Rich Welsh| A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence bulletin revealed that Russia may attempt a cyberattack on the US homeland if the Kremlin discerns a NATO or US response to interfere in their invading the sovereign nation of Ukraine as a threat to Russia’s “long-term national security.”
Invading neighboring countries is part of Russia’s long-term national security policy? We invaded Iraq for doing the same thing to Kuwait. That would be like Joe Biden threatening to take over parts of Mexico as a national security strategy. In his case, it would be to bring in even more millions of illegal aliens.
A January 23 memo that was distributed by DHS to critical infrastructure operators, along with state and local governments said, “Russia maintains a range of offensive cybertools that it could employ against U.S. networks — from low-level denials-of-service to destructive attacks targeting critical infrastructure.”
The memo states that DHS analysts estimate that Moscow’s ability to conduct cyberattacks, either destructive or disruptive, on the US homeland “probably remains very high.”
“We have not observed Moscow directly employ these types of cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure — notwithstanding cyberespionage and potential prepositioning operations in the past.”
The federal government has been preparing for cyberattacks from Russia since they threatened to invade Ukraine by sending over 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border.
The Treasury Department held a classified briefing covering the issue of a cyberwarfare attack against large US banks, as the Energy Department briefed America’s biggest electric utilities on Russia’s cyber abilities, according to CNN.
Less than two weeks ago, Ukraine was attacked by a Russkie cyberattack that popped up a warning message on government websites saying, “be afraid and expect the worst,” as Moscow released pictures of more troops on the move to Ukraine’s border.
President Biden is contemplating sending between 3,000 and 5,000 troops to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania as part of a wider NATO effort. He is also thinking of sending naval vessels to visit NATO allies to calm their concerns.
I think it is because of Joe Biden that Putin thinks he can get away with what everyone believes he is planning to do. After the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, Moscow started to make its move because the Russian leader spotted a weakness in Biden. How the US handles this situation will determine if other bad actors on the world stage, like China, Iran, and North Korea, will act to take advantage of the perceived weakness of the US and attempt to pull something they wouldn’t have even considered under Trump.
According to Politico, US Intelligence agency leaders say that sanctions, throwing out Russian diplomats, and indicting Russian hackers after past cyberattacks haven’t deterred Russia from continuing its cyber espionage activities and ransomware attacks.
When Putin’s done playing GI Dzho, the world will remember Russia is only a $1.7 trillion economy. Honestly, I don’t know why we keep treating Putin as if he’s some world superpower leader. In contrast, the United States had a GDP for 2021 at $23.19 trillion and that was with Mr. Disaster in the White House. Canada had a GDP of $2.015 trillion, Brazil had a GDP of $1.6 trillion, Mexico had a GDP of $1.285 trillion, Iran had a GDP at $1.1 trillion in 2021.
