Russia will help the Democrats next; NSA leads as WH is MIA on cybrsecurity; Russia accessed Facebook’s data, and more

Vladimir Putin’s goal isn’t—and never was—to help the Republican Party, at least in the long run. Boosting Trump’s presidential campaign was a means to Putin’s end: Weakening the West, and exploiting the seams and divisions of the West’s open democracies to undermine our legitimacy and moral standing. Russia accomplished that with great success in 2016—and it’s a strategy that is continuing to pay dividends today. “Their purpose was to sow discontent and mistrust in our elections; they wanted us to be at each others’ throat when it was over,” former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers said last year. “It’s influencing, I would say, legislative process today. That’s wildly successful.”
Just look at the past week of foreign policy, during which Trump slammed NATO, insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, undermined British Prime Minister Theresa May and the government of our closest ally, called Europe a “foe,” and mused out loud about whether he would honor the foundational mutual-defense premise of NATO. Not to mention the bizarre news conference with Putin that the BBC summed up as: “Trump sides with Russia against FBI at Helsinki summit.” It would have been hard for Putin to plan a more effective week to undermine and divide the West if he had orchestrated and stage-managed the entire process from a Kremlin whiteboard.
As former FBI Director James Comey explained Putin’s strategy: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. And so they’re going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible. That’s what this is about, and they will be back. Because we remain—as difficult as we can be with each other—we remain that shining city on the hill. And they don’t like it.”
The Russian attack in 2016 was a nearly perfect asymmetric assault. Although it was expansive and expensive—the Internet Research Agency effort alone employed hundreds of people and cost upwards of $1.25 million a month, according to Mueller’s indictment—it was highly cost-effective, perhaps the most effective intelligence operation in modern history, all achieved at very little political cost to Russia and at little risk to its personnel. As Comey said, “We’re talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion, lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it.”
The next round of election attacks may not even stem from Russia. Other nation-state adversaries—particularly America’s three other leading cyber adversaries, China, North Korea and Iran—have surely taken note. It would be all but espionage malpractice for them not to be out there plotting right now about how to achieve the same results by following Russia’s now tried-and-tested model. That’s especially true as they watch the wishy-washy response to Russia’s attack from the White House: The U.S. government has taken no meaningful action that would discourage Russia from interfering again, in 2018 and 2020—and we’re spending another week consumed by the very question of whether Russia even did attack us. The White House, meanwhile, has even done away with the National Security Council’s cybersecurity coordinator position, downgrading the role that has served as the government’s main point person on cyber—meaning that if an attack did occur this fall, our response might even be slower and less coordinated than the response was in 2016.
These are hardly the actions of a government inclined to rain down meaningful, damaging punishment on someone coming to attack voting machines in Arizona.
There’s a good argument to be made that China, for one, might look at our congressional elections and think that helping the Democrats in 2018 would be best for them. While much of our focus on Trump’s bull-in-a-multilateral-china-shop approach to foreign policy has focused on his attacks on Canada, Europe and Africa, or his inexplicable coddling of Putin and Russia, there’s no country that has benefited more from his presidency than the rising and increasingly aggressive and authoritarian China.
As we retreat from international alliances, China has stepped into that vacuum. Trump’s temper tantrums have given China the time and space to build new relationships around the Pacific Rim, to pursue their mega-One Belt One Road project and to chip away at the international security alliances that have made the Pacific an American lake for 50 years.
One way for China to extend the period of a vacuum of American leadership: Throw the Senate to the Dems, ensuring not just two years of oversight hearings but also fraught nomination fights that would leave the government understaffed and under-resourced and unable to engage thoughtfully with the rest of the world.
Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress might, from a brass tacks Chinese or Russian perspective, guarantee two years of a paralyzed America, a country continuing to look inward, not outward. And Democratic control of Congress could help arrest Trump’s trade war, which actually could be harming China’s growth and rise—and the one thing China can’t afford to lose right now is it’s economic growth. A Democratic House might lead to a polarizing impeachment fight that would further exacerbate America’s political divides and weaken the country globally, at least in the short term.
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If it weren’t for the president’s fragile ego, it would be easy for Republican lawmakers to say, “We don’t think the Russian effort affected the 2016 election, but we can’t take the chance that similar efforts in the future ever succeed.” And then throw themselves into an all-out, no-expense-spared, herculean effort to lock down every county-level voter system, ensure paper backups in every elementary school gymnasium voting precinct, install two-factor authentication on every GOP congressional campaign email account, and pound the social media platforms every day to remove disinformation, minimize bots and trolls and block dark-money ads.
Remember that Dick Cheney led the nation into the War on Terror with the so-called “One-Percent Doctrine,” his idea that. if there was an even a 1 percent chance that terrorists were pursuing a nuclear weapon, “We have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.”
The odds that a foreign government is coming back to attack our election this fall in 2018, or in 2020, are far, far greater than 1 percent.
We should all care about securing our elections against foreign interference, for many patriotic reasons. But even if Trump and the Republican Party’s turn-the-other-cheek approach to Russia’s cyber attacks is based on crass self-interest, they should rethink their silence. There’s no guarantee that today’s allies are tomorrow’s allies.

