The most remarkable thing about Russia's meddling in our democracy is that President Trump has done nothing about it.
According to Monday's New York Times, the State Department was allotted $120 million in the past two years to counter Russia's "Information warfare" against the West, but not a dime has been spent, in part because the office that runs such programs has no Russian speakers or computer experts, but mainly because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has imposed a hiring freeze.
What sorts of things could Trump do? Richard Clarke, the cyber and counterterrorism chief for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, recently said he would "Fry" the computers of the Russians-especially those close to Putin-who launched the attacks.
The proposal raised eyebrows because, in his 2010 book, Cyber War, Clarke warned against strategies relying on cyber-offensive operations, noting that they could spark retaliatory strikes, which would hurt us more because the United States is more dependent on computer networks-and more vulnerable to cyberattacks-than other countries.
Chris Wysopal, CTO of Veracode, a leading cybersecurity company, offers a more moderate option-slowing the computers down.
"We could make the computers suffer hard-drive failures, keeping the operators so busy they couldn't do much else," Wysopal told me.
We still don't know just why President Trump declines to investigate, much less respond to, Russia's cyberattacks on our democracy-why he refrains from uttering a single critical word about Putin or Russia, even as he trashes allied leaders, American lawmakers, and his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/why-is-america-letting-russia-get-away-with-meddling-in-our-democracy.html
According to Monday's New York Times, the State Department was allotted $120 million in the past two years to counter Russia's "Information warfare" against the West, but not a dime has been spent, in part because the office that runs such programs has no Russian speakers or computer experts, but mainly because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has imposed a hiring freeze.
What sorts of things could Trump do? Richard Clarke, the cyber and counterterrorism chief for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, recently said he would "Fry" the computers of the Russians-especially those close to Putin-who launched the attacks.
The proposal raised eyebrows because, in his 2010 book, Cyber War, Clarke warned against strategies relying on cyber-offensive operations, noting that they could spark retaliatory strikes, which would hurt us more because the United States is more dependent on computer networks-and more vulnerable to cyberattacks-than other countries.
Chris Wysopal, CTO of Veracode, a leading cybersecurity company, offers a more moderate option-slowing the computers down.
"We could make the computers suffer hard-drive failures, keeping the operators so busy they couldn't do much else," Wysopal told me.
We still don't know just why President Trump declines to investigate, much less respond to, Russia's cyberattacks on our democracy-why he refrains from uttering a single critical word about Putin or Russia, even as he trashes allied leaders, American lawmakers, and his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/why-is-america-letting-russia-get-away-with-meddling-in-our-democracy.html
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