Pirate's Cove

What’s the first thought that ran through your head when reading that headline?

Biden administration to launch cyber attacks on Russia as feud with Putin escalates

The Biden administration is preparing a series of aggressive cyber attacks on Russia in a major shift in tactics designed as a warning shot to rival powers.

The attack, which is expected in the next fortnight, is in retaliation for the SolarWinds hack, the large-scale infiltration of American government agencies and corporations discovered late last year that was traced back to the Kremlin.

It comes after Joe Biden this week engaged in a war of words with Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president a “killer”, while the White Houses attacked China for rights abuses in a tense opening of face-to-face talks.

The US will not target civilian structures or networks, but the hack is instead designed as a direct challenge to Mr Putin, Russia’s President, and his cyber army, The Telegraph understands.

The White House confirmed it will take “a mix of actions” – both “seen and unseen” – although it did not provide specifics on when and how it would do so.

The first thing I think is “why in the hell would you announce this? Why give them warning? You just do it.” This is like someone warning you that they will throw eggs at your house over the next few weeks. You know when it is coming. So, if real, Russia knows, so can take action, and can take measures to guard against it, and, when it happens, can just complain about China Joe at the U.N. You do these things secretly. Maybe you get caught, but, you don’t announce it. This is not meant to do anything but virtue signal.

Russia and the US had committed to the so-called cyber confidence building measures that allowed the countries to have a confidential beeline about possible breaches but the agreement collapsed spectacularly in 2016 when Russian hackers targeted the Democratic National Committee.

Supposedly, because Crowdstrike has only said this happened. They’ve never once let the FBI examine the actual servers. Further, the Mueller report shows definitively that it wasn’t so much a hack, as a spear-fishing operation, and that the old people in charge of security at the DNC should not be.

Any such move would mark a different tact taken by previous administrations, which have largely acted defensively against Moscow’s cyber warfare. Donald Trump took a much more cautious approach on Russia, being careful never to directly criticise or challenge the regime.

Obviously, there’s some TDS in this piece. What Trump did was actually slap Russia and China with lots of sanctions, and any operations against Russia were done in secret. Because that’s what you do with intelligence operations. Quiet. Secret. Gather info. Disrupt enemies. Not attempt a catty, announced cyber attack, which is about as useful as one of Obama’s strongly worded letters. This is what the U.S. foreign policy is apparently going back to.