Obama Ordered Cyberweapons Implanted Into Russia’s Infrastructure
A new report from the Washington Post today quoted a series of Obama Administration officials [5] reiterating their official narrative on Russia’s accused hacking of the 2016 election. While most of the article is simply rehashes and calls for sanctions, they also revealed a secret order by President Obama in the course of “retaliation” for the alleged hacking.
[6]
This previously secret order involved having US intelligence design and implant a series of cyberweapons into Russia’s infrastructure systems, with officials saying they are meant to be activated remotely to hit the most important networks in Russia and are designed to “cause them pain and discomfort [7].”
The implants, developed by the NSA, are designed to hit Russian networks deemed “important to the adversary and that would cause them pain and discomfort if they were disrupted,” a former U.S. official told the Post.
They could be activated in the event that Russia attacked a U.S. power grid or interfered in a future U.S. presidential race.
The US has, of course, repeatedly threatened “retaliatory” cyberattacks against Russia, and promised to knock out broad parts of their economy in doing so. These appear to be the first specific plans to have actually infiltrate Russian networks and plant such weapons to do so.
Despite the long-standing nature of the threats, by the end of Obama’s last term in office this was all still in the “planning” phases. It’s not totally clear where this effort has gone from there, but officials say that the intelligence community, once given Obama’s permission, did not need further approval from Trump to continue on with it, and he’d have actually had to issue a countermanding order, something they say he hasn’t.
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