By Dave Lindorff
Russia and the US are engaging in tit-for-tat hacking of each others’ power grid, the New York Times is reporting, in what is really a kind of cyber “cold war” where the hackers from each country’s military and intelligence services load electronic “explosives” in the computer systems of criticalinfrastructure of the other, that in a crisis or war could be “detonated” to create chaos or bring down electric grids.
The Times article, the publication of which President Trump decried in a tweet as “close to treason,” was disturbing for a number or reasons. One was that sources told the Times the hacking by the US Cyber Command of Russia’s power grid had been conducted without the president’s knowledge, for fear that he might act to prevent it or might disclose it.
In other words, an action — the hostile hacking of another rival country’s essential infrastructure, which the US government has warned other nations would be viewed as an “act of war,” is being taken by the US military, without the President’s or Congress’s knowledge!
That should be enough to send shivers down the spine of any sane person. In fact, the that could lead to a US “military response.”
If the Times is correct in both its articles, the current US hacking of Russia’s power grid is evidence of a US military establishment run amok.
Congress should be outraged and calling for immediate hearings to determine the chain of command that allowed this to happen. Either Trump is lying, and knows all about the hacking, or some high-ranking military officers who acted without his knowledge should be fired the way President Truman fired an insubordinate Gen. Douglas McArthur during the Korean War.
But of course that won’t happen. Trump might fire Gen. Jim Mattis as war secretary, and might fire Gen. H. R. McMaster, as National Security Advisor, but he’s not going to fire anyone for hacking Russia’s power grid, whether it’s Acting Secretary of “Defense” Patrick Shanahan or National Security Advisor John Bolton, the known war-mongerer who may well have been behind the order to do it. TheTimes itself didn’t even deign to run an editorial calling for heads to roll over the news of the dangerous provocation.
But the Times article was disturbing for another reason too. The lengthy investigative piece, while it talked all about the secret cyber war already being fought by the internet forces of the US and Russia, never mentioned Venezuela.
Recall that at the height of opposition militancy a few months ago, when middle-class Venezuelan backers of calls for President Nicolás Maduro’s resignation were taking to the streets of Caracas and confronting police and army soldiers, virtually the whole country was thrown into darkness and chaos by the collapse of its power grid.
Maduro’s government claimed to have solid evidence that the grid had been hacked by the US. Meanwhile…
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, seven-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/us-cyber-attack-on-russias-power-grid-is-an-act-of-war-according-to-the-us/