Trump world's Russian entanglement; NATO practicing cyber-warfare games; Senate's Russia probe to extend deep into 2019, and more

Meanwhile, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties rode the golden elevators up Trump Tower in Manhattan for the now infamous meeting with Trump’s oldest son, son-in-law and his campaign chairman after promising to dish dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
And campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was working to arrange a trip to Russia for Trump through a contact in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It would be rare for an American presidential campaign to have even a single business contact with a foreign government, let alone an adversarial one like Russia’s. That day alone there were three, and over the course of Trump’s bid for the White House, there were many more.

How Trump, ISIS and Russia have mastered the internet as a weapon – a review of P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Leigh Giangreco, Washington Post)
When lawmakers hauled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Capitol Hill for a hearing on privacy and abuse of data in April, the only clear theme to emerge from their line of bizarre questions was the Senate’s complete misunderstanding of social media. Instead of unraveling how Russian disinformation thrived on Facebook and influenced the 2016 election, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wasted his given time asking basic questions about the platform’s business model, while Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) took a misguided tour of the messaging app WhatsApp.
In a more innocent time, the gang of clueless senators would have made for an amusing montage on “The Daily Show.” But in the age of information warfare, it showed that our leaders had little grasp on the greatest existential threat to American democracy.

Russian cyber operations: State-led organized crime (James Sullivan, Royal United Services Institute [RUSI]
The author, a research fellow in cyber threats and cyber security at RUSI, writes:

·  “The recent activities of … Russia’s military intelligence, otherwise known by its traditional … acronym of the GRU—on the territories of the U.K. and other European countries are by now well documented.”
·  “However, less media and public attention is paid to the GRU’s hostile cyber activities, despite the fact that last month, the U.K. and its allies directly attributed a series of hostile cyber attacks to the Russian military intelligence service.”
·  “The GRU has been deploying malware with delivery mechanisms commonly used in cybercrime campaigns, which meant that the recent cyber attacks were initially perceived to be criminal in nature (rather than state-led). Added to this, Russian organizations have been part of the collateral damage … making attribution even more complicated. The GRU may seek to outsource more of its malicious cyber activity to organized criminals for greater plausible deniability.”
·  “Attribution alone is unlikely to deter the Russian state from carrying out cyber attacks.”
·  “[T]he most effective tool to tackle the threat will be robust cyber risk-management strategies at both national and organizational level, together with diplomatic, legal and economic measures to deter future attacks.”

Russia and Vladimir Putin tried to interfere in midterm elections, secretary of defense says (Cristina Maza, Newsweek)
Russia continues to try to influence U.S. elections and even tried to “muck about” in the U.S. midterms in November, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Saturday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum in California, Mattis said that the U.S. relationship with Russia is getting worse and that U.S. intelligence agencies had seen a “continued effort” to meddle in U.S. elections and internal affairs.
“I don’t know that the effort has increased but it has continued,” Mattis told Fox news. “He [Putin] tried again to muck around in our election this last month, and we are seeing a continued effort on those lines.”

MI6 chief wants new generation of spies to help fight against Russia in cyber war (Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun)
The spymaster’s declaration comes as his foreign intelligence service rapidly expands from 1,600 to 2,400 personnel

Derelict Scottish mill is shadowy hub in UK’s fight against Putin’s propaganda machine (Scottish Daily Record)
Gateside Mills in rural Fife is the official headquarters of the controversial Institute for Statecraft (IFS) – a “think tank” set up to combat Russian disinformation.

NATO practicing cyber-warfare games (C. Mitchell Shaw, New American)
To address the growing concern of cyber-warfare, NATO has launched the “Cyber Coalition 2018” in Estonia — a mere 30 miles from the Russian border. The exercise is a “War Game” focused on defense and counter-attack in the arena of digital battle.

How Europe can push back against Putin’s aggression (Guy Verhofstadt, EUObserver)
Russia’s recent intimidation and violence against Ukraine - the capturing of three Ukrainian naval vessels and the blockade of the strategically important Kerch Strait - is yet another breach of the international world order and an attack on European values.
From the Salisbury nerve agent attack, to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Russia’s president, driven though he may be by falling poll ratings, is testing Western unity and our ability to respond.
It would be highly regrettable if the global response to Russia’s military aggression against its neighbour consisted of a slap on the wrist.

Russian hackers haven’t stopped probing the U.S. power grid (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
“There’s still a concentrated Russian cyber espionage campaign targeting the bulk of the U.S. electrical grid,” says FireEye analyst Alex Orleans. “The grid is still getting hit … [and] we likely haven’t fully uncovered the extent to which they have gotten into the wires.”

Senate’s Russia probe to extend deep into 2019, chairman says (Steven T. Dennis, Bloomberg)
The Senate’s bipartisan Russia probe could stretch well into the first half of 2019, according to Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s fatigue with investigations of his campaign.