Russia is not a particularly wealthy country. If they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars, we have much bigger problems that need to be dealt with structurally and defensively rather than piecemeal and after-the-fact.

It's like we shoot ourselves in the foot with citizens united, but instead of tending the wound, we blame Russia for startling us.

edit: and in response to JumpCrisscross, "pervert our democracy" is not my thesis. It was a conditional in response to parent comment.

My only point on this line is that it is kind of fucked up that money has as much power in the process as it does.

> Russia is not a particularly wealthy country. If they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars, we have much bigger problems...

That is the essence of asymmetrical warfare. The 9/11 hijackers didn't even spend a million dollars in their plan to crash planes into buildings, yet they killed thousands, destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of property, and provoked billions of dollars of spending by the United States.

Cyber warfare is an emerging battlefield where someone can cause enormous damage with a very modest investment. I do think it requires some changes to our democracy to protect against it in the future, but in the mean time we absolutely should push back, hard against Russia's efforts.

Citizens United certainly created more opportunity for foreign actors to influence our political system, that much is certain. Doesn't mean we should allow Putin to use Russia intelligence services against our political system.

> if they can pervert our democracy with a few million dollars

They didn't "pervert our democracy." They illegally interfered with it, stealing Americans' identities and fraudulently opening bank and PayPal and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the process. Law enforcement is enforcing the law against willful lawbreakers. This isn't that complicated.