>>118396302The whole deal with the current Russian involvement is a lot more crazy than that simplification. Russian intel games have always been pretty sophisticated and they're always doing something. I read a report recently about how a bunch of Russian sleeper agents were sent over to the US with fake birth certificates, and they learned to blend in seamlessly with regular Americans. Their goal was to get access to institutions that would normally be off-limits to foreigners. They communicated and coordinated with each other, but something tripped off the feds and after a length of surveillance they were caught and then exchanged for American agents who'd been nabbed in Russia. But the lingering concern of that report was, "Who are the guys we DIDN'T find?"
And then, when you look at how Russians have historically done their stuff, what they like to do is infiltrate a political party and try to unite the radical elements with the moderate elements and push them together into one party. That way, when people go to the polls, if they want that side they have to usher in the radicals as well. The radicals then get Russian support until they take over the party, and then half the political system is crazy people with damaging links to Russia. And now here's the clincher: the Russians in that case may not even have provided that much material support, but merely being involved with federal agents is a crime and therefore a form of "kompromat", meaning if the Russians come forward and say they helped, those politicians are screwed.
In the Soviet Satellites that joined the USSR peacefully, what would happen ahead of time is what they called "salami politics", where the radical elements would be persuaded into cutting up the government a slice at a time, like a roll of salami. You know - deregulate this here, remove that guardrail there, create these instabilities over here - also known as the modern Republican agenda, frankly.