Trump is being manipulated by Putin. What should we do? (Rep. Will Hurd [R-Texas], New York Times)
Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.
The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans. By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.
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Russia is an adversary not just of the United States but of freedom-loving people everywhere. Disinformation and chaos is a Russian art form developed during the Soviet era that Russia has now updated using modern tools. The result has been Russian disinformation spreading like a virus throughout the Western world. From elections in Britain, France and Montenegro to invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Moscow has pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at spreading disorder and expanding Russian influence in states formerly under the heel of Soviet Communism. These efforts weaken our allies and strengthen those who seek to undermine the democratic order that has helped prevent another world war in Europe since 1945.
Moreover, the threat of Russian meddling in United States elections is not behind us. Just last week, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that “the warning lights are blinking red” that Russia and other adversaries will undertake further cyberattacks on our digital infrastructure. This includes many of the energy companies in my home district in South and West Texas.
Make no mistake, Russian disinformation campaigns are working.
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In this dangerous geopolitical environment, we must be both vigilant and strong in responding to foreign threats. The challenges posed by Russia are no different, and I hope the president shares my conviction that American strength, not weakness, is the best way to preserve a secure world in the face of adversaries like Russia.

Homeland Security chairman warns of Russia’s ambitions (Maritime Executive)
On Wednesday, in a discussion hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) raised concerns about Russia’s growing naval capabilities and ambitions. In addition to a discussion of Russia’s information warfare activities in Ukraine, Europe and the United States, McCaul highlighted the potential threat of Russia’s actions the Middle East.
In addition to the growing Russian presence in the Mediterranean, “for the first time since the end of the Cold War, we have now detected [Russian submarines] off the coast of the United States,” McCaul said. “And they’ve bragged about the fact that they were able to do it without us detecting it. Why is that important? Because they carry the nuclear warheads.”
McCaul described these developments - along with Russia’s cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns abroad - as motivated by a global-scale ambition. “[Putin] wants to regain the glory of the former Soviet empire and take back what’s rightfully Russia’s,” McCaul said. “And that is Ukraine, the breadbasket of Russia. That’s why he annexed Crimea … and he’s using the same model in the Baltic States.”

What we know about Russia’s election hacking (Martin Matishak, Politico)
U.S. officials have laid out a wealth of details about how they believe Moscow executed its plot.

Trump says Russia isn’t still targeting the U.S.—but he’s wrong (Amy Zegart, Defense One)
Putin’s government is waging information warfare against America, but the president is ignoring his intelligence advisers as they sound the alarm.

From the start, Trump has muddied a clear message: Putin interfered (David E. Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg, New York Times)
Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.
On Monday, standing next to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr. Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No” — directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different question.)
Hours later, in a CBS News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia, “because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his presidency.
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Almost as soon as he took office, Mr. Trump began casting doubts on the intelligence on Russia’s election interference, though never taking issue with its specifics.
He dismissed it broadly as a fabrication by Democrats and part of a “witch hunt” against him. He raised unrelated issues, including the state of investigations into Mrs. Clinton’s home computer server, to distract attention from the central question of Russia’s role — and who, if anyone, in Mr. Trump’s immediate orbit may have worked with them.
In July 2017, just after meeting Mr. Putin for the first time, Mr. Trump told a New York Times reporter that the Russian president had made a persuasive case that Moscow’s cyberskills were so good that the government’s hackers would never have been caught. Therefore, Mr. Trump recounted from his conversation with Mr. Putin, Russia must not have been responsible.
Since then, Mr. Trump has routinely disparaged the intelligence about the Russian election interference. Under public pressure — as he was after his statements in Helsinki on Monday — he has periodically retreated. But even then, he has expressed confidence in his intelligence briefers, not in the content of their findings.
That is what happened again this week, twice.
Mr. Trump’s statement in Helsinki led Mr. Coats to reaffirm, in a statement he deliberately did not get cleared at the White House, that American intelligence agencies had no doubt that Russia was behind the 2016 hack.
That contributed to Mr. Trump’s decision on Tuesday to say that he had misspoken one word, and that he did believe Russia had interfered — although he also veered off script to declare: “Could be other people also. A lot of people out there.”

