Ex-NSA deputy director affirms Russia couldn’t have changed one single vote in US election

LONDON, March 7. /TASS/. Russia could not change one single vote during the US presidential election held in November 2016, Chris Inglis, former National Security Agency (NSA) Deputy Director, told TASS on the sidelines of the World Cyber Security Congress in London.

"I don't think they changed one single vote, they didn't do that. The American system is reasonably robust against that, and I think that chances of succeeding in that are very slim."

Although Russian hackers’ interference has not been proven officially, Inglis, nonetheless, argued that there is compelling evidence pointing to this. However, in his view, cyber tools were not used to influence the results of the election as such.

Russia’s motives

"I don't think that Russian desire and intent was to physically change the results of the election to cause Donald Trump to win or Hillary Clinton to lose," Inglis continued.

"I think that desire was essentially to cause the American political system to be somewhere introspective, to be concerned about the resilience, the robustness of their own electoral processes."

Inglis asserted that the second objective was "to weaken the presumptive winner of that contest, Hillary Clinton," who, according to polls, was touted the most likely winner of the presidential election.

Chaos in America’s political system

Inglis noted that the US political system was to blame to some extent for such interference describing the US political system as "chaos." He added that in that situation, it became possible to influence public opinion through fake news, dissemination of false information and compromising materials.

US probe

In January, the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence announced a probe into alleged cyber attacks against US political organizations during last year’s presidential election. Washington tried to blame Moscow for these supposed attacks. These accusations were one of the main pretexts for imposing sanctions last December, which affected some Russian companies, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian General Staff.

In addition to that, the US authorities expelled 35 Russian diplomats and announced the closure of two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected any involvement in these cyberattacks. Commenting on these sanctions, Russian Presidential Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said they were a manifestation of aggression.