Russia has shown no sign of slowing down its social-media interference and cyberattacks on U.S. targets, including election infrastructure, because “they have not paid a price that is sufficient to change their behavior," according to Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency.
“Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough,” Rogers testified to a Senate committee on Tuesday. “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity.”
If we haven’t done enough, as Rogers tells us, then clearly we need to do more. When asked why the United States has not taken direct action to try to alter the strategic equation for Putin -- for example, through cyber-counterattacks directed at those groups launching these assaults -- Rogers told the Senate that he needs direction from the president to take such steps and that unfortunately, no such direction has been given.
“I need a policy decision that indicates there is specific direction to do that,” Rogers said. “The president ultimately would make this decision in accordance with a recommendation from the secretary of defense.”
On one hand that’s a remarkable confession, although it merely confirms testimony given by Rogers and three other top U.S. intelligence officials a few weeks ago. It’s even more odd because in certain other areas of government, Trump has been anything but shy about demanding action from department and agency heads.
It’s just a matter of what he finds important and makes a priority, and what he does not make a priority. Why just this morning, he launched this little missive:
A month ago, Trump thought “massive FISA abuse” was an overdrawn credit card, and it’s safe to say that even now, his concern isn’t motivated by some sudden and profound concern about the protection of civil liberties. All Trump knows -- all he cares to know -- is that this has been suggested to him as ammunition in his battle to discredit the FBI and his own Department of Justice, and he’s eager to use it. Putin and Russian cyberattacks? Those are somebody else’s problem.
It’s also astonishing to see Trump publicly berate, belittle and degrade his own attorney general, a man whose early political support helped win Trump the Republican nomination. A person of integrity and independent stature would resign rather than accept such humiliation from their boss, but Jeff Sessions reacts to it like some whipped puppy dog eager to somehow please his abusive master.
That story of incompetence, bizarre behavior and willful ignorance repeats itself in almost every area of government.
In Northeast Asia, we still have no ambassador to South Korea, our top diplomatic expert on North Korea is suddenly retiring for “personal reasons” and fashion-shoe designer Ivanka Trump has been enlisted to fill the vacuum and carry out sensitive nuclear-weapon diplomacy in that region. The First Son-in-Law, empowered to negotiate the little issue of Middle East peace, has been stripped of the top-level security clearance that he has enjoyed for the past year, apparently because his business debt and naivete make him too easily manipulated by rich foreign powers, and up at the North Pole, temperatures have gotten above freezing in the dead of winter, 45 degrees above average.
Here at home, the EPA is closing its National Center for Environmental Research, which among other things studies the impact of chemical exposure on children, Ben Carson has a beautiful new $31,000 dining table for his office and the president wants to appoint his personal pilot as head of the Federal Aviation Administration.
It’s all just ... great.
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