Fake news my ass. The utility responded to a warning from the Feds and found what they were warned about BEFORE it got on their grid. I’m giving a big thumbs up to the utility’s IT department for looking as thoroughly as they did.
The US has already lost the cyberwar to Russia. Russia will continue the cyber attacks now that Pres. Dipshit is more interested in making out with Pooty than call him the criminal he is. Thank Og there’s at least one Republican with enough brains to see it as it is. John McCain.called Russian hacking an “act of war.”
Really? And you think this is a sign of brains on McCain’s part? What is the usual response to an act of war, do you think? Are you ready for us to start throwing men and bombs at the Russians?
Might just be an example of cyber-cancer, where the original code replicates beyond its original target. I recall reading that similar things had been observed about the Stuxnet virus unleashed upon the Iranians.
Are American hackers smarter than Russians? In blind ignorance, I would guess so. And I am amused by the notion of the CIA and FBI recruiting underground Snapple addicted hackers. Could be the basis for an entertaining sit-com, given the cultural dissonance.
I was thinking of it as being more or less “spontaneous”, like DNA coding that does not actually perform a function, but replicates nonetheless. But I understand less about computer hacking than I do about quantum mechanics, or women.
That’s hacking 101. Find someone who works where you want to attack, infect their computer and hope they plug in when they get to work.
When I worked in a SCIF, you weren’t allowed to bring in anything electronic, ever. We’re going to have to get a lot smarter about cyber security. Just wait 'til they infiltrate a nuke plant.
I didn’t waltz past anything. I can understand why Russia behaves brutishly and still not cave in to it.
Sanctions are a long game that take time to work. Until the recent campaign, Obama had every reason to expect that his successor, Democrat or Republican, would continue to see Russia for what it is and keep the pressure on it somehow because that’s been the default position of the West against an aggressive tyrant. But because the U.S. took a schizophrenic turn and elected a president with Putin’s shit on his nose and semen around his mouth, Obama didn’t have the right to sanction Russia because…Bush invaded Iraq?
What didn’t Obama do that he should have? Start a war? Give Putin free rein?
Seriously. Also, Iraq isn’t a US colony. The US doesn’t collect taxes from Iraqis. The US doesn’t ‘take their oil’ (as Man-Baby stated he wants to do). Bush invading Iraq =/= Putin annexing Crimea.
The US has plenty of moral standing for opposition to Putin’s land grabs–the Iraq war did not dilute it.
Yes. If the principle were actually he that is without sin, let him cast the first stone, then there would be no such thing as international diplomacy at all.
What you fail to address is that plenty of people can see things from the perspective of an adversary, but that doesn’t mean we have to give them a pass. One can understand precisely how bin Laden viewed the world; doesn’t mean you can’t plot to kill him.
We can play touchy-feely with Putin’s inferiority complexes forever, doesn’t mean we should just let him invade countries who haven’t attacked Russia in any way, shape or form.
And if you play that silly “we are such hypocrites” card, then how about this: on the basis of Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, the US is justified in invading Canada to protect English-speaking people who are oppressed there. Right?
And remember the “reset” of Russian ties that Obama attempted in 2009? Ther hasn’t been any “encirclement” of Russia since then, as it comes to NATO, yet you keep trotting out that excuse for why Putin has become such an aggressive dictator in the last few years.
Jesus wept. Like half a million dead civilians mean nothing at all.
After 50 years of destroying democracies in central and south America and MENA, the world knows exactly, Democrat, Republican and likely Trump, what the USA is about.
How did you manage to get “half a million dead civilians mean nothing at all” from my post?
I made no remark that stated or implied that US actions in Iraq ‘meant nothing at all.’
I merely pointed out the utter non-equivalency of Putin’s annexing Crimea with George Bush’s attempt to punish Saddam Hussein for dissing his father and for imagined responsibility for the 9-11 attacks—the alleged equivalency having been the topic under discussion. I offered no endorsement of any kind of US overseas actions.
The US is morally justified in saying ‘you can’t annex a neighboring nation’ even if the US has failed to be pacifist and/or neutral and/or non-interventionist. When the US does annex a neighboring nation, that moral standing will cease to exist.
BTW, for those who’re interested - here’s a techie community reaction to the “FBI/CIA report” (hardly a “right wing” post)
for the TL;DR crowd: “Thursday’s Joint Analysis Report provides almost no new evidence to support the Obama Administration’s claims Russia attempted to interfere with the US electoral process.”
I don’t know what people expected from a Joint Analysis Report. This one is just like the others they release. It’s not meant to be proof of anything, it is meant to be a brief guideline to help people defend against the threat.
Well, ignoring little movements like Calexit, if you ask most states about it, they’ll say they’re happy to be in the US. Now ask the former Soviet republics. Yeah, most of them got the hell out as soon as they could and some still want out.
I think we’ve got the moral high ground on the annexation issue.