Top Russian officials are suspected of deliberately hacking selected democrats' email accounts to deflect the results of November 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. But how will the US government retaliate?
The cold war has long been out of the horizon. Yet, tension rose between the United States and Russia over Russians' cyber-attacks being carried out against Democrats. The FBI conducted a probe on the matter. It revealed that high level Russian officials hacked DNC (the Democratic National Committee) and Hilary Clinton's campaign to influence the election results to benefit Trump. They allegedly forwarded all the stolen data to Wikileaks for publication. As retaliation, the United States government ordered sweeping new sanctions, including the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats.
President Obama said in a statement released while he was vacationing with his family in Hawaii: “using this new authority, I have sanctioned nine entities and individuals: the GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU's cyber operations. In addition, the secretary of the treasury is designating two Russian individuals for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information. He also announced the closure of two Russian compounds in the US."
In response to the US retaliatory measures, Vladimir Putin chooses not to counterattack. However, Russian authorities on Thursday ordered the Anglo-American School of Moscow closed. As difficult as Putin could be, one can only speculate on his motive not to reciprocate with the expulsion of US diplomats of his own. Is his behavior an admission of guilt? Is he playing a good guy? Actually, Russia is financially weak, vulnerable and heavily sanctioned by NATO over Ukraine. Putin annexed Crimea, and he is fully supporting the rebels who are fighting to secede from Ukraine. Putin is simply laying low to escape from Obama's fury.
The Russian hacking literally benefited Trump, but if Clinton were blameless, would Russian cyber attacks ever be harmful enough to cost her the presidential election? No one in the right mind thinks so. In fact, with the cyber attacks, Trump won the election with a wider margin than he would have without. Clinton was self-defeating. The Americans are fed up with the status quo and politicians who are suspected of not telling the truth. The country needs some drastic changes in many areas: immigration, education, security, jobs and trade, etc.
No one knows how president-elect Trump will approach these difficult issues. How he will fare with his buddy Putin and other world leaders on foreign policy issues remains to be seen. Trump praised Putin as a greater leader than President Obama. If it is the case, how much greater politician Putin is than a novice Trump? That statement could backfire on him. Any way, these new sanctions the United States imposed on Russia must stick. Trump, beware!
"When you attack a country, it's an act of war," McCain said. "So we have to make sure that there is a price to pay so that we can perhaps persuade the Russians to stop these kinds of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy."
