Hey! THERE's an idea

The Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election.

The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process.

“Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who announced the policy at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

  WaPo

The same conference where Dan Coates made fun of Trump's invitation to bring Putin to Washington.

The Obama administration struggled in 2016 to decide whether and when to disclose the existence of the Russian intervention, fearing that without GOP participation it would be portrayed as a partisan move. Concerns about appearing to favor the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, weighed on President Barack Obama, who was reluctant to give then-GOP-nominee Donald Trump ammunition for his accusation that the election was rigged.

“If this disclosure requirement had been around in 2016, I firmly believe that it would have served as a meaningful deterrent after Russia’s interference was first discovered, and it would have informed voters more quickly and more forcefully that a foreign government was trying to affect their vote,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who two years ago pressed the Obama administration to call out Russia’s activities.

Historians will be discussing that - and Comey's fateful decisions - for decades, if not centuries. Assuming humans still exist centuries from now.

“It’s absolutely crucial that the intelligence community lean forward, push the envelope on sharing as much of that information as possible, because one of the biggest challenges we have is on education of the public, of the electorate, on foreign, read Russian- influence operations,” said former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who last year at Aspen called for such transparency.

[...]

At the Aspen Forum on Thursday, a Microsoft executive said that Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, has targeted at least three candidates running for election this year. Tom Burt, the company’s vice president for customer security and trust, said that his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign targeting the candidates.

And....who might they be? Are we going to be told these things or not?

Rosenstein noted that influence operations are not new. The Soviet Union used them against the United States throughout the 20th century, including in 1963, paying an American to distribute a book claiming that the FBI and the CIA assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Well that's just silly. It was the mob and the CIA.