New York Times has reported that ‘The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively’.
While quoting present and previous officials in the know of matter, the paper also claimed that President Trump was not given details of the matter and that most likely the mission was executed under new legal authorities in the military authorisation bill passed by Congress last year. Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval.
The POTUS bashed NYT calling the entire project as ‘Fake News’
Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019
…..ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019
The highly confidential operation practically justifies anything that Russia may now do against US. The powergrid of any country, as a whole is a civilian infrastructure built to serve its populace with redundancies based on hardware failures and physical breakdowns. Potential attacks on Russian Powergrid by US (and on Iranians allegedly by Israelis) suggest a new reality.
In future wars one can easily expect the wars to be preceded with cyber attacks on utilities. The problem is that there will be no winners in such an attack. Even small North Korea or Israel is as mighty as super powers as far as cyber warfare is concerned. Worst still, the weapons of this war will not be restricted to the nation states.
Not long ago the strategists in Pentagon used Islamic hardliners to Soviets in Afghanistan only find a bigger monster staring them at 9/11. The worms embedded in Russian utilities are bound to find their way to Russian organised crime and from there to rest of the world. While chances of some nation state attacking another with a utility off switch remain low, the fact that it is going to happen just approached near future
