Russian Hackers Aren’t the Only Ones to Worry About
Other states are learning that “hacking and leaking” is an effective strategy against foreign citizens.
Crime scene.
Photograph: Bloomberg
On the surface, John Podesta and Elliott Broidy are not at all alike. Podesta chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, whereas Broidy was a major fundraiser for Donald Trump. Broidy is a businessman who has long been on the outskirts of national politics. Podesta, a former White House chief of staff, is the consummate Washington insider.
And yet Broidy, like Podesta, looks to be the victim of a new kind of political warfare: state-sponsored hacking and leaking. Governments have been spying on foreigners since the dawn of war. Until recently, however, they kept most of the details to themselves. That changed in 2014, when the Russian government intercepted a phone call between two senior U.S. diplomats discussing the Ukrainian government after a popular uprising and posted a recording of it on the internet. Podesta’s privacy was violated when his emails were pilfered by Russian operatives and distributed in 2016 through fake websites and WikiLeaks.