for the White House. The briefings, the officials told NBC, are used to alert candidates and their teams about such threats. They are generally given around the point at which candidates begin receiving classified information, and campaigns are told to alert any suspicious activity to authorities.

National: Senate intel committee investigating Jill Stein campaign for possible collusion with the Russians | The Washington Post

The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking at the presidential campaign of the Green Party’s Jill Stein for potential “collusion with the Russians,” a sign that the panel’s probe is far from over, even as allegations swirl that the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation is racing to a close. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told reporters Monday that the Senate Intelligence Committee has “two other campaigns that we’re just starting on,” in addition to the panel’s ongoing probe of alleged ties between the Trump administration and Kremlin officials. One of those he identified as Stein’s; Burr has indicated previously that the committee is also looking into reports that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for research that went into a dossier detailing allegations of Donald Trump’s 2013 exploits in Moscow.

National: Trump-Russia: Republicans trying to kill off investigation, says Adam Schiff | The Guardian

The senior Democrat in a congressional Trump-Russia investigation has said he fears Republicans are manoeuvring to kill off inquiries into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election. “I’m increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House intelligence committee investigation at the end of the month,” said Adam Schiff, who is the leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Schiff suggested Republicans also had their sights on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president’s personal lawyers are reportedly set to meet Mueller and his team within days to ask about the next steps in his investigation.

United Kingdom: Russian cyber-activists ‘tried to discredit Scottish independence vote’ | The Guardian

An expert in Russian cyber-operations has accused Russian activists of running a disinformation campaign to discredit the Scottish independence referendum result, by wrongly alleging it was rigged. Pro-Russian propagandists used Twitter, fake videos on YouTube and Facebook accounts to make and then spread false allegations that votes were interfered with to ensure victory for pro-UK campaigners, according to Ben Nimmo, an analyst for the US thinktank the Atlantic Council, which is part of the Atlantic Treaty Organisation linked to Nato. Nimmo said the ongoing inquiries into allegations the Kremlin tried to subvert last year’s EU referendum and US election should be widened to cover this operation, and to test whether the Russians sought to influence Scottish voters before the referendum on 18 September 2014.

National: Senate Russia Probe May Not Have More Open Hearings, Burr Says | Bloomberg

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said he doesn’t currently see a need for more public hearings in his panel’s investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election, but added that he still won’t be able to meet an original goal of wrapping up this year. “I’m running out of days, aren’t I,” the North Carolina Republican told reporters Tuesday. Burr said they still have dozens of witnesses to interview behind closed doors. He said he hopes to finish the probe “pretty quickly” next year unless additional information surfaces, but the committee may first issue recommendations on election security while it wraps up the broader investigation.

National: Ex-Spy Chief: Russia’s Election Hacking Was An ‘Intelligence Failure’ | Poitico

The politics of spying in America has never been more intense. President Trump has taken to publicly bashing his intelligence agencies and continues, a full year later, to question their conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. election on his behalf. For their part, an array of career spooks have come out of the shadows where they spent their careers to challenge the commander-in-chief in once unthinkably public terms. Michael Morell is one of the career types who’s broken with decades of practice to confront Trump. A veteran of nearly three decades in the CIA, Morell rose from within the ranks to become the agency’s longtime deputy director, twice serving as its acting leader before retiring during President Barack Obama’s second term. In the summer of 2016, he broke with tradition to endorse Hillary Clinton over Trump, and he has continued to sound the alarm ever since.

Editorials: With democracy under attack, it’s time to protect American elections | A. Scott Bolden/The Hill

From freedom of the press to separation of powers, the years-long erosion of America’s democratic institutions has many voicing their concerns. As the country gears up for elections in 2018 and 2020, it’s time to restore faith in a bedrock principle of American politics that is under serious threat: reliable election results and the peaceful transference of power. Controversies surrounding the 2016 election gave people across the political spectrum reason to distrust the integrity of America’s democratic process. President Trump undermined our elections during his final days as a candidate, when he claimed that if he lost to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, it could be the result of a widespread conspiracy. Mounting evidence of Russian interference, disinformation campaigns, and collusion with the Trump campaign has given many who oppose the president reason to doubt the election results as well.