NSA and Cyber Command to coordinate actions to counter Russian election interference in 2018 amid absence of White House guidance (Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post)
The head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm has directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
The move, announced to staff at the National Security Agency last week by NSA Director Paul Nakasone, is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups and comes as President Trump in Helsinki on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “extremely strong and powerful” in denying Russian involvement in the presidential election two years ago.
It is the latest initiative by national security agencies to push back against Russian aggression in the absence of direct guidance from the White House on the issue.
“Nakasone, and the heads of the other three-letter agencies, are doing what they can in their own lanes, absent an overall approach directed by the president,” said Michael V. Hayden, who has headed the NSA and the CIA. “As good as it is, it’s not good enough. This is not a narrowly defined cyberthreat. This is one of the most significant strategic national security threats facing the United States since 9/11.”
On Friday, the same day that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III announced the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for hacking Democrats’ emails, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats issued a new alert on Russia. “The warning lights are blinking red again,” he said, also likening them to the danger signs that presaged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack,” he said, adding that if Russia continues to assault the United States in cyberspace, the government should “throw everything we have got into it.”
On Monday, after Trump’s remarks, Coats felt compelled to issue a statement reiterating the intelligence community’s January 2017 assessment that Russia interfered in the presidential election and noted its “ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.”
The Russian assault on the U.S. election was “an attack from an unexpected direction against a previously unappreciated weakness,” said Hayden, who explores this theme in a new book “The Assault on Intelligence.” “It hit a seam between law enforcement and intelligence, between ‘sigint’ [electronic spying] and ‘humint’ [human spying], between state and federal agencies, between politics and policy.”
The government had no agency, no plan or strategy to counter such a threat, he said.
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month, Victoria Nuland, former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said that, “While the Trump administration has taken some important sanction steps to punish Russia for past actions, strengthen Cyber Command, and harden our electoral infrastructure, it has not launched the kind of presidentially led, whole-of-government effort that’s needed to protect our democracy and security for malign state actors who are intent on weaponizing information and the Internet.”
She called for the establishment of a multiagency fusion center modeled after the National Counterterrorism Center to pool information and resources, to identify and expose and to respond to foreign government attempts to undermine U.S. democracy through disinformation and cyberattack.

Document: Prosecutors seek pretrial detention for Mariia Butina (Victoria Clark, Lawfare)
The Department of Justice has filed a memorandum in support of pretrial detention ahead of Wednesday’s detention hearing for Mariia Butina. Federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint against Butina on July 16 and a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Butina on July 17. The government now seeks to deny Butina bail on the grounds of her “history of deceptive conduct” and the concern that she poses a serious flight risk.

Document: Indictment against Mariia Butina (Quinta Juresic, Lawfare)
A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has returned an indictment against Mariia Butina, the Russian woman arrested for her involvement in an alleged conspiracy to “infiltrate organizations active in U.S. politics in an effort to advance the interests of the Russian Federation.” The indictment, available in full below, charges Butina with failing to register as an agent of a foreign power and with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign power.

Trump decided Russia indictments should come pre-summit, sources say (Chris Strohm and Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to announce new Russian election-hacking indictments before his meeting with Vladimir Putin rather than after — in the hopes it would strengthen his hand in the talks, according to accounts from people familiar with the decision. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein went to Trump last week and offered him the choice: before or after the Putin summit on Monday in Helsinki? Trump chose before, ultimately putting the issue into the spotlight just 72 hours before the high-stakes meeting, the people said.

Trump tanks his own Putin walk-back during one of the “worst moments of his presidency” (Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng, Daily Beast)
If Trump’s explanation for why he botched his Putin press conference didn’t sound believable, there was a reason—even he didn’t buy it.

GOP rep: Putin delivered “classic disinformation” in conference with Trump (Jacqueline Thomsen, The Hill)
Will Hurd (R-Texas), a former CIA officer, on Tuesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was conveying “classic disinformation” during his press conference with President Trump. “Vladimir Putin spouted many of his usual lines that were just completely wrong and he did it standing next to the leader of the free world and there was no rebuttal,” Hurd said on CNN’s “New Day.” “That’s classic disinformation.” The lawmaker added that Trump siding with Putin over the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election is “just unacceptable.” “All of our intelligence agencies have said that, all of the congressional oversight has confirmed that Russians have tried to manipulate our elections, and this is something that we need to be preparing ourselves for the next election,” Hurd said.

U.S. officials “at a fucking loss” over latest Russia sell out (Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast)
The White House’s refusal to rule out turning over former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul to the Russians has current and former State Department officials seeing red.

Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data was accessed from Russia, MP says (Donie O’Sullivan, Drew Griffin, and Patricia DiCarlo, CNN Tech)
The now infamous Facebook data set on tens of millions of Americans gathered by a Cambridge University scientist for a firm that went on to work for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was accessed from Russia, a British member of parliament tells CNN.