President-elect Joe Biden spoke to the press today warning of dark days ahead with the coronavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 crisis and recent revelations about possible Russian hacking into U.S. government computer systems. “When I learn the extent of the damage and in fact who is formally responsible, they can be assured that we will respond. And probably respond in kind. There’s many options, which I will not discuss now,” Biden told the press in remarks about hacks and Covid-19 crisis. Biden’s talking tough implying that Trump’s been weak with Russia during his four years in office. When news broke Dec. 13 from Reuters about possible Russian hackers infecting SolarWinds software with malicious code then extracting information on U.S. government servers, barely a word came from Trump. Trump said Dec. 19 that the damage wasn’t greatly exaggerated by the fake news.
Now Biden’s swept up in the hacking scandal, threatening to take unspecified retaliatory measures against Russia if the U.S. intel community pinpoints who’s responsible for the hack. When Biden says the U.S. has many options and would responding in-kind, what’s he talking about? Try to infect Russian computers with malicious code to steal secrets from Kremlin computers? Biden pretends he has many more options like his predecessor former President Barack Obama when he ousted 35 Russian diplomats Dec. 31, 2016, only three weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Biden believed the intel community when they said Russia meddled in the 2016 election, buying the same rubbish generated by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bogus “dossier,” alleging Trump’s ties to the Kremlin. Hillary blamed her loss to Trump on the Russia and everything else.
What’s significant is that Biden has not pointed fingers at Russia in the 2020 election because he won. By the same twisted logic, Trump could argue that Biden won the Nov. 3 election because of Russian meddling. But that would be preposterous, just like the allegations in 2016 that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent nearly two years and $40 million find not evidence that Russia changed one vote in the 2016 election. All that can be said factually about Russia’s influence peddling in the 2016 or 2020 elections was that it’s the same as every other election in Cold War U.S. history. Influencing peddling does not mean the one U.S. vote changed in either the 2016 or 2020 election based on anything Russia did. Yet Biden acts like he’s going to retaliate against Russia when he has no real proof of Russian hacking only wild speculation at this point.
Biden’s talk of retaliation against the Russian Federation has real implications on the battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere where the U.S. finds itself colliding on foreign policy with the Russian Federation. When it comes to spying or espionage, it’s clear that both sides have spied on each other certainly since the Cold War, if not before. But the real issues for incoming Secretary of State Tony Blinken should be the same as any administration, trying to improve relations. If Blinken enters the picture threatening sanctions, it doesn’t bode well for U.S.-Russian relations going forward. Blinken should think about former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn who was spied on by the Obama White House because he wanted to start mending fences with Russia after Obama acted impulsively evicting Russian diplomats three weeks before he left office.
When Atty. Gen. Bill Barr examined all the evidence on Flynn, including the “unmasked” phone calls by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, he found absolutely nothing improper in any of his conversations with former Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak. But if you asked President-elect Biden, he’d tell you Flynn violated the 1799 Logan Act, preventing private citizens from conducting U.S. foreign policy. Biden was the one that accused Flynn of violating the Logan Act when he did no such thing. Yet Biden was present at a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting where he and former FBI Director James Comey and others plotted to set Flynn up in a perjury trap. Barr looked at all the evidence and determined the FBI has no probable cause to interrogate unannounced Flynn Jan. 24 at the White House. Biden’s already accusing Putin of hacking U.S. government computers.
Biden doesn’t really understand that if Russia hackers did anything, they sent malicious code into SolarWinds software update for U.S. government computers. But had SolarWinds had proper security protection, the malicious code would have not penetrated their software, providing the chink in U.S. government computers using SolarWinds network management programs. “This attack constitutes a grave risk to our national security,” Biden said today. “The truth is this: The Trump administration failed to prioritize cybersecurity,” Biden said. Biden reads his talking points and most likely doesn’t understand that it was SolarWinds with the problem, not the Trump administration. Biden’s limited understanding is likely to get the U.S. on the wrong footing with the Russian Federation. Just like Covid-19, Biden will be blaming Trump for years to come.
