"Russia's Hmeimim base is packed full of their most advanced antiaircraft systems, yet they still lost planes (ironically, as usual, they spent the next several days both simultaneously confirming and denying that they got hit ;) ). Locals described the sky as lit up by antiaircraft fire."
It's pretty comical that despite all the facts already being shared by RuMoD like 5 days ago, many people still don't know them. There was a mortar attack on December 31, when several planes were *damaged* by shrapnel and 2 servicemen were killed. In the recent drone attack nothing was damaged and nobody got hurt, as all 13 of them were intercepted before getting to the bases (3 went for Tartus, 10 for Khmeimim). Of these 7 were shot down by Pantsirs and 6 were intercepted by EW hardware, most likely directed microwave emitters which fried their electronics. They fell down, 3 were destroyed by explosions of their bomblets, 3 remained largely intact. There's ton of material about it out there already...

"Plus, having to waste an antiaircraft missile on someone people glued together with bargain basement parts is asymmetric to the benefit of the rebels."
Nobody knows whether any missiles were fired, it's only that some western reports added the missiles to the original Russian report, which does not mention them. From other signs it's more likely that the Pantsirs' IR tracking and 30mm cannons were used to destroy the drones.

Be careful, the above points, applied to other cases, could lead to unintended results. Try it on Crimea... :)

And I went even further - I've sold my car and now I commute by bus. So every day I have something over 2 hours that I can spend either sleeping, reading, listening to music, watching videos or browsing on my tablet, without being disturbed by my boss, colleagues, wife or kids.

I'm looking forward to watching how the Russian government uses this US move as a pretext to squeeze foreign IT companies from the Russian market and provide Russian companies with a fantastic home base advantage - which they'll use for attacks on foreign markets. Why has the US spent almost 20 years negotiating with Russia about WTO accession when now it's handed excuse after excuse to impose import embargoes?

How is this problem of Google or Facebook, or even of 4chan? It's the problem of the users who are just not mature enough for these technologies, who are not capable of distinguishing solid, verifiable, non-sensationalist news from all the crap that constantly floats out there. The "fake news" phenomenon is a laughable excuse for stupid people without a shred of critical thinking abilities, who are willing to believe anything they're told.

There is nothing ethical about any political campaign - especially in an election where $200mil get spent on electing somebody as Trump. If you want to get rid of unethical conduct in US presidential elections, get rid of the electoral college as a start. But even that won't help much IMO. As an outsider, I see Trump as the candidate of the horrible income inequality that exists in the US. Fix that, and frauds like Trump won't stand a chance. Keep the people who voted for him poor, uneducated and desperate, and next time they'll give you somebody even worse (not possible? just wait). Pointing the finger to measly $100,000 in face of all this is... either irresponsible sensationalism or an outright attempt at evading the real issues that got Trump into the WH.

I've been paying attention for a long time now, and what I see is the same old thing - using Russia as a boogeyman. Before, it was the USSR's massive tank formations, submarines and nuclear weapons which everybody had to fear. Now, since their tank formations are just an outdated shadow of their former glory, their submarine fleet is tiny compared to the US' one, and the nuclear weapons are regulated by treaties, we need to fear something else they're oh-so-good at, right?
And where exactly in Europe have they been doing it? Because I've seen frontpage articles on CNN, in NY Times and elsewhere saying how it seems that Russians are targeting French and German elections. Weeks or months later I've read reports - which somehow didn't get frontpage attention - that French security services ruled out Russian involvement in their elections, and no hacking or something similar has happened in German elections. So who is not paying attention?
Compare these two articles: The NSA Confirms It: Russia Hacked French Election ‘Infrastructure’ and The Latest: France says no trace of Russian hacking Macron. Who is lying? Is it the French themselves, or is it maybe Rogers just riding the wave to get more funding for NSA? And this one is hilarious - NY Times going existential over missing Russian hackers in German elections in an article, where they cite their previous article on how Macron's campaign got hacked by Russians (from May) even though by now it is known that no such thing has happened. Am I the only one who sees a massive number of various interests riding the very, very old wave of russophobia in order to get more money, more readers, more views, more attention? It is all a theatre, keeping us occupied and entertained so we part with our money more easily.

I know... and I guess it's not a problem, it's all just theatre for the masses anyway. The US need a boogeyman to justify a crazy $700bln military budget, Russia needs one to justify its autocratic system of government - and we have something to argue about :)

$100,000? Like, really? The Clinton+Trump campaigns have spent together over $200,000,000 on their campaigns. Either the Russians are absolute geniuses and light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to effective political ads, or this is just another inflated sensationalist article trying to get views for WaPo using a hot topic.
Also, I'm somehow missing the connection to Russia in the article - it's once again presented as a certainty, but it is not explained how the authors managed to do the attribution to the Russian government. If this is considered a serious article in the US, I'm not surprised that "fake news" is a thing there. How about some critical thinking?
Really, guys, to the rest of the world this histeria is beyond awkward and facepalming. Trump is your creature, born out of the swamp that is the 2-party scam, not some foreign plant. Reform your political system, and these things won't happen. Until you do so, according to the article everybody who has $100,000 to burn will be able to elect your president for you...

