BY MAYA KOSOFF
JULY 16, 2018
As the White House trained its attention on the spectacle surrounding the meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the Trump administration was largely ignoring a more potent danger back home. The Trump-Putin summit, after all, is mostly a media event—an opportunity for Trump to size up his adversary and, in the court of public opinion, try to convert him to a friend. Back in Washington, however, the bureaucrats, analysts, and officials responsible for resisting Russia’s clandestine actions are facing another threat: neglect. For the past 18 months, the Trump administration has been at war with itself over Russia—or, perhaps more accurately, at war with its Russophile president.
... the result has been a disorganized and often underfunded effort to counter Russian disinformation and other active measures, such as election hacking. The White House’s election-meddling task force, for instance, recently lost the 18-year F.B.I. veteran who was leading it, leaving some to question whether the group has the focus or support needed to carry out its mission ... Instead of being pre-emptive .. the response from the White House to Russian election-meddling attempts had been indifferent, leaving the F.B.I. to be “reactive” in its responses to threats.
Those threats are more pressing now than ever, according to Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. On .. the same day that 12 Russian nationals were indicted for alleged crimes related to the hacking and release of Democratic e-mails in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Coats said the indictments were a warning that the Kremlin still poses a threat to the United States’ cyber-security. “The warning lights are blinking red again,” Coats said. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack” ... Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, said said his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign launched by the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence agency, and targeting three candidates running in the 2018 midterm elections. Burt declined to name the candidates, but said “They were all people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint, as well as an election disruption standpoint.” At the same security forum, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the Justice Department will notify the public, private organizations, and American companies if and when foreign interference occurs. “The Department of Justice investigates and prosecutes malign foreign influence activity that violates federal criminal law,” he said. “Some critics argue against prosecuting people who live in foreign nations that are unlikely to extradite their citizens. That is a shortsighted view.”
Despite the overwhelming proof, Trump reportedly chafes at the mention of Russian election meddling. After meeting with Putin last year, Trump told reporters, “You can only ask so many times. He said he didn’t meddle . . . every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it” ...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/how-trump-let-putin-win-the-cyber-security-war
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