>There's a big difference between principled citizens who choose to leak information, and foreign adversaries of the US. I would have thought this was obvious but it's down to US citizens to decide the US election, and external interference should be met as the attack on the US that it is.
I can't agree with that, the election was decided by the US citizens, they saw the information and made their choice. Unless you're arguing that said leaks are fake as far as I'm concerned information is information, if the candidate did something the voter base wouldn't approve of and it was unveiled the source is completely irrelevant. Under those pretenses any kind of leak can be trivially attributed to some enemy and now its discredited, call those who report on it pawns of the $enemy_state and there you go. You can see this being attempted in real time in US politics, thankfully with waning success.
My point about the capabilities of the US espionage comes in when you factor counterintel and exposing falsehoods, as I said before my position is that information is information and the only thing that can be argued against information is whether it was fabricated or not. For an example, as far as I'm concerned the entire hunter laptop scandal being completely pushed under the rug by intel agents[0] is far closer to actual manipulation than the DNC e-mail leaks, because it was a lie that it wasn't real and conveniently no journalist wanted to fact check it, just to come out now 2 years later after the election is done and walk back on it. I'm citing this to try and make clear that the veracity is far more important than the source.
I do concede the point that arguing that just because the US can do the same supposed leaking of documents to another country doesn't change much, although assuming they're actual leaks i'd like them to.
I can't agree with that, the election was decided by the US citizens, they saw the information and made their choice. Unless you're arguing that said leaks are fake as far as I'm concerned information is information, if the candidate did something the voter base wouldn't approve of and it was unveiled the source is completely irrelevant. Under those pretenses any kind of leak can be trivially attributed to some enemy and now its discredited, call those who report on it pawns of the $enemy_state and there you go. You can see this being attempted in real time in US politics, thankfully with waning success.
My point about the capabilities of the US espionage comes in when you factor counterintel and exposing falsehoods, as I said before my position is that information is information and the only thing that can be argued against information is whether it was fabricated or not. For an example, as far as I'm concerned the entire hunter laptop scandal being completely pushed under the rug by intel agents[0] is far closer to actual manipulation than the DNC e-mail leaks, because it was a lie that it wasn't real and conveniently no journalist wanted to fact check it, just to come out now 2 years later after the election is done and walk back on it. I'm citing this to try and make clear that the veracity is far more important than the source.
I do concede the point that arguing that just because the US can do the same supposed leaking of documents to another country doesn't change much, although assuming they're actual leaks i'd like them to.
[0]:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-...