Understood. I think the idea that it could be traced back to the GRU is highly likely, though I do have some trouble with the idea they were able to identify a specific agent based on the IP address - what, does Russia assign static IPs to each and every agent in the office? Of course, there could have been more legwork we're not told about, or this could be a case of parallel construction, but who knows.

I did want to point out the sourcing either way, though. It's really distressing to me the way anonymous sourcing has really taken off lately, and that most people appear to be entirely credulous despite the lessons we learned back during the Bush administration. It rarely even gets questioned, though even the past year in particular has served up frequent and egregious object lessons of why anonymous government sources cannot simply be taken at their word. The sad fact of the matter is that the vast majority of anonymous sources are not leaking information to edify the American people. They are leaking information because they have an agenda.

That doesn't mean that we can simply ignore them. Sometimes the information is false, sometimes critical context is left out, but sometimes it is true and extremely important. It means we have to consider what they say very carefully and why they might be saying it.

I’ve often wished for a reporter scorecard, showing how many times the reporter quoted unnamed sources that turned out to be garbage, and how severe those were.

Columbia Journalism Review publishes insightful articles on these and other problems.

With the modern need to push fast headlines for outrage clicks, I don’t see the standards rising anytime soon.

The only thing I've seen that even possibly makes sense is that it was the officer's home/personal IP, not work. Which might also explain the opsec slip up, but until I see something more credible than an anonymous source (which may happen soon from muller) or a better explanation, that statement is ringing some alarm bells for me. However, the article doesn't explicitly state GRU headquarters, just ties the officer to GRU headquarters and tries to imply the connection was directly from their HQ w/ weasel wording.