They didn't, oddly enough! They were as surprised at the outcome as most everyone else was, and had more intended to put the expected Clinton presidency off on a bad foot. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-a... is fairly on the mark about their goals then and now.
American coverage on their efforts was by and large terrible, at least from major outlets. Focused analyst coverage in the space has been a lot more nuanced, but nobody's reading that without an existing personal or professional interest.
The other half of that analyst coverage is that they rapidly became quite tired of Maddow and friends hammering on a very simple narrative that missed the point, but was very effective at achieving its actual goal, keeping consumers of major media on the left-of-center end of the American political spectrum engaged in their content and bringing in continued advertiser money. That tiredness is relegated to water cooler discussion on Twitter, however, so it's not going to shape major outlet coverage much.
Thanks for the link; that seems like a nice summary. I appreciated the warnings about "loose talk" "despite a lack of evidence to justify such", but this lampshade is the size of a tent and swallows the whole article. Jack Cable described real things that could be verified and don't contradict facts we already know. That was good stuff, but everything else seems exactly like loose talk without justifying evidence. Basing the argument for "Russians hacked Hillary's campaign" on the Podesta emails, for one thing, is problematic. Although we're warned "the Russians have grown adept at tailoring bespoke messages that could ensnare even the most vigilant target. Emails arrive from a phony address that looks as if it belongs to a friend or colleague, but has one letter omitted.", in reality the phish that got Podesta was totally generic. [0] There are probably a million people around the world who could have executed this phish. I think I could have done it, if I'd had the inclination.
That's about the extent of the claims that can actually be checked by the reader. Of the rest, I certainly agree with the warnings about poor security for voting machines and other election infrastructure, but that's been a commonplace on HN for a decade, and the most salient if by no means the most egregious example this cycle, the Iowa Primary, is totally dismissed. Also in other parts of the article we're assured without any sort of proof that no one hacked a voting machine in 2016. Can we be so sure? The narrative walks a narrow path. The Russians did bad things but not catastrophically terrible things (i.e. they prepared to discredit the election on social media but didn't change the results). Voting machines should be more secure but let's not even mention requirements for open code and hardware audits (about which I've been writing my legislators for many years). Federal efforts on election security since Trump took office have been paltry but everything before that was great. Did Goldilocks write this? Was she the confidential source who provided most of the information without attribution?
I'm glad that normal neoliberal Democrats will finally distance themselves from the Maddow noise, but I would have preferred actual progress by this date rather than just "yeah sorry we went loopy for 3.5 years". I'd also like some indication that the next president, whether he takes office in January or four years later, will do anything at all to make voting more secure and more accessible to citizens. As it is, I just expect more attacks on the First Amendment. News media firms won't complain; as you observe they're banking fat stacks with Trump to kick around. The concern that keeps me up at night is that they're cooking up a new Russia effigy with which to torment the public now that Covid-19 seems likely to remove Trump himself from public office.
American coverage on their efforts was by and large terrible, at least from major outlets. Focused analyst coverage in the space has been a lot more nuanced, but nobody's reading that without an existing personal or professional interest.
The other half of that analyst coverage is that they rapidly became quite tired of Maddow and friends hammering on a very simple narrative that missed the point, but was very effective at achieving its actual goal, keeping consumers of major media on the left-of-center end of the American political spectrum engaged in their content and bringing in continued advertiser money. That tiredness is relegated to water cooler discussion on Twitter, however, so it's not going to shape major outlet coverage much.