A new report from the Washington Post today quoted a series of Obama Administration officials reiterating their official narrative on Russia’s accused hacking of the 2016 election. While most of the article is simply rehashes and calls for sanctions, they also revealed a secret order by President Obama in the course of “retaliation” for the alleged hacking.
This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons into Russia’s infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to “cause them pain and discomfort.”
The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened “retaliatory” cyberattacks against Russia, and promised to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.
Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama’s last term in office this was all still in the “planning” phases. It’s not totally clear where this effort has gone from there, but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama’s permission, did not need further approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he’d have actually had to issue a countermanding order, something they say he hasn’t.
The details are actually pretty scant on how far along the effort is, but the goal is said to be for the US to have the ability to retaliate at a moment’s notice the next time they have a cyberattack they intend to blame on Russia.
Unspoken in this lengthy report, which quotes unnamed former Obama Administration officials substantially, advocating the effort, is that in having reported that such a program exists, they’ve tipped off Russia about the threat.
This is, however, reflective of the priority of the former administration, which is to continuing hyping allegations that Russia got President Trump elected, a priority that’s high enough to sacrifice what was supposed to be a highly secretive cyberattack operation.
So now we really know (as if we needed to) that both the “Democratic Party” and the “Republican Party” are full of self-seeking liars with no care for the future of their country or any other (except Israel, of course!!)
100% agree but certainly do not believe this is news; as a matter of fact, my belief is that is all the politicos from both parties do well is to lie or as they chose to call it “spin.”
I would throw in Saudi Arabia too.
It’s all about Israel.
lights out, America… dig your shelters deep. no more chatting on the internets.
I guess you forgot we’re the one’s on Russia’s doorsteps with four battalions a missile defense shield and just buzzed it’s defense ministers plane after downing a dictator they’re propping up militaries jet in Syria.Now who’s scared doesn’t seem like we’re running from the fight more like we’re taking it to them literally.Now you go back to spending you’re worthless Russian ruble while you’re president rob you’re country blind.An honest question what does Russia make that anybody in the world actually wants.I can’t remember the last time someone wanted a Rosburger but McDonald’s is worldwide.Do y’all make a car that global do y’all have a clothing line that’s famous anyone actually buys? Can’t remember the last time I wanted anything y’all ever made for that matter.Thats why Putin keeps y’all dumb asses distracted with these incursions into Ukraine and Syria makes the West the Boogeyman and keeps y’all on some patriotic I’ll starve for my country and sacrifice type shit.Meanwhile he’s getting rich by actually taking the stuff people want like the oil companies trumping up charges on the Russians who own them nationalizing the company’s and using the oil to prop up his government.Problem is the price of oil is at all time low so y’all starve until sanctions lifted and he leaves office”Never gonna happen” or makes nice with the world.USA
You are obviously a neo-nazi Ukrainian who probably works for the little fat (Hitler like) Poroshenko who murders journalists and his own people.
No I’m an American that’s free in a society where I can speak and do what I want my dollars worth something world wide an my president actually can be voted out if he doesn’t do what he promised in 4 years how about you???O… I forgot you don’t have a free press to hold your leaders accountable just a rubber stamped system of parrots chirping Putin’s talking points just like your government.In America we are free to expose the truth how about y’all?O…wait wasn’t an ex prime minister killed in front of the Kremlin that was holding a rally the next day to expose Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. I know you envy my country and I don’t blame you for wanting freedom in a country without Putin…You Russians have the power to change what’s happening,Rise up and resist for your children’s future,the real war is not with the West it’s within your country…Fight for true freedom,imagine a Russia without Putin.USA
Whatever you’re on don’t get caught; even if its just a coffee-sugar crash, civil forfeiture sucks.
Lucky they launch our space program.. … We don’t launch any heavy payloads anymore….. No, the Russians do it… There would be NO American astronauts out in space, if the Russians weren’t taking them up…
Just this last week, one of our interceptor rockets failed to destroy its target.. TWO THIRDS of these tests have failed since Bush took us out of the treaty banning IBM interceptor systems.
We got to see on nine /eleven how well our trillion dollar NORAD protected us… Four planes attacked us, and ZERO were intercepted!
