Lo and behold, it’s happening again. Russia is trying to hack our election.
This latest explosive report comes from the New York Times: As the impeachment inquiry kicked off in November, Russians hackers began targeting the Ukrainian energy company at the center of the storm, Burisma.
It’s the one that Trump wanted investigated, in search of anything damaging he might be able to use against his presumed 2020 rival, Joe Biden.
Trump first asked President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, as a personal favor. Then he publicly asked the same of China.
Now Russian hackers have apparently stepped up to do it for him.
This is their opening salvo in a brand-new assault against American democracy in 2020. Imagine the future we’re looking at: One in which every country in the world has an incentive to spy on American homes and businesses.
A world in which foreign intelligence services mine our citizens for embarrassing revelations on anything from financial blunders to adultery.
Yet to this very day, the White House has no robust strategy to counter this interference in our elections. There is good legislation, but that too is being blocked by Republicans.
And in the meantime, instead of doing all he can to keep Kremlin agents from hijacking our democratic process, the President of the United States has gone out of his way to encourage them.
Remember when Trump wagged his finger at a laughing Putin, and told him with a grin, "Don't meddle in the election"? Well, Putin isn’t an idiot. He got the message.
In short: “You’re welcome to get involved in American elections, as long as it helps Donald Trump,” as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) put it.
Russia is reportedly using the same tactics now that it did during the 2016 presidential election, against the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.
Once again, it’s launching a cyberattack against a political target, in the hopes of stealing data and then dumping that information, in an effort to influence another election in Trump’s favor.
Ask yourself: What if they don’t find the dirt they’re looking for this time? Will they simply make it up?
Either way, this is exactly what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and FBI Director Christopher Wray have been warning about. Russian meddling in 2016 was indeed just the “dress rehearsal” for 2020.
The Kremlin’s cyberwarriors have a large arsenal of tactics, as Wray outlines.
“What has pretty much continued unabated is the use of social media, fake news, propaganda, false personas, etc. to spin us up, pit us against each other, to sow divisiveness and discord, to undermine America’s faith in democracy,” he said.
“That is not just an election-cycle threat. It is pretty much a 365-day-a-year threat.”
We will never block foreign interference altogether. That’s impossible. What’s key is instead to punish the countries that do it, to deter them and others; starting with the most blatant hits on political targets.
That’s the point of the “Deter Act,” one of the many bills currently stuck in Mitch McConnell’s graveyard. The strategy is to force any country to consider the potential costs of its actions against the gains.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would take the president out of the equation entirely, given that he currently helps incentivize the meddling.
And it would give Russia a reason to exercise self-restraint. If the Kremlin attacks American candidates, campaigns, or voting infrastructure, consequences would be swift and harsh: Sanctions on major sectors of the Russian economy, blacklisting key Russian oligarchs from entering the U.S., and more.
Trump issued an executive order in 2018 that outlined possible discretionary sanctions, but the Deter Act would make them much stronger. Given his reluctance, we need a national policy for dealing with Russia, like in the Cold War.
We don’t have that now. And until we do, Putin knows he doesn’t have to worry about facing any real punishment, as long as he can keep his puppets in power.
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