Another Biden Folly; Cybersecurity

AMAC Exclusive by: Tammy Bruce

This week President Biden stated that there is ‘evolving intelligence’ suggesting the Russian government is preparing cyberattacks aimed at our critical infrastructure. This is not new nor surprising as experts believe Russia is behind scores of cyberattacks against the United States for the past 25 years. Every president has stumbled when attempting to address the issue until President Donald Trump established the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2018.

But typical of a bloated bureaucracy, only now as Russia continues to press its war against Ukraine and we target them with our economic response is our government scrambling to convey the seriousness of the issue to American businesses and enterprises.

The president said in part due to the war on Ukraine, “This is a critical moment to accelerate our work to improve domestic cybersecurity and bolster our national resilience. I have previously warned about the potential that Russia could conduct malicious cyber activity against the United States, including as a response to the unprecedented economic costs we’ve imposed on Russia alongside our allies and partners…”

‘Could’ is misleading. ‘Have been’ is more accurate. And it’s not just Russia. We know China and North Korea have been involved in hacking attacks on the American government and business. How the Biden administration is handling this long-term problem is as they’ve handled every other issue, like deer in the headlights.

What we do know is in December 2020, Russia was behind a massive hacking into multiple governmental agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and multitudes of other businesses. The New York Times reported, “The scope of a hacking engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday… the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon — had been compromised. Investigators were struggling to determine the extent to which the military, intelligence community, and nuclear laboratories were affected by the highly sophisticated attack. It was evident that the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the first agencies reported to be breached, were only part of a far larger operation whose sophistication stunned even experts who have been following a quarter-century of Russian hacks on the Pentagon and American civilian agencies.”

In February of 2021, the new “National Cyber Director” promptly told everyone it would take “several months at least” for a probe into that shocking breach to be complete.

Then just a few months later, in April 2021, a ransomware attack on networks of the Colonial Pipeline Co was unleashed, the largest fuel pipeline in the United States provoking the shutdown of the entire system leading to panic and gas shortages along the East Coast. “It was the first time Colonial had shut down the entirety of its gasoline pipeline system in its 57-year history, [their CEO] said. ‘We had no choice at that point,’ he said. ‘It was absolutely the right thing to do. At that time, we had no idea who was attacking us or what their motives were,’” reported Bloomberg. Colonial ended up paying $4.4 million to the hackers, much of which the federal government says it was able to recover.

One month later, in May 2021, a ransomware attack on JBS Foods was launched; one of the biggest meat processing plants in the world shut down plants in the United States and Australia. They reportedly paid the hackers $11 million to regain access to their computer system.

It is now believed both cyberattacks were Russia’s doing. Sources involved in the cyber security industry who have knowledge of the breaches told me it’s possible these attacks served, in part, as test runs for a more comprehensive cyber-attack on the United States.

Joe Biden’s response to the Colonial and JBS attacks was to tell Vladimir Putin that ‘certain’ critical infrastructure was “off-limits” to cyberattack. He even gave the Russians a list of what not to touch. The equivalent would be revealing to Bonnie and Clyde which banks hold all the money and then insisting to the murderous gang that those special banks were “off-limits.” Because we say so.

This only works if you can trust the ‘goodwill’ of your adversary. Considering what Russia had already done to us, and now the president’s current warning that the Russians are coming again for our critical systems in the midst of the war against Ukraine, it sounds like Putin isn’t taking Biden any more seriously than anyone else.

How unserious is Biden about Russia? As the president tells us to be ready for a Russian cyberattack on our country, and the United States has officially declared Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, we are still having the Russians represent us during the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. This is inexplicable and makes absolutely no sense if you are genuinely concerned about our national security. Does the Biden regime actually believe war criminals are negotiating a deal with a declared terrorist nation that will be in our best interests?

The Biden administration speaks as though they expect a cyberattack on our critical infrastructure will not only be attempted but will be successful. These sectors include dams, energy (think the grid), food and agriculture, nuclear reactors, water, financial services, communications, chemical, emergency services, and more. Clearly, every cyber threat to our infrastructure must be handled as an existential priority. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen that materialize.

In the meantime, as with the southern border and the Afghanistan debacle, the Biden gang keeps reminding us that our national security is a concern for them— specifically how quickly the tall poppy of the United States can be cut down to size.

Contacting your local, state, and federal representatives can make a difference in focusing them on this issue. Knowing you remain informed and concerned will remind them of these matters. We’ve learned during the past decade that we can no longer sit by and trust politicians to do the right thing without being held to account. November can’t come soon enough.