Space program was a drain on U.S.budget at a time America was fighting two wars and we where in a recession.Now we’ve privatized the space industry and it’ll take some time but,Space X,Virgin,a and I forget the other companies are working on it and the beauty of it is the tax payers will no longer have to foot the bill for the program.Leaves us more money for important things like modernizing our nuclear arsenal.We lead the world in innovation might as well be the first to have private spacecraft industry flying to space.America is there anything we can’t do?USA
Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin was the other.Shout out to Russia for getting us up there in the meantime not for free they get hundreds of millions for it and desperately need the money.USA
Um… you do know all that conventional stuff is useless in a nuclear exchange, right? And that bullying Russia makes even less sense if they have nothing we want?
How can you say we have nothing they want when they fucking want to be us!!! They desperately want to be a Super power!!! Problem is they’re nothing but,a gas station with nothing else to provide.Simple as that.USA
… I said you said they have nothing we want… and did not say we have nothing they want. Russia loves its Western imports, or at least they used to.
Nuclear war is not survivable. An EMP maybe, but a manmade EMP burst would almost certainly escalate beyond that.
“. . . in having reported that such a program exists, they’ve tipped off Russia about the threat.”
Making sure the Russians know about the U.S. capability, though, would be essential to MAD deterrence. Not saying that this sort of MAD deterrence is a good thing (or a bad thing either), only that “tipping off” Russian makes sense from a MAD perspective.
Well, what goes around comes around. This belligerent establishment never learns and we the people always pay the price for it. The U.S. establishment has brought all this on themselves and they think oh if we retaliate against what we have been doing then nothing will boomerang. The cycle of violence will continue.
Zero Hedge is circulating Mac Slavo’s SHTFPlan article “The Government’s Plan To Survive Nuclear War Doesn’t Include You” (June 20, 2017).
Slavo references a new book called “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Plan to Save Itself” – Garrett M. Graff. Graff’s tome is a history of the government’s survival planning and networks of bunkers just for elite government officials.
They really do seem to be hoping to duck what comes around when it does but hope the rest of us catch it.
From what we’ve ‘seen’ already, creating cyber weapons is – first of all – quite demanding in terms of manpower, time and resources. Deploying such weapons is another set of problems altogether. Sometimes foreign expertise is needed to assist. In all of this, as was blatted-around last week, the US seeks to design ‘daggers’ to attack specific part or aspects of a malignant target. The weapons are supposedly precise, effective, and sophisticated but at the same time anonymous.
We know from the Stuxnet virus and what we understand happened in Iran is that the first attack – targetting the software controlling Siemens-designed centrifuges – was quite effectiive in taking down part of the Iranian enrichment system. When it appeared that work-arounds were being put in place the Israelis went rogue using the software again in the hope of causing some kind of radioacticve catastrophe. This second attack was intercepted and steps were taken to minimize damage. Parts of the virus were found in software and released to the world.
Kaspersky antivirus in Belarus went to work and provided key information that permitted all or most of the malicious code to be retrieved. Stux net was released and has, since, again we are told, infected numerous Windows based systems the the west.
Russia we are told uses the cyber equivalent of a sledgehammer to hack accounts and steal information. They have also used such tools to temporarily disable power grids in the Ukraine. Very recently it is thought that Chinese hackers may have accessed a NAVsat operation to provide phony readings to GPS systems resulting in last wewk’s incident with aUS Navy destroyer.
What seems obvious is that both sides seem willing and reputedly able to deploy an arsenal of such weapons on stages of increasing severe effect. If what they are wasting for thus far minimal results, is an indication of the ‘secret weapons’ that would be deployed in a war scenario, We could have something to worry about.
Then again an EMP, I’m pretty certain,would put me and everybody else on my electical grid into the stone age, possibly permanently. In that event cyber warfare would be less effective than a sharp stick. I think the pinball wizards might already be aware of this.
Recovery post-EMP would certainly be difficult if the backup software is compromised.
The ‘ol double tap is a second EMP wiping out the backup hardware, but cyber weapons post-recovery would be a triple tap.
Cyber attacked Russia but Israel did the hacking/election fraud , so he gave them billions. And McjewDonalds is getting around employment with computer collection ATMs