Russian Roulette

The Kremlin (Depenbusch)

Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

Under-reported throughout the entire development of its story, the Russian involvement in the 2016 US election—from hacking into DNC and RNC computer servers, unleashing a coordinated network of bots and propaganda across social media, and attacking the election systems in every US state—is clearly and thoroughly covered in this investigative work by veteran journalists Michael Isikoff (Yahoo! News) and David Corn (Mother Jones). Isikoff and Corn do an impressive job elucidating a story that is studded with clandestine meetings, the names of more US and Russian players than one would care to count, legal and political procedures and norms that appear, frankly, baffling and nonsensical to those not Washington insiders, and technical details relevant to how hacking and social media influencing work. While Isikoff and Corn clearly show the depth and breadth to which Russians influenced US politics, they go farther by integrating two other important threads of the greater story: first, they show the many ways in which Trump and his surrounding players have been connected to Russia before, during, and after the election; second, they show the failure of the US political system more broadly and the ways in which vital political information is withheld from people living in the US as a matter of course. An indictment of the US and Russian political establishments alike, the book is a dispiriting—if enlightening—read even for the already disillusioned.