National Security

Donald Trump is now a national security risk

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Timothy Egan of the New York Times has a thought provoking opinion, The Real Plot Against America:

Cartoon_48In retrospect, it worked out much better than planned. Who’d have thought a pariah nation, run by an authoritarian who makes his political opponents disappear, could so easily hijack a great democracy? It didn’t take much. A talented nerd can bring down a minnow of a nation. But this level of political crime requires more refined mechanics — you need everyone to play their assigned roles.

You start with a stooge, a fugitive holed up in London, releasing stolen emails on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, in the name of “transparency.” Cyberburglars rely on a partner in crime to pick up stolen goods. And WikiLeaks has always been there for Russia, a nation with no transparency.

The emails show office gossip — catty, sometimes crude back-and-forth by party operatives, and a bias for one candidate. Ho-hum. To make the plot work, reporters have to take the bait. On cue, they decry the fact that politics is going on inside a major political party. The horror — Democratic hacks saying nasty things about Senator Bernie Sanders.

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Election security is now a national security issue

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Some commenters on this blog have been dismissive of the Russian hacks of the DNC, the DCCC, Hack of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ‘Similar’ to DNC Breach, and a Clinton campaign analytical program. Computer Systems Used by Clinton Campaign Are Said to Be Hacked, Apparently by Russians, largely on the grounds that the United States engages in cyber spying against the rest of the world, so “what’s the big deal?”

First of all, cyber spying is the foundation of national security in the modern world. The United States would be grossly negligent if it was not doing cyber spying, when every other major country in the world is doing it. How often have we heard since September 11, 2001 “why didn’t our intelligence agencies know this was coming?” This false equivalency argument strikes me as a “blame America first” argument, that the United States deserves it for its own actions. This is not a way to ingratiate yourself with your fellow American citizens.

DieboldSecondly, I’m guessing that many of the people making this argument just a few years ago had their hair on fire about electronic voting machines being hacked to rig elections. (Oh, you know you were).  What makes you think that these Russian hackers will stop with attacks on the Democratic Party? We still have electronic voting systems that are vulnerable to hacking.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier writes, By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines:

Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded.

The FBI is investigating. WikiLeaks promises there is more data to come. The political nature of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this as much as possible. Even so, we have to accept that someone is attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence a presidential election. This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of our democratic process. And it points to the possibility of an even worse problem in November — that our election systems and our voting machines could be vulnerable to a similar attack.

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Putin pal Donald Trump asks Russia to cyberattack Clinton and U.S. State Department

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Putin pal Donald Trump said on Monday,  Our ‘Friends’ in Russia, China, ‘hacked the hell’ out of DNC emails:

Putin-Trump-KissDonald Trump told a Roanoke, Virginia, rally on Monday night that:

“Little did she (Wasserman Schultz) know, Russia, China, one of our many many ‘friends’ — Trump made a quotation gesture — “came in and hacked the hell out of us. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?” said a gleeful Trump.

The Trump remark was broadcast on CNN. A Buzzfeed video later appeared on the Talking Points memo web site.

Today Trump came perilously close to crossing the line into treason by calling for Russia to help elect him president:

We’ve never seen anything like this.

Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Russia to help find the missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump proposed from a podium at his Doral Resort. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The Republican presidential hopeful added that he doesn’t believe Russia was responsible for hacking DNC materials — there’s overwhelming evidence that suggests Trump is wrong — but the GOP candidate said that if Russia did steal Democratic documents, he “hopes” the Russians have Clinton’s emails.

Let’s be very clear about what happened this morning. The Republican candidate for president held a press conference in which he urged Vladimir Putin’s espionage services to help sabotage the American election and put Trump in the White House.

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The Trump-Putin bromance: deep financial ties to the Russian Oligarchy

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When you think about it, Russia is the perfect place for Donald Trump. It is an autocratic Oligarchy of wealthy businessmen who operate under a system of state-run organized crime. A con man like Trump would fit right in.

trump-putin_website-800x430I touched on Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin earlier this week. Did Trump-Putin 2016 hack the DNC?

Russian President Vladimir Putin again complimented Donald Trump on Friday, calling him a “bright” person. Putin repeats praise of Trump: He’s a ‘bright’ person – POLITICO:

Putin, who was speaking at the Russian Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, said he would work with any of the presidential candidates, but specifically lauded Trump for his comments on improving relations between Russia and the United States, according to the Associated Press.

The Washington Post today takes a deeper look Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin:

Donald Trump was in his element, mingling with beauty pageant contestants and business tycoons as he brought his Miss Universe pageant to Russia for a much-anticipated Moscow debut. Nonetheless, Trump was especially eager for the presence of another honored guest: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Fact Checkers destroy Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theory

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Screenshot-16The short-fingered vulgarian, Donald Trump, in the wake of the massacre in Orlando, Florida, insinuated that President Obama sympathized with terrorists, which provoked a backlash that included rebukes from members of his own party.

“The Donald” doubled down, declaring that he was not just insinuating it but that he was “right,” based upon a report from the right-wing conspiracy “news” (sic) site Breitbart.com, which has informally been acting as the media arm of the Trump campaign. Trump says he was ‘right’ about Obama and terrorists, citing unverified intelligence:

In a post to his Twitter account early Wednesday, Trump said “Media fell all over themselves criticizing what Donald Trump ‘may have insinuated’ ” about Obama. “But he’s right,” it said, linking to a story published by the conservative website Breitbart News.

The story was based on a declassified 2012 cable written by a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official, addressed to about two dozen military and national security agencies and officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Labeled as “information report, not finally evaluated intelligence,” it refers to “the general situation” in Iraq and Syria in the early days of the armed insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

It describes al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Islamic State precursor, as part of the anti-Assad opposition, and notes that opposition forces fighting in eastern Syria are backed by “Western countries, the [Persian] Gulf states and Turkey.”

But the document appears to be an initial intake of spot intelligence from the early days of the Syrian civil war. That intelligence had not yet been vetted or verified. Trump’s embrace of Breitbart’s interpretation of the cable fits a pattern of careless handling and circulation of facts, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. Such missteps have piqued concerns among foreign policy experts and Republican strategists about Trump’s understanding of complicated policy issues and his fitness for office.

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