TBF that one sounded more like the antics of a couple of mentally ill people than any organized thing.
Based on the Soviet past the people they probably do have in place are almost certainly going to be occupying positions where they can control via compromises - which means politics and the media, specifically political funding. It is depressing to note that no Western government has done anything to even acknowledge the idea that political funding must be cleaned up and made transparent; in fact we here in the UK have had a government appear that is largely run by a group (the IEA) about whose funding we know nothing.
Given what the government are trying to do, in the face of all sense and advice and with effects on the scale they are if it goes wrong, this should alarm far more people than it does.
You
can get to be a doc at Hopkins if you're mentally ill, but it's hard. The view that the laws are written by buffoons and an inconvenience to medical practitioners is not an uncommon one in my experience when dealing with members of that profession, I'm afraid. Ego seems like the problem there.
The major apparently took the laws more seriously, but was willing to turn coat. That's pretty interesting for someone that was a 'first' (in this case, openly transgender officer). I would argue that anyone who is driven to be a 'first' likely has some problems (Tom Wolfe's chronicle of the foibles of the first American astronauts is quite widely known), but I would also stop
well short of calling Sally Ride mentally ill.
Certainly, the Soviets had a reputation for doing it on the cheap. Sex,
kompromat and ego were their stock in trade. I would agree both that the Russians are likely to commit their currency resources to politicians and the media, and that
Citizens United is a terrible decision that wholly ignores the fact that campaign finance is a national security issue. There's the Russians offering to help Kennedy with information (he wisely refused), Johnny Chung during Clinton's re-election campaign...foreign governments can and will attempt to influence democratic elections, and the only reasonable solution is to impose both maximum safeguards and whistleblower protections for those with legit information.
www.bbc.com
