“As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” Mr. Trump said on January 11th, 2017, which were  his first comments accepting the conclusions of United States intelligence that Moscow had interfered to help him win the presidential election. Donald Trump never admitted to Russian interference in hacking the votes for Trump to win because it would set a bad precedent to his victory as president. He had said in the past that Vladimir Putin wouldn’t do such an act, stating, “He won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading than when other people have led it.” He bolstered his own greatness by assuming other world leaders respect him.

History of Russian Hacking

But America isn’t the only country that was affected from the notorious hacking of Russia. The German domestic intelligence agency stated that hackers linked to the Russian government may have infiltrated Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, as well as German state computers. And to add on top of that, the head of German intelligence suspects that Russia could interfere in German elections to cause “political uncertainty”. There are also cases of alleged hacking from Russian at the Anti-Doping Agency, right before the Rio Olympics of 2016, which later resulted in the Russian track-and-field athletes to be banned. However, the Russian government refuses to acknowledge any involvement with this. Other countries like Lithuania and some Baltic states have suffered from Russia DDOS (denial of distributive services) attacks as well. Ukraine was cyber-attacked in 2014, just 3 days before their election.

Why is Russia on a Hacking Spree?

But why is Russia even participating in illicit activities? Some reasons for these attacks are downright eccentric and eerie. Either the hacking was to help Donald Trump succeed in winning the election, or to just cause downright confusion and mayhem with the CIA and US intelligence. Other hacks that occurred in the past was normally to just punish the victim country for a certain action. Georgia was hacked, in which Twitter and Facebook were shut down, simply to commemorate the first anniversary of the Russian invasion.

DHS Thoughts on Russian Hacking The events of Russian hacking leave many DHS students rather confused and upset. Being in a Democratic state, it can be reasonably inferred that if the interference of another state has allowed a Republican to be president, many people will be rather enraged for such an occurrence. Even some Trump supporters in California are somewhat upset about what happened.

Sophomore Brian Kim stated flatly, “The Russians only hacked so that Donald Trump could become president, and when he ruins America, Russians have a better time screwing with us.”

Other students were rather nonchalant about it. Another sophomore said, “Russia has been hacking different countries for quite a while. It’s not super surprising that the election was hacked into, considering the different attacks that Russia did in the past.”