National: Donald Trump Jr back to Congress to face questioning on Russia links | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, returned to Congress on Wednesday to face questions from lawmakers about alleged Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US election and possible collusion with Moscow by his father’s presidential campaign. Trump arrived shortly before 10am for what was expected to be several hours of questioning by members of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, one of three main congressional committees investigating the matter. The session was conducted behind closed doors, and Trump Jr was not seen by reporters waiting outside the meeting room, although congressional officials confirmed he had arrived.

United Kingdom: British elections at risk from perfect storm of threats, says watchdog | The Guardian

The head of the elections watchdog has demanded urgent reform of the UK’s electoral laws and warned that the country faces a “perfect storm” of threats that could put the integrity of the system at risk. Sir John Holmes, the chair of the Electoral Commission, also confirmed to the Guardian that the body has launched an inquiry into possible Russian interference in the EU referendum and is waiting for evidence from Facebook, Google and Twitter. The regulator said that in order to police the electoral system properly, and hold politicians and campaigns to account, wholesale changes were necessary.

National: Democrats question GOP commitment to Senate’s Russia inquiry | Politico

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are raising fresh concerns about the GOP-led panel’s appetite for digging into the Russian ties forged by multiple advisers to President Donald Trump. Friction on the committee last spiked in October, when the chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), sent a slew of letters to key figures in the Russia investigation without the signature of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the panel’s top Democrat. Feinstein has followed by sending four rounds of letters without Grassley’s signature that seek material from other players in the Trump campaign’s communications with Russian officials — the most recent series of letters coming on Monday. Asked about Grassley’s decision to not sign on, Feinstein told reporters late Monday that “I think there’s an effort, subtle, not to go deeply. And I hadn’t realized it before, but I realize it now,” she continued. “And we’re going to have to find a way to deal with it.”

National: Deutsche Bank Received Subpoena on Client Trump | Bloomberg

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller zeroed in on President Donald Trump’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank AG as his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections widens. Mueller has issued a subpoena to Germany’s largest lender, forcing the bank to submit documents on its client relationship with Trump and his family, said a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified because the action has not been announced. “Deutsche Bank always cooperates with investigating authorities in all countries,” the lender said in a statement to Bloomberg, declining to provide additional information.

National: Trump transition official wrote in email: Russia ‘has just thrown the USA election to him’ | The Independent

Russia threw the US election to Donald Trump, a top official in his transition team reportedly said in an email. Emails between top Trump transition officials suggested Michael Flynn was in close contact with other senior members of the transition team before and after he spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, The New York Times reported. An email from K T McFarland, a transition adviser to Mr Trump, sent on 29 December, suggested Russian sanctions announced by the Obama administration had been aimed at discrediting Mr Trump’s victory. In emails obtained by the Times, she said the sanctions could also make it more difficult for Mr Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the USA election to him.”

National: Trump Pressed Top Republicans to End Senate Russia Inquiry | The New York Times

President Trump over the summer repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to a half dozen lawmakers and aides. Mr. Trump’s requests were a highly unusual intervention from a president into a legislative inquiry involving his family and close aides. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the intelligence committee chairman, said in an interview this week that Mr. Trump told him that he was eager to see an investigation that has overshadowed much of the first year of his presidency come to an end. “It was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as quickly as possible,’” Mr. Burr said. He said he replied to Mr. Trump that “when we have exhausted everybody we need to talk to, we will finish.”

Europe: EU election fears behind Russian fake news fight? | Euractiv

For the first time, the EU is setting aside funds to tackle the alarming Russian fake news. The money is not huge, around 5 million, but it means the bloc has officially recognised that Russian disinformation or propaganda is a serious threat that needs to be tackled in the long run.   No policymaker will publicly admit that there are concerns about the EU elections in 2019. But we have all read reports about the alleged impact of Russian fake news on the US election, the Brexit referendum and Catalonia. Everyone is focusing on Russia’s growing political meddling in the Balkans or on the renewed fears among Eastern European countries, including Ukraine. Interestingly enough, sources in Brussels stress that North African countries which happen to be under Russian influence will also be part of that new anti-fake news project.

