Q5 What is Russia’s response to any impeachment proceedings?

Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?)

Admit nothing, deny everything, shift blame, counter-accuse and let Trump swing.

They got their money’s worth with the initial DNC breach and were playing with the house’s money when Podesta doubled-down by clicking on the link in Gmail.

They they’ve been riding the crest of one of the most successful election influencing ops in history in terms of their strategic outcomes ever since. Putin knows when to call the chips in.

There are no real Russian hawks in the 2020 Democratic contender crop that I can see…not on the level that Clinton would be considered. And the entirety of Democratic concern on Russia is inward focused on election, interference, and Trump…which leaves the other rest of the world still open for Russia to do what it wants. Honestly a Democratic win in 2020 of a progressive or left-leaning domestic reformer, who is not perceived as a foreign-policy hawk or interventionist, is not that bad an outcome compared to a strong-Pence or Romney or someone like that and would allow Russia to consolidate what they’ve gained in the last ten years.

Result: 

I think I called this one pretty accurately. If we use Hamilton 2.0 as a dashboard for tracking Russian influence operations, or the just revealed conglomerate of Soul Publishing on YouTube – they are not going all-in on impeachment like they have on other topics. They are much more focused on issues of general division in the cultural space as they are in political.  I read recently that a significant amount of Star Wars trolling content may be being generated by Russian troll-farms and bot accounts. Why influence the 2020 campaign directly when you can nudge Red and Blue further along to a civil war by ensuring everything in the country becomes political, and those politics of are division along Red and Blue lines? I’m sure they are stirring up things, and will continue, related to impeachment, but it’s not really necessary.  When you’re playing Go and you’ve got a 5-8 stone lead in moves on your opponent, you don’t waste moves playing onto the same Joseki when you can carve out large strategic advantage in Fuseki; shaping the other parts of the game while your opponents tries to catch up by tossing stones. That’s kind of where I view the Russians right now. Looking to 2020, and global issues of strategic interest in many theatres, and not so much focused on impeachment itself. 

Score: 1

Running Score 4.5 out of 12