Clinton Should Stop Whining About Russian Hackers

Hillary Clinton and her team hold that "the Russians" were responsible for almost any disruptive or embarrassing hack in the U.S. Many articles about the recent attack on Dyn, the New Hampshire-based internet infrastructure company, mentioned Russian hackers, though the disruption could not be traced to them. This blame game, however, is not an effective response to the shady side of the tech revolution.

Russian hackers (and East European ones in general) are dangerous. Their skill is inversely proportional to their well-being, and their lack of opportunity often makes them angry, cynical and vindictive. They have even hacked the Kremlin and the Russian government: A group known as Anonymous International or Shaltai-Boltai has revealed, time after time, e-mails and other confidential documents from the domestic policy department of President Vladimir Putin's administration, as well as those belonging to ministers and aides to Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. The revelations they contained were often more embarrassing than those that emerged from the Democratic National Committee hack or the e-mails of Clinton aide John Podesta. For example, the e-mails of Kremlin staffer Timur Prokopenko exposed a history of pressure on Russian media and the systematic subversion of some news outlets.