Espionage has been a thing for as
long as humanity had civilizations. Something that people love to forget. Counterintelligence is
just as old. Which is also something that people love to forget. Espionage and counter-espionage is a war of its own, and due to the very nature, you won't hear much about it unless something goes
very wrong or gets linked to a problem down the line. You can't parade your achievements in this war of cloaks and daggers, for it only reveals one's toolkit as it were and
that makes one's job in the field harder.
Another thing about this field is that it takes
time no matter what you do. You can't do stuff in a day, you need information, statistics, and more to do well in this field alongside a massive network of informants, double agents, and more, and those don't pop up from the ground. That sort of thing is more akin to a garden than anything, something that you have to
grow, something that takes time to cultivate. Since these networks don't grow on trees, simply revealing them is -in common sense-
the stupidest thing you can do unless you have no other choice.
That is how the KKK and organized crime got their backs broken (politically) in the US, the FBI took the time and resources to create a
massive network of informants and undercover operatives alongside using information and eventually use the organizations' people against them.
Russia is an undisputed master of HUMINT and has been using it in what is known to us as 'active measures' for decades. The reason that anti-vaxx in Africa is so strong and efforts to stop HIV went so poorly?
The Soviets made the majority of the people of Africa think that vaccines are bad and HIV was an American bioweapons program, I shit you not. The current -apparent- goal -thanks, in an ironic twist of fate, to their variant of Mein Kampf- of Putin and his associates is simply burning down the entire world order and damn the consequences. So, destabilize the West as much as possible using their toolbox -particularly their HUMINT tools- to do so.
The GOP made it even easier by being the perfect pawn, as they've kept kicking out anyone that doesn't toe the party line (i.e. power over all other considerations including country) without exception (I
distinctly remember the 'RINO' purges that happened in the '90s and early 2000s), leaving fewer and fewer voices of reason within the party. As these voices of reason got kicked out, the more insane in ideology they got. The fewer voices of reason in the party, the easier it is to make them into pawns.
Trump, well, Trump went to Russia and thus has a file, a Kompromat file, where every dirty secret done in Russia is kept. Bernie would have such a file as well, as they do this to
every foreigner, just in case if it becomes useful later.
So, Russia used its entire toolbox and tip the scales enough to ensure Trump got elected... and no matter what Trump did, Russia is reaping the benefits. Russia also didn't simply do this to the US, they did this across all of western Europe, Brexit is being investigated for having irregularities of the
Russian kind, France's Trump was backed by Russia but failed due to how France's election system works (and the fact that if he
did win, he would probably be overthrown in a military coup... something that has happened before)...
