This week’s news cycle has been so completely shellacked by bombshells stories about the bumbling state of American intelligence that shell-shocked readers could be excused for reactively casting Russia as the international antagonist.
But a note of caution is in order. While Russia remains a reliably bad actor, it’s the American media that regularly trades in Russian hysteria. Over at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty provides a handy summary catalogue of recently debunked red scares.
Remember how Russia mounted a massive fake news campaign to dupe the electorate? It amounted to little more than the Kremlin’s funding of RT.
Remember how Russia hacked C-SPAN to hijack the news cycle awhile back, and how it also hacked the state of Vermont’s power grid? Turns out neither happened.
And remember how Russia secretly opened a back channel with the Trump campaign to pull the strings of the Republican party? Turns out it was likely an automated Trump hotel server sending spam to the Kremlin.
None of these examples should dismiss the current and very serious concerns about Trump sharing “code word” intelligence with the Russian ambassador on a whim. But it should shine some light on the Kremlin’s boogeyman.
As Dougherty correctly concludes, Russia’s been known to meddle, but they’re not omnipresent.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
