In the wake of news of Russia’s massive cyber-intrusion into a swath of private and public networks, including, alarmingly, agencies controlling the nuclear stockpile, the main lacuna of the story, as it has been for four years, is the president’s subservient relationship with Russia.
There is a sharp ongoing debate over just what sort of response Russia’s hacking operation merits. Some members of Congress likened it to an act of war, or at least something close. Jack Goldsmith has made the contrarian case that Russia’s hack was merely a larger and more successful version of normal spycraft in which the United States also engages. But even normal spy operations can be met with some kind of government response short of war, or even sanctions. Russia and the United States have frequently expelled officials from the country or given verbal warnings in response to major espionage escalations.
Trump, though, said nothing for days. He has mentioned Russia a few times since news broke of its massive operation, but only in the context of complaining about “the Russia hoax.”
Here are a few perspectives on the SolarWinds hack from entities that do not currently have negative credibility:
The US government’s leading security agencies: “The FBI, CISA, and ODNI have formed a Cyber Unified Coordination Group (UCG) to coordinate a whole-of-government response to this significant cyber incident”
CISA in particular: “CISA has determined that this threat poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations”
Trump’s own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity”
Former Trump DHS advisor Thomas Bossert: “The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate. The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months”
Former CISA director Christopher Krebs, who was fired by Trump for calling out his lies about election fraud:
