Interview on This Is Hell: The DNC Russian Hack Story

I dialed into Chuck Mertz's great radio show, This Is Hell, to talk about my Baffler Magazine Russia hacking piece and the scummy, politicized world of cyber attribution.

As I told Chuck, to most Americans this story somehow exists in total isolation. Despite a lack of evidence that Russia did it, people are ready to go to war with Russia — a nuclear power — over this alleged hack. Gunning for war in retaliation for a hack based on flimsy-to-non-existent evidence? Seems like a bad precedent for America to set. Perhaps people forget what Edward Snowden revealed not so long ago about America's own hacking operations? "I don't think a lot of people connect Russia hacking with Edward Snowden's disclosures about what the NSA does. Those things seem to exist in two different realms, they don't overlap. Everyone is freaking out that Russia might be hacking American computer systems, yet everyone knows the NSA completely owns the internet - there's nothing that happens without it going through some NSA bug. It's very hypocritical."

PS: Some static at the start of the interview.

—Yasha Levine