natecheese

Anyone interested in a local llm should check out Llamafile from Mozilla.

So your point is that Russia does try to interfere in American and other foreign elections, they just aren't very good at it?

The electoral college makes it easier for foreign actors to influence American elections. Instead of convincing 3 million people to change their votes from Clinton to Trump in order to effectively influence the election, the entities spreading FUD only need to influence a few thousand in key swing states.

From your Brookings article:

The bottom line is that the Mueller report clearly shows that the Russian information operations were highly adaptive to the political context in the United States, followed a seemingly well-thought out strategic plan akin to a marketing or public relations campaign, involved direction from Russian intelligence, and were incredibly effective in infiltrating American media while influencing public debate around the 2016 election.

The article from the Nation is a poorly sourced opinion piece from someone who seems to have a very poor understanding of how the Russian intelligence works. The key "gotcha" in the article is that IRA is not a Russian government agency, rather a private company run by Russian individuals.

This isn't in contradiction to the Mueller report, it's common for Russian intelligence (and other intelligence agencies around the world, including CIA and other American intelligence agencies) to use private corporations to carry their agendas. As pointed out by the Brookings article Russian intelligence directed the actions of IRA, even though IRA and its employees weren't directly employed by the Russian Government on paper.

Also unnecessarily hostile.

I've read the Mueller report and nothing in there supports your claims, which makes your statement even more confusing.

From the Wikipedia article on the Mueller report:

The report concludes that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities".[4][5][6] Investigators had an incomplete picture of what happened due in part to some communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved, as well as testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined.[7][8][9]

More importantly:

However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion"[10][11][12] but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.[13][14][15] It also identifies myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies,[16] about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.[4] Mueller later stated that his investigation's conclusion on Russian interference "deserves the attention of every American".[17]

You're being unnecessarily hostile. There is a lot of ambiguity in the statement as I outlined my comment.

If you can clarify the point they were trying to make that would be great, if not you're proving no value to this conversation.

The point you're trying to make here isn't very clear.

Are you saying:

1. That Russia didn't try to interfere with the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections?
2. Or are you saying that Russia did try to interfere, but they were incompetent and couldn't actually do it?
3. Or are you saying the Muller report clearly stated that there is a deep connection between Democrats and Russia, and only a much weaker connection between Russia and Republicans?
4. Something else entirely or some combination of all of these?

One person doing something bad? You clearly didn't read the article.

And to suggest that our scientific research institutions shouldn't be scrutinized or there isn't room to improve the process is a little naive.

I generally have a pretty high trust in science, but my faith is shaken when I come across shit like this

Lmao got em, take that France!

That's "doing what you can and not taking responsibility for things that aren't your fault"

I think it's a combination of learned helplessness and an unrealistic expectation of your ability to affect change.

As of July 1st, 2023, there are 334,914,895 million people participating in the US political system, I think it would be a little ridiculous if every one of them could influence our government. Not all the people can vote, but they're still participating in the political system whether they know it or not.

Each of these people have their own ideas, hopes, dreams, ideologies. It takes a long time to sway that much public opinion, even when you aren't fighting disinformation campaigns from powerful corporations and state actors. Keep at it and have realistic expectations about the impact you'll have and how quickly things will change.

Do what you can, live the best life you can, and don't take responsibility for things that aren't your fault.

Edit: corrected the population of the United States because people oddly focused on that part of my comment.

I'm a data scientist for a mid-size finance company.