<p>In an atmosphere of toxic political partisanship, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence is working very hard to maintain a functioning bipartisan investigation on Russian interference. The vice-chairman of that committee, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, is more informed about Russia’s role in the 2016 election—on social media and in communications with the Trump campaign—than just about anyone else in Washington. Warner is deeply frustrated that, after everything his committee and others have discovered about Russian hacking and manipulation, the White House is ignoring a clear and present danger. Russia has interfered with democracy in the United States and elsewhere “for less than the cost of one new F-35 airplane,” Warner tells David Remnick. “We’re buying the world’s best twentieth-century military, when in many ways, the conflict in the twenty-first century may be in the realm of cyber and misinformation,” he says. “And in those areas, Russia is our peer.”</p>
In an atmosphere of toxic political partisanship, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence is working very hard to maintain a functioning bipartisan investigation on Russian interference. The vice-chairman of that committee, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, is more informed about Russia’s role in the 2016 election—on social media and in communications with the Trump campaign—than just about anyone else in Washington. Warner is deeply frustrated that, after everything his committee and others have discovered about Russian hacking and manipulation, the White House is ignoring a clear and present danger. Russia has interfered with democracy in the United States and elsewhere “for less than the cost of one new F-35 airplane,” Warner tells David Remnick. “We’re buying the world’s best twentieth-century military, when in many ways, the conflict in the twenty-first century may be in the realm of cyber and misinformation,” he says. “And in those areas, Russia is our peer.”