New York Times Persists in Russia Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory

Introduction

“Russia Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds”, read the headline of a New York Times article published on July 25, 2019. In it, the Times asserted as fact that, during the 2016 US presidential election season, the Russian government attempted to hack into state election infrastructure. The leading potential motive provided for this alleged activity was to tamper with vote tallies to throw the election to the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. In the state of Illinois, the Times tells us, Russia succeeded in penetrating the system, although there’s admittedly no evidence that any voting data was altered.

The problem is that, despite asserting as proven fact that Russia hacked or attempted to hack into US electoral systems, the Times presents no evidence to support that sensational claim. Instead, as is its habit, the Times unquestioningly parroted claims made by government officials, without evidence, as though verified truths. Just as it did prior to the Iraq War, the Times has chosen to propagate a conspiracy theory that serves various political agendas, rather than to properly inform the public.

The report mentioned in the headline, released earlier that day, was from the Senate Intelligence Committee. As the Times informs us, the Committee concluded “that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, an effort more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time.”[1]

This is reminiscent of another Times article published on September 1, 2017, titled “Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny”, which alleged that the Russian government had successfully hacked into North Carolina’s electoral infrastructure.[2]

In that article, however, as I have previously detailed (see my Foreign Policy Journal article “New York Times Propagates Russia Hacking Conspiracy Theory”), the Times likewise had presented no evidence that there was any hacking of US election infrastructure by the Russian government at all. On the contrary, the Times attributed the claim to government officials and informed us that the supposed evidence was “classified”.

The key source cited by the Times to support its conclusion was a classified report by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had been leaked to The Intercept. But what that NSA report actually showed was that the identity of the suspicious actors was unknown. The NSA judged that they were “Probably within” the Russian intelligence agency abbreviated in English as “GRU” (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie, translated “Main Intelligence Administration”). The basis provided for this conclusion was that these actors “utilized some techniques that were similar to other Russian GRU cyber operations units”. The NSA, in other words, didn’t know that the Russian government was trying to hack US election systems; it was just guessing that this was so on a rather flimsy evidentiary basis.[3]

Likewise, in its more recent propagation of the conspiracy theory, the New York Times relays claims from the Senate report as though fact, even though there’s not a single shred of evidence within the report itself supporting the claim that actors operating on behalf of the Russian government hacked or attempted to hack into state election systems.[4]

Indeed, to the contrary, information contained in the Senate report seriously calls into question the credibility of the claim that is being made by government officials and falsely reported by the New York Times’ headline as a demonstrated fact.