Maybe our social media obsession is a bigger problem than Russian election interference

Based on the tone of Tuesday’s Democratic debate, you would think the Kremlin has already determined the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Former Vice President Joe Biden said Russians are “engaged now, as I speak, in interfering in our election.” Billionaire Tom Steyer said there is “an attack by a hostile foreign power on our democracy right now.” Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg charged that Russia was backing Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to ensure a Trump victory in November.

Clearly, the Russia scaremongering is in full swing. Last week’s intelligence community testimony that the Kremlin is backing President Donald Trump made headline news. Another report emerged alleging Moscow is backing Sanders. Biden claimed that Bernie-backing Russian bots have been attacking him on Facebook. And Hillary Clinton told a foreign audience that “Russians are back in our cyber systems,” and that “anyone who tries to deny it” is living in a “sad dreamworld.”

Russia seeks chaos

Moscow no doubt is up to something, seeking to create chaos and discredit democracy. So are other malign actors. But it is safe to say the greatest practical effect Russia will have is serving as a narrative platform for Americans to generate increasingly strident headlines, tweets and sound bites discrediting the election. This will happen whether Russian President Vladimir Putin lifts a finger or not. As the Democratic debate showed, it is happening already.

First, let’s acknowledge that Moscow’s attempts to undermine American democracy did not start in 2016, or even back in the 1980s when Sanders was there on his honeymoon. Interference in foreign politics has been a fixture of the Kremlin’s foreign strategy for 100 years, since the days of the Comintern. These efforts have had no discernible impact on American politics, other than occasionally to provide talking points for left-wing radicals.

There is no reason to suspect Russia will improve its record in shaping American elections. The Mueller report detailed the efforts of Kremlin-linked activists to interfere in the 2016 election, but it did not conclude that these crude propaganda efforts influenced the outcome whatsoever. We should balance our legitimate concern that the Russians are trying to sway the electorate with the knowledge that they are not very good at it.

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On the other hand, technology has made these influence operations easier to execute. Social media networks have empowered superficial and emotional messaging regardless of the source. And Americans hardly need Moscow to push divisive ideas. Any glance at Twitter reveals how bitter our politics has become, whether traffic is driven organically by memelords or paid for by Bloomberg.

But the Russian interference narrative has become entrenched. When intelligence community election expert Shelby Pierson speculated to the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that Russia was trying to help President Trump get reelected, it quickly leaked, became a front-page story in The New York Times and precipitated the usual outrage. It took a few days for the less dramatic truth to catch up — that there was no evidence for the “misleading” supposition that the Kremlin is pro-Trump; at best Russia may have a “preference” for a “deal-maker.”

However, it is not clear how Russia would benefit from a Trump second term, since the first one has not worked out well for them. President Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia, expelled Russian diplomats, sent arms to Ukraine, sold Patriot missiles to Poland, undercut Russia’s natural gas markets in Europe, pursued strategic nuclear modernization while not rushing to renew the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and even killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria.

Those who recklessly accuse the president of being a Kremlin asset should seriously rethink their premises.

Moscow isn't always to blame

It is also a mistake only to blame Russia for bot campaigns and other forms of election interference, since any foreign government with a grudge against the United States could be at it. Iran has already tried to hack into the Trump reelection campaign. China may also be involved in seeking to influence the 2020 election; it was recently accused of election meddling in Cambodia and Indonesia.

When incidents take place leaving behind clear evidence of well-known Russian cyberespionage groups like Fancy Bear, it could well be hackers from other countries trying to cover their tracks. Even Americans could be exploiting the climate of Russophobia to try to hack the election and escape undetected.

The United States should remain aware that malign groups, both foreign and domestic, will seek to exploit the increasingly shrill information domain to tilt the election playing field one way or the other. Forewarned is forearmed. Even so, Americans should not make it easy for them. We play into the hands of these groups by overreacting to the latest shiny stimulus thrown into the media ecosystem. In that sense, the real problem is much bigger than the Russians; the problem is us.

James S. Robbins, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of "This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive," has taught at the National Defense University and the Marine Corps University and served as a special assistant in the office of the secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter: @James_Robbins.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Russia isn't backing Sanders and Trump as much as hoping for chaos