Jim Lewis is an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to working at CSIS he held government positions, which included intelligence assignments. Over the years at CBS I have come to trust his insight on a range of cyber-related issues, and early on in the Russia investigation I began relying more on him. During the course of 2016, 2017, and 2018, we had several conversations about strategy. He explained why Putin had authorized this massive cyber operation.

You know, at first it was for defense; they felt like Russia didn't come out so well from the Cold War and they needed to regain some land. Under Yeltsin, they had economic disaster, and they blame the Americans for that. Putin is convinced that America has a secret plan to destroy Russia. I know this from people who have spoken directly to him about it. He's convinced, and so he wanted to push back, and in pushing back he discovered he has got a great opportunity to do things here [in the West] that the Russians have wanted to do for decades, like destroy NATO, destroy the transatlantic alliance, and push back on human rights. It started out as a defense, and now it's an opportunity. Remember, he is a former KGB agent. He knows the rule book…. He's acting in a way that goes all the way back to the Tsarist intelligence services and to the initial Soviet intelligence services. This is something they're really good at, this kind of disinformation. It's an opportunity for him to do what they've always wanted to do to NATO and the United States.1

Lewis explained some of the ways Putin's cyber warriors have wreaked havoc on NATO countries (aka the North Atlantic Alliance), a military alliance between governments of several European and North American states that grew out of the 1940 North Atlantic Treaty.

“They did hack the German congress; they have tried to hack [the British] parliament; they're all over Europe—and these are the incidents we know about,” he said. “They're doing other things, too. They're using refugees as a political tool; they're bribing people; they've got RT [previously known as Russia Today], the Russian-government-funded television network. They've got their [internet] trolls. It's a huge campaign to destabilize the United States and our allies.”2

Lewis also discussed how the Russian hackers were able to penetrate our systems.

The Russians are among the best in the world. They're at least as good as we are, and in the past, we know they've broken into our networks. It's very hard to find them…. When they want to be hidden, they stay hidden.

One of the signs that this was a political action was the Russians were really noisy about it: they didn't mind that we know it was them. It's almost like it's disrespecting the United States. They're the best in the world, and if they want to do this kind of thing, [they can]. They have been doing it since the ’80s. Now they've gone public: now they're going for political effect.³

Lewis further describes how Russia's particular skill set lends itself to this kind of thing. He said if they aren't still in our computer systems, they have a way to get back in if they want to.

I later asked Lewis what the Russian hackers may be doing specifically to interfere with our elections. Would they break into our voting booths?

They may have been looking to see if there was some central vulnerability that they could exploit that would really tilt the election or damage the vote count. I think that was the goal: to damage the vote count. But it turns out that it may have been too hard. But they could still complicate things. They could create chaos at some polling places. You could create some bad image that they could run on Russian television and in papers around the world…. This is a PR campaign to damage America's image….

It's a war of ideas. It's not like the old Cold War. It's a war where the Russians are saying, “We were told that Western democracy is perfect and that's the model we all aspire to. But look at this situation. It's such a mess.” Clearly that's not true. It's building the case for an authoritarian regime, for rulers who already know what the vote is going to be long before the election. It's to create an alternative model to Western democracy. And it's part of a larger campaign. They're doing things like this in Europe with extremist groups and right-wing groups. Russians have a different doctrine than we do. So, people here worry about cyber Pearl Harbors, or cyber 9/11s. But the Russians never talk about that. They talk about using information to shape opinion, to create political conflict, to destabilize. The Russians are still mad at us for winning the Cold War, so they're yanking our chain.

Lewis may have known then what would eventually become public. US officials would later acknowledge that Russian bots had used Facebook and Twitter to spread misinformation during the 2016 election. The Russian bots exploited controversial topics in the United States and then hyped them up. The Guardian reported, “What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro–Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions in America by stoking disagreement and division around a plethora of controversial topics such as immigration and Islamophobia. And, even more pertinently, it is clear that these interventions are continuing as Russian agents stoke division around such recent topics as white supremacist marches and NFL players taking a knee to protest police violence.”4

I asked Lewis if the United States was good at information warfare.

“What we're good at is telling the truth because the truth is on our side, right?” he said. “And that's what we need to do. It's not like advertising; you're not going to make a commercial for a soda pop and then use it to sell propaganda. We're just not good at it. We were never good at it during the Cold War. We're better off if we're just straight with people because the facts are on our side.”