(2017-06-13) Adams Russia Hacked Our Election So What

Scott Adams: Russia Hacked our Election! (So what?) From 2017 onward, the democratic process in any country is open to “voting” by the entire world. The foreign “votes” will come in the form of social media influence on the local voters

I see a consensus forming that Russia attempted to influence our election with fake news and other social media shenanigans. But why?

let’s compare the standard explanations for Russia’s alleged influence on the election with two other hypotheses.

The first question I have to ask is this: Aren’t all the big countries trying to influence elections in all the other countries, all the time?

Vladimir Putin seems like a smart guy. It’s hard for me to believe he thinks he would come out ahead by destabilizing the world’s most important military and economic power. And that is doubly true when you are teaming with that country to fight ISIS, put a cap on North Korea, and keep the economy chugging along. It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario in 2017 in which Russia gains by poking America with a sharp stick. The probable outcome seems more bad than good

I’d like to introduce a new hypothesis to explain why Russia might have wanted to influence American elections: They believed a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a disaster to the world, including Russia.