December 18, 2020, 12:23 pm*
Donald Trump and his administration are currently under fire for seeming to largely ignore what has been reported as a massive hack job by a Russian foreign intelligence unit. Mitt Romney is particularly outraged by this development, calling out the “glaringly inadequate cyber defenses” of the U.S. government as well as “inexcusable silence and inaction” from the current administration.
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“What I find most astonishing is that a cyberhack of this nature is really the modern equivalent of almost Russian bombers reportedly flying undetected over the entire country,” he wrote Thursday.
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According to U.S. officials, the cyberattack on the country went undetected for almost nine months and gave Russia access to networks that included “the Pentagon, FBI, Treasury, State Department and nuclear security agencies.” We may never know just how much information they stole during this time.
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“CISA has determined that this threat poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in a statement.
Trump himself has had nothing to say about this attack, opting instead to bring up the thing he was impeached for and once again call it a “hoax.”
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There may be a good reason that Trump is avoiding the subject, however. According to former FBI deputy director Frank Figliuzzi, his administration took funds out of the budget for cybersecurity in order to fund his big useless wall.
“We have a president diverting money, billions of it, to build a wall, changing personnel at the top of the Pentagon and we’ve not heard word one about the plan or strategy to respond to this ongoing attack,” said former FBI deputy director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi. He added that “there is no one in charge from the Oval Office down throughout the intelligence community.”
In a normal year with a normal president, this kind of thing would have been all anybody was talking about. The extent of the attack seems to be growing bigger by the hour as experts continue to reveal additional targets and suggest that the full program went on for years.
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“I cannot underscore enough how serious and widespread this Russian hack appears to be,” wrote Senior Advisor and Director of Investigations Daniel Goldman. “As more info seeps out, I fear we are going to learn that Russia has gained access to a tremendous amount of info about our government and corporations. This requires an aggressive response.”
*First Published: December 18, 2020, 12:21 pm
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