National: 6 Months In, There’s No End In Sight: Who’s Who In The Vast Russia Imbroglio | NPR

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference has passed the six-month mark, and President Trump’s staff is painting a picture of a process nearing its end. “We still expect this to conclude soon,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders has told reporters. Ty Cobb, the outside attorney brought in to help the White House in its response to the probe, told NPR’s Tamara Keith that Mueller’s interviews with Trump campaign officials would be completed “ideally by Thanksgiving.”

Editorials: The Cyber Attacks on Democracy | Juan C. Zarate/InsideSources

The investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election continue to reveal a full-scale assault on American democracy. From sophisticated social media efforts and traditional information operations to attempted hacks of voter rolls and state electoral systems, the Russians engaged in a campaign to undermine American democracy. This is not the only time they have engaged in such activity. In countries like the Netherlands, Ukraine and France, the Russians have used influence operations to affect political campaigns and candidates, and to attack perceived opponents of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and support those more sympathetic to Russian interests. The Russians have decided to do this to achieve three complementary goals. They want to undermine faith and confidence in democracy and its institutions from within; exacerbate social and political divisions advantageous to Russian interests; and obfuscate or confuse the truth and amplify narratives that align with Russian interests, even when patently false.

United Kingdom: UK to step up investigation into big tech’s Russia ties | Financial Times

MPs are stepping up their inquiry into fake news in an effort to extract answers from Facebook and Twitter about the extent of Russian interference in last year’s EU referendum and this year’s UK general election. Russian entities are known to have bought adverts on Facebook and generated election-related content before Donald Trump won last year’s US presidential election, while authorities in France and Germany have said their elections were also targeted.

National: Top Russian Official Tried to Broker ‘Backdoor’ Meeting Between Trump and Putin | The New York Times

A senior Russian official who claimed to be acting at the behest of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried in May 2016 to arrange a meeting between Mr. Putin and Donald J. Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter. The news of this reached the Trump campaign in a very circuitous way. An advocate for Christian causes emailed campaign aides saying that Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia’s security services and organized crime, had proposed a meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The subject line of the email, turned over to Senate investigators, read, “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,” according to one person who has seen the message.

United Kingdom: Rising alarm in Britain over Russian meddling in Brexit vote | The Washington Post

New investigations released this week suggest the Russians meddled in Britain’s historic referendum last year to leave the European Union, placing an already weakened Prime Minister Theresa May in a most awkward position — just when she needs to be her strongest in Brexit negotiations. The evidence that the Russians, with possible support from the Kremlin, bombarded British targets with social media tweets and posts was splashed on the nightly news and front pages in Britain. Even so, the prime minister and her office stressed that Russian propaganda had “no direct successful influence” on the Brexit vote. Critics of May say an admission that Russia tried to dupe British voters could raise questions about the Conservative Party’s mandate to extricate Britain from the European Union.

National: How Can an Election be Hacked? | Pacific Standard

It’s been almost a year since Election Day 2016, but the campaign news hasn’t stopped. October 30th brought the first indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. On Tuesday and Wednesday, representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter faced congressional grilling over widespread Russian influence on their platforms. Also on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice is considering charging Russian government officials for crimes related to the Democratic National Committee hack. Amid the flurry, it’s easy to blur these conversations—especially because they all seem to feature Russia. But the election-hacking conversation desperately needs to be untangled. Whatever other revelations may come, it helps to remember that election hacking is really about three separate threats: hacking voters, hacking votes, and causing disruption or chaos.

National: Jared Kushner failed to disclose emails sent to Trump team about WikiLeaks and Russia | The Guardian

Jared Kushner shared emails within Donald Trump’s team about WikiLeaks and a “backdoor overture” from Russia during the 2016 election campaign and failed to turn them over to investigators, it emerged on Thursday. Senators said that a disclosure of files to their committee by Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, “appears to have been incomplete” and was missing “documents that are known to exist but were not included”. They said in a letter to Kushner’s attorney that they knew of emails received and then sent on by Kushner during the campaign that appear relevant to inquiries into alleged collusion between Moscow and Trump’s team.

United Kingdom: Russia used a network of 150,000 Twitter accounts to meddle in Brexit | Business Insider

Twitter accounts based in Russia posted 45,000 tweets about Brexit within the space of 48 hours during last year’s referendum on EU membership, an investigation commissioned by The Times has found. Data scientists at the University of Swansea and University of California, Berkeley found that over 150,000 accounts based in Russia posted content relating to Brexit in the days leading up to voting day on June 23, 2016. These accounts had previously focused on issues like Russia’s annexation of Crimea, before focusing their attention on the Brexit referendum, with the majority of tweets seen by the Times encouraging people to vote Leave.

