Over the next 24 hours, it will transform a huge number of people into experts on intelligence reporting requirements, hacking, sources and methods, and diplomacy.
Respectfully, do you feel this is constructive discourse?
Because to me the purpose of your comment is to drag down other comments, even yet unmade ones, into the mud. Invalidating everyone's opinion on this subject except 0.1% of the population (namely very specific experts). Even politicians or professional political commentators wouldn't meet your high bar.
And to the people who do feel like the bar should be set at "only experts are allowed an opinion" then why stop on this issue? Why not branch it out to every major political issue? Plus seemingly being well read on a topic is no longer enough to have an informed opinion, qualifications are the only metric by which we can measure an argument rather than the qualities of the argument itself.
My point is that this is a dangerous argument that only seeks to result in the silence of commentators. It only detracts rather than adds to the discussion's value.
I was commenting on the phenomenon in which random "facts" from narrow professional niches are cherry-picked to make politically motivated arguments.
The show is playing now on the usual blogs, so rest easy. If I had been making an oblique argument attempting to shut people up, I failed rather miserably.
Plot twist: there was no attack, the RNC and DNC invented it as a way to teach America's political blowhards what spear-phishing is and how to avoid it.
Over the next 24 hours, it will transform a huge number of people into experts on intelligence reporting requirements, hacking, sources and methods, and diplomacy.