Federal Communications Chairman (FCC) Ajit Pai said it was a “fact” that there was Russian interference in the public comments ahead of its controversial net neutrality vote last year, amid sparring between another commissioner about a lawsuit the agency is in the midst of.
The admittance was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, who requested access to records surrounding the public comments that they argued would “shed light to the extent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian government have interfered with the agency notice-and-comment process about a topic of extensive public interest.”
The public comments left ahead of the FCC’s net neutrality vote have been at the center of much scrutiny—with millions of fraudulent comments (including the names of dead people and current members of Congress) being used.
One recent study recently found that of the real comments, nearly 100 percent were made in favor of the FCC keeping the existing net neutrality rules.
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/net-neutrality-comments-lawsuit/
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:45PM
Dictators and the like often need an external evil to pass blame on to so that he looks strong to his own subjects. Putin's picking on the biggest out there to maximize that effect. China would be a better trade partner to him than the US anyway, much like China is a better trade partner for the US than Russia.
Short answer: The show of power is why he's trying to destabilize the US.