National: Senators: Kushner Didn’t Disclose Emails On WikiLeaks, ‘Russian Overture’ | NPR

Senior White House adviser and son-in-law to the president, Jared Kushner, failed to hand over to Senate investigators emails concerning contacts with WikiLeaks and a “Russian backdoor overture,” according to a letter sent by two senior lawmakers. The letter, released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and its ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, says Kushner failed to turn over “September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks” and other emails pertaining to a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.” The lawmakers said they were seeking the documents that were “known to exist” from other witnesses in the investigation. “We appreciate your voluntary cooperation with the committee’s investigation, but the production appears to have been incomplete,” the letter, sent to Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said. “It appears your search may have overlooked several documents.”

Europe: Balance of Power: Russian Election Meddling Fears Invade Europe | Bloomberg

The Russia scandal has ricocheted back across the pond. And it’s dragging Silicon Valley’s giants along with it. Spurred on by Prime Minister Theresa May’s threat to retaliate against Russian interference, a parliamentary committee wants to grill executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter. The committee, following similar inquiries by U.S. lawmakers, is investigating whether Russians are using American internet companies to sway British elections, including last year’s Brexit vote.

United Kingdom: Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows | The Guardian

Concern about Russian influence in British politics has intensified as it emerged that more than 400 fake Twitter accounts believed to be run from St Petersburg published posts about Brexit. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh identified 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) attempting to influence UK politics out of 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the US. One of the accounts run from the Kremlin-linked operation attempted to stir anti-Islamic sentiment during the Westminster Bridge terror attack in March in a bogus post claiming a Muslim woman ignored victims – a claim that was highlighted by mainstream media outlets including Mail Online and the Sun.

National: Russia’s Election Meddling Was Another U.S. Intelligence Failure | Dana Priest/The New Yorker

After American intelligence agencies failed to detect and stop Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, sixteen years ago, Congress more than doubled their budgets and gave them unprecedented secret authorities. As the intelligence beat reporter for the Washington Post at the time, I watched these agencies grow in size, as dozens of new buildings appeared around the Washington region to house a ballooning workforce of over a million people with top-secret security clearances. The National Security Agency obtained permission to collect and store the private Internet correspondence and cell-phone data of millions of Americans. The F.B.I. was granted the power to obtain citizens’ banking, library, and phone records without court approval. The C.I.A. opened secret prisons abroad where they tortured terrorist suspects. Local police departments began employing military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, and cell-phone-tracking devices.

National: Russian Twitter Trolls Stoked Voter Fraud Fear Before Election | NBC

Russian trolls used Twitter to challenge the validity of the U.S. presidential election months before it took place, according to new NBC News analysis. In apparent expectation of a Trump loss, the trolls began sowing seeds of doubt to make voters question a win by Hillary Clinton. But when Donald Trump’s victory began rolling in, they changed their tune and began tweeting about the Trump success. Kremlin propaganda tweets using the “VoterFraud” hashtag first appeared in August 2016 and slowly ramped up to an Election Day blitz, according to the NBC News analysis of some 36,000 archived tweets from a single anonymous source with knowledge of social media data.

Editorials: Did Donald Trump Jr. Cross the Line With WikiLeaks? | Matt Ford/The Atlantic

Donald Trump Jr.’s private exchanges with WikiLeaks on Twitter during the 2016 campaign raise a host of new questions about the Trump team’s communications with foreign entities before the election. But the messages alone don’t appear to cross any clear-cut legal lines. “I certainly didn’t see anything that looks like a smoking gun in the descriptions that we were given,” Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law professor who specializes in election law, told me. My colleague Julia Ioffe reported Monday that Trump Jr. exchanged multiple private messages on Twitter with the radical transparency organization before the election. In some cases, Trump Jr. appeared to act on requests from the group. In one instance, for example, he tweeted a link it had sent his way. A message posted by his father’s account soon after the group contacted Trump Jr. also mentioned WikiLeaks. The messaging, which WikiLeaks initiated during the election and continued as recently as July, was not previously known to the public. #url#