Fresh Start Political Thread

President Donald Trump played down the SolarWinds breach and shifted blame to China in his first public remarks on a cyberattack that’s crippled numerous federal agencies.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted at 11:30 a.m. ET Saturday. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

Trump’s remarks around attribution contradict what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday in an interview with conservative talk radio program “The Mark Levin Show.”

https://www.crn.com/news/security/trump-downplays-solarwinds-hack-pompeo-blames-russia

White House officials had readied a statement Friday calling Russia "the main actor" in the attack, but were ordered not to release it, the Associated Press reports.

Around the same time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview that Russia is "pretty clearly" behind the attack, which hit the State Department, among many other agencies and businesses.
Saturday, Trump tweeted that the extent of the attack was being overplayed by the media and that others could be responsible for the attack, perhaps China.

Between the lines: Some security experts fear the president's position will transform what should be a unified government response to a hostile act by a foreign power into yet another personal loyalty test.

Last month Trump fired CISA director Christopher Krebs after Krebs affirmed that the 2020 election had been secure.

Anything involving "Russia, Russia, Russia" (as Trump put it in his tweet) has been a sore point for the president since Russia's hacks during the 2016 election became the foundation for years of investigations into his administration's relationship with Moscow.

https://www.axios.com/solarwinds-hack-russia-trump-blame-game-683eca31-ff57-4582-b6a7-5e31c0787c94.html

Receipts as you like to say ....

Its okay to acknowledge that a bankrupt tv reality personality would put his image above country ...

Bothsideism definitely applies when it comes to Trump and Obama interactions with Russia/Putin - Obama was soft even before he was inaugurated (The after I'm elected comments, the wrecking of NATO missile defense policy etc. and Trump has been praising/defending Putin since he was elected.

Biden hasn't been as soft as either (yet?) but that is almost certainly due to Trump's coziness with Putin rather than a rational policy decision (although in this case it works out).

Chico has a point about the lifting of the pipeline sanction - hmm close Keystone and hurt Canada and the US, but remove sanctions connected to the Euro pipeline and help Russia. I withdraw my assertion that Biden is harder on the Russians so far, he is just as bad as his two predecessors.

The pipeline .. Ive heard 2 reasons why.

1. Germany really wanted us to lift the sanctions bc the pipeline would greatly help them (albeit make them even more dependent on russia energy). After 4 years of treating our main ally poorly, I think we are trying to mend some broken relations.

2. We want to try and work with Russia on areas where we can. We made targeted sanctions in response to Solar Winds hack and this pipeline to Germany has nothing to do with the hacking.

I did read weve "hacked" russias power grid .. or at least let them know we can hack it at any moment.

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But my original thought remains ... what do we do with Russia and hacking? Do you hack them back hard? Do you sanction them some more?

its not a biden or trump thing moving forward .. what do we do now?

Id say we make cyber security a top priority. the actual details, i dont know.

In March of last year, thousands of companies and U.S. government agencies were sent a routine software update. This happened regularly with SolarWinds Orion software. There was no reason to suspect anything was wrong with the update.

What they couldn't see at the time was a malicious piece of code buried deep within the update, a Trojan horse planted by Russian military hackers looking for a backdoor to important American computer networks.

Nine months after that compromised software update, cybersecurity firm FireEye sounded the alarm. They had been hacked. Their crown jewels, what the company calls "Red Team tools," had been stolen. FireEye suspected that anyone who had downloaded and installed the SolarWinds Orion update had been hacked too.

The U.S. Treasury Department, Department of Justice, State Department, Energy Department, and the agency that protects and transports the U.S. nuclear arsenal, didn't see the Russians rummaging through their computer networks for nine months. Businesses, including software titan Microsoft, also found their systems compromised by the update. SolarWinds says its products are used by 300,000 customers around the globe, and that 18,000 customers downloaded its compromised software update.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solarwinds-60-minutes-2021-07-04/

The biggest cyber espionage hack ever was done by Russia to us in March 2020. During trumps watch.

1. Russia and China will hack us as much and as often as they can, regardless of who is the current US president

2. Trump DID weaken our cyber security defenses and Trump DID downplay Solar Winds hack and Russia's involvement

3. Biden has taken steps in his first few months in office. He sanctioned Russia for the solar winds hack and we created and installed a new position National Cyber Director.

