Russia’s Solar Winds hack calls attention once again to President Trump’s subservient relationship with Vladimir Putin. Trump has not denounced the operation, nor did he ever denounce Russia’s poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
In early September, after Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned, Western leaders like Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel issued sharp condemnations and demanded explanations from Russia’s government. President Trump told reporters he hadn’t yet made up his mind who was responsible. “So, I don’t know exactly what happened. I think that it is tragic. It is terrible. It should not happen. We have not had any proof yet, but we will take a look.” Two and a half weeks later, having given him more than enough time to digest all the intelligence, a reporter asked him again. “Ahh, we’ll talk about that at another time,” Trump demurred. The other time has not come. Three months later, that remains Trump’s last word on the matter. In the wake of news of Russia’s massive cyber-intrusion into a swath of private and public networks, including, alarmingly, agencies controlling the nuclear stockpile, the main lacuna of the story, as it has been for four years, is the president’s subservient relationship with Russia. There is a sharp ongoing debate over just what sort of response Russia’s hacking operation merits. Some members of Congress likened it to an act of war, or at least something close. (Mitt Romney’s comparison was Russian bombers flying undetected over U.S. airspace.) Jack Goldsmith has made the contrarian case that Russia’s hack was merely a larger and more successful version of normal spycraft in which the United States also engages. But even normal spy operations can be met with some kind of government response short of war, or even sanctions. Russia and the United States have frequently expelled officials from the country or given verbal warnings in response to major espionage escalations.
