What does the US government know about Russia and the DNC hack?

[Commentary] Potentially unpleasant news for FBI Director Jim Comey: We need you to intervene in the 2016 election again. There is significant evidence that individuals acting at the direction of or on the behalf of Russia—the degree of coordination is unclear—are attempting to use organizational doxing to influence the United States presidential election.

As Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith noted, this raises a number of scary questions regarding preserving the integrity of US election results. It is not entirely clear what is motivating the DNC document dumps or the apparent targeting of Hillary Clinton; some speculate the aim it to benefit Donald Trump, though a plausible goal might simply be to insert a degree of chaos into US politics. Understanding the ultimate goal of the hack and leaks, however, is not all that important to deciding how exactly we should respond. What is critical to mitigating the harm is sufficiently strong public attribution.