4. Cyber security should and mostly is bipartisan.

Well your not gonna read the plan and what the administration did based on Cooperation with Obama and built off csnp…which included the first transparency plan between private and public sector. You say simply Trump administration lead us down the wrong path on cyber security as he dismissed someone…thats wholehearted false. Even previous Obama officials stated trump administration was focused on cyber security and heavily invested.

solar winds…terrible hack…on the Trump administration, that’s fine, I’ll take that, but weird how with all the fake Russia hoaxes this seemed to the be one Dems were quiet about. Weird right?

But that type hack versus ransom ware and major infrastructure government/business continuity issues…which affects us more? Which affects the people of this country in day to day? That’s the problem.

Saying this is trumps fault, nope…this is a Biden problem which he hasn’t responded well enough especially after his face to face.

And there is no excuse for Biden removing sanctions to allow a major strategic energy win for Russia in leu of a cyber hacks to disrupt our pipelines. Come’on man…2 scoops of ice cream ain’t good enough reason to allow it.

Foreign hacking is no ones fault. We cant stop China or Russia from trying, Id assume we are under constant multiple attacks at all times .. and that doesnt change if its a D or an R in the WH.

Its not Trumps fault then and its not Bidens fault now.

Claiming that Biden is weak on Russia and hacking bc of his decision re a pipeline that benefits our ally Germany and is not connected to cyber hacking .... thats your call.

Hopefully we make cyber security a main priority going forward ... just seems like such an untameable ever changing beast to me.

I dont think we will ever be in front of it. Honestly what our govt is doing, i dont think we will ever know or become public knowledge.

Foreign hacking is no ones fault. We cant stop China or Russia from trying, Id assume we are under constant multiple attacks at all times .. and that doesnt change if its a D or an R in the WH.

Its not Trumps fault then and its not Bidens fault now.

Claiming that Biden is weak on Russia and hacking bc of his decision re a pipeline that benefits our ally Germany and is not connected to cyber hacking .... thats your call.

Hopefully we make cyber security a main priority going forward ... just seems like such an untameable ever changing beast to me.

I dont think we will ever be in front of it. Honestly what our govt is doing, i dont think we will ever know or become public knowledge.

Agreed, that it's only the president's fault insomuch as he was the president when it happened (any president). But it's not like they are on the front lines.

And you can't stop every hack forever. It's not possible or reasonable to expect.

As much as playing defense the best you can is important, I think being able to track where the threats come from and being able to hit back twice as hard is more important.

Cyber warfare is going to be just as important as boots on the ground for the rest of humans existence on this planet.

We should be spending time, money, and resources on it like our national security depends on it. Because it does.

We can launch an offensive attack with manpower/weapons that the world has never seen before, we need to have the same capabilities with cyber warfare. Maybe we already do, like you said, I doubt that is info they will or should share.

Infrastructure Bill is going to be interesting. Seems there are going to be 2 bills.

One is bipartisan at around 1.2T focused on "hard" infrastructure like roads, bridges.

Second is the Dem only one, which would be passed through reconciliation only requiring 50 + 1 (VP Harris). Manchin said he could go along with a 2T plan, Bernie wants 6T. Dem plan would include climate measures, health care, college etc.

The "infrastructure bill" is supposed to pay for itself and then some but idk. Im not keen on passing a 6T bill. 2T sounds fair enough.

6 trillion…what in the actual fuck ? Amazing. Absolutely no way should we waste 6 trillion for these bullshit pet projects…I’m sure they spending on welfare so more lazy ass Democrats can sit home and not work…claiming their oppressed or some other made up bullshit excuse of being a victim


I know what I’m getting G1 for Christmas:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5txDszWQAQNqOB?format=jpg&name=small

Lol get rekt

Infrastructure Bill is going to be interesting. Seems there are going to be 2 bills.

One is bipartisan at around 1.2T focused on "hard" infrastructure like roads, bridges.

Second is the Dem only one, which would be passed through reconciliation only requiring 50 + 1 (VP Harris). Manchin said he could go along with a 2T plan, Bernie wants 6T. Dem plan would include climate measures, health care, college etc.

The "infrastructure bill" is supposed to pay for itself and then some but idk. Im not keen on passing a 6T bill. 2T sounds fair enough.

Wow 2T sounds fair enough??? How did we get to the point where anyone thinks that is sane?

Wow 2T sounds fair enough??? How did we get to the point where anyone thinks that is sane?


By ignoring it for years and years and years. Mitch and the GOP and their “just leave well enough alone” attitude. Now we have major issues across the board as a result of the do nothing GOP.
It’s the same as not paying your bills or taxes for years. All of the sudden you have a mountain of debt. Its just on a larger scale because we are talking about an entire country not a single family home.