The United States participates in offensive cyberwar operations against Russia, according to the U.S Army general who oversees the National Security Agency and U.S Cyber Command.
Gen. Paul Nakasone admitted that his agencies are involved and supporting Ukraine, which will undoubtedly create pushback from Russia and be met with a response that will entrench the U.S involvement in the war between the two neighboring countries.
Gen. Nakasone told Sky News UK: “We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations.” That includes “offensive hacking operations,” he said.
“My job is to provide a series of options to the secretary of Defense and the president, and so that’s what I do,” Nakasone continued.
The interview was conducted in Estonia, a Baltic nation that is currently the spot for Ukraine support operations.
Nakasone also spoke about Russia making major efforts to launch their own cyber-attacks against Ukraine, “And we’ve seen this with regards to the attack on their satellite systems, wider attacks that have been ongoing, disruptive attacks against their government processes.”
“This is kind of the piece that I think sometimes is missed by the public. It isn’t like they haven’t been very busy; they have been incredibly busy. And I think, you know, their resilience is perhaps the story that is most intriguing to all of us,” he said, in describing Ukraine’s response thus far.
The NSA director referenced the following:
Nakasone previously said his agency deployed a “hunt forward” team in December to help Ukraine shore up its cyber defenses and networks against active threats. But his latest remarks appear to be the first time that a U.S. official said publicly that the U.S. has been involved in offensive cyber operations in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nakasone also rolled out that old doozy about Russia being involved with rigging American elections.
“We had an opportunity to start talking about what particularly the Russians were trying to do in our midterm elections. We saw it again in 2020, as we talked about what the Russians and Iranians were going to do, but this was on a smaller scale,” he said.
“The ability for us to share that information, being able to ensure it’s accurate and it’s timely and it’s actionable on a broader scale has been very, very powerful in this crisis,” he added.
There seems to be a fair bit of groundwork happening, where those in shaky positions of power are already implying that Russia is going to rig the coming Midterm election (but of course this will not be true if Democrats manage to cheat enough to win).
The Hill reported:
“Experts have warned that Russia will likely deploy its cyber operations in the 2022 midterm elections, which may take different forms, including disinformation campaigns and election hacking. The experts also said that Russia’s playbook is to divide the U.S. along party lines and suppress voter turnout.”
The Democrats are also pushing for more mail-in ballots, and as monkeypox fear is spread, it is likely that people will be afraid enough to go along once again with the lie. Let us hope that does not happen again.
We just never learn to stay the hell out of things like this. Eisenhower was right when he said to beware of the military-industrial complex.