Why did he say hackers then? These ex-FB people aren't hacking anything. I don't agree with your interpretation one bit.

Not only are they not comparable in terms of hacking/espionage, there's a huge difference between a group of americans spending money to influence american elections compared to russian military and intelligences ops doing it.

And that's still true even if the russians weren't pushing both false/misleading propaganda and weaponizing the products of their targeted espionage.