Let me put out a theory filled with tinfoil hats, based on what I read on social media (Reddit/HN): (Disclaimer: I am not an American and I do not live in the USA. I have no horse in this rat race)<p>Amount of Russian Hacking in US Elections is directly proportional to the amount the elections go to the favor of the Republicans/Others.<p>Democrats won the house, so no Russian meddling happened. Had the republicans somehow managed to win the house, the democrats would have declared war on Russia by now.<p>It's both funny and sad to see USA behaving like the entire country is on LSD.
How about giving credit to tech companies, maybe they fixed whatever was broken the last time and reduced the amount of misinformation and propaganda that was being spread? I recall seeing something like Twitter banning 20k accounts that were discouraging people from voting.
So... HN's consensus is that The Media Lies and there was no Russian hacking of the election last time?<p>Am I reading that right?<p>I mean, it's not an indefensible position. But it seems weird that we default to this. There's an awful lot of smoke to just assume there's no fire.
Because the whole point of the 2016 operation (which involved support for lots of different, often diametrically opposed, positions and candidates) was to set up a situation where the US was even more politically divided against itself, weakened and ineffectual in foreign affairs, and set on a course to continue inflicting self-harm, and it obviously succeeded beyond Putin's wildest dreams, and there was no apparent need to interfere to change course evident in the run-up to the midterm. Plus, everyone was looking for it's so better to keep powder dry this cycle and leave 2016 seen as either a one time thing (or even, for the truly gullible, a thing that didn't happen) so next time there is a need, there isn't as much guard.
There was nothing to be gained, this time.<p>Interference would only reinforce and strengthen Trump's critics and doubt about Trump. (And by naming "Trump", I include all in that camp, that is promulgating policies/initiatives favorable to Russia -- in outcome, when not in stated goal.)<p>As it is, Trump has been saying "no collusion", "no effect on the outcome", etc. And now in his rhetoric he can point to the 2018 elections and say, "See!"<p>I mean, this one isn't exactly rocket science, as they say.
Here are a couple of hypotheses -<p>1) Russian hackers, as an influencing factor in US elections, never existed;
2) Russian hackers grew disillusioned with Trump when he failed to go full Quisling and surrender the USA to Putin.