You mean everything except what is supposed to be there for the benefit of NSA. So now we have officially good backdoors and bad backdoors.

I think it's not acceptable anywhere. And it's not happening just in Slovakia, it's the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary has a serious problem with Soros' NGOs, it made news recently multiple times. I have several Czech friends who say it's the same there. I know the NGOs practically rule Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, that was also in the news in the last couple of years. I think the whole of Europe is ripe for some democracy-strengthening reforms regarding external financing of politically active organizations...

OK, let's try to avoid any "fake news." The French connection was just this - the French themselves said that there's no trace of Russian interference: https://www.apnews.com/fc570e4... I've heard a lot of "they will surely try it" but no other concrete accusation, just the U.S. presidential election. Regarding Brexit there was a report that Russia or China "may have" tried to do something, which is in my opinion fake news by itself - anyone "may have" tried something. What we know for sure is that the current UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson lied - "spread fake news" in current lingo - about the budgetary advantages of Brexit. Do you know of any other concrete examples?

I'm not saying it's OK since the U.S. does it too - as a matter of fact, most of my post is about how I find it not OK to do something like that. It's an affront to any fan of democracy, no matter who does it. But why such hypocrisy? I don't remember half a year of whining in the MSM about the U.S. meddling abroad. If this is about the defense of democracy, then it should be defended every time. If it's about the U.S. being an exception to the rule, a country which can meddle abroad but is off-limits itself, then the U.S. need to wake up. There are no nuclear cyber weapons and nobody is off-limits.

I see the discussion here has - predictably - devolved into the good old "but they took our cookies." It's disappointing, since this being /. I expected some actual cyber security experts to weigh in on the issue of how such a joint task force could work. I'm a professional (not an actual expert) and I see some potential in it and would like the really wise to say more. But apart from SuperKendall (thank you for the courage) nothing so far...
Anyway, maybe it's because I'm from a different country (Slovakia, proud member of both the EU and NATO), but I just don't get all the indignation about the "hacked elections" and all the stubborn irrationality that comes with it. It's like playing soccer and being mad at the other team when they score. Could you please try to explain it to me (and a lot of others like me)? As I see it, and as many here see it, influencing of internal political processes abroad is a very common tool of all major players. I've seen it several times where I come from - the U.S. (via USAID and even NED) are funding several NGOs here which are very politically active and we all know that if any major political figure here starts pushing us the "wrong way", the NGOs will go after him/her with opinion pieces in major newspapers, billboard campaigns, discussion trolls (a lot more of U.S. trolls here than Russian trolls) and lately even serious protests organized over social media. It's happening all the time to the extent that it's actually a serious limitation of our freedom of speech - heavens forbid that our politicians openly criticize some actions of the U.S. or of our other western "allies." And if you freely express your negative opinion of, let's say, the U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the wrath of many anonymous debaters with paid subscriptions, a lot of time on their hands and sometimes suspiciously similar wording of arguments descends upon you. I am old enough to remember how it was here before 1989, back when we were part of the "Communist" block, and it looks to me like we're getting back to the times when having an "opposing view" to the one pushed by the mainstream media and the mentioned NGOs means being ostracized, insulted and shamed into submission. And since there are now some proposals being floated about criminalization of "fake news", it seems to me that we're getting dangerously back in time and closing on 1984, both as I remember it being here and as it is in the book. Except now it is with digital communications and Big Data analytics.
So, when I compare the leaked e-mails to the situation here (and it's similar all around Central and Eastern Europe), I don't see what the fuss is all about. Your government uses a lot of your money to keep our governments docile and obliging, no matter what we as the actual voters think. We the People are so far OK with it because we're pragmatic and economically strong, but we resent the arrogance of it all. Now someone else gave you some selective truths and maybe influenced the way you, as voters, looked at the candidates in the "hacked election." Well, I'd be happy to trade - you keep the NGOs and the mind control, and we get access to e-mails of some of our politicians. It doesn't matter which ones, you pick - they're all corrupt to some extent.

Ah, a voice of reason in a swamp of madness. I agree with you, both the U.S. and Russia could gain a lot by sharing info on cyber threats and maybe even by jointly developing defences agains other actors. A lot of people nowadays seem to forget that Russia is by far not the biggest cybersecurity threat to the U.S. There's NK and China, which are a lot more focused on this area and do a lot more damage.