Romney: Trump has a ‘blind spot’ when it comes to Russia

by

“The president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia, so you can expect that to be the response he would get,” Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper about “State of the Union” when asked about a tweet from Trump undermining his secretary. of the state assessment of the massive hack.

“This is a big wake-up call for us and I think we really need to rethink our military and national security readiness when it comes to cyberspace because this is the war of the future and I hope we can build ourselves up to the capacity that you would expect from the strongest, largest nation on Earth, ”the Utah Republican added.

At least half a dozen federal agencies are now known to have been targeted in the breach, including the cyber division of the Department of Homeland Security and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and State. Researchers are still trying to determine what government data may have been accessed or stolen during the hack.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said on Friday that the attack was “a very significant effort” and linked it directly to Russia. But the next day, in his initial public comments on the matter, Trump appeared to undermine those comments in a few tweets, suggesting without evidence that “it might be China” that is responsible. The president also claimed that “everything was under control,” although officials said last week that the attack “poses a great risk” to networks in both the public and private sectors.

Romney similarly said the cyber attack puts the US in a vulnerable position, and suggested the country should respond vigorously.

“What Russia has done is create a capacity to potentially paralyze us in terms of our electricity, our water, our communications,” he told Tapper. “This is the same kind of thing you can do in wartime and so it is extremely dangerous and it is an outrageous affront to our sovereignty and one that will have to be answered with a very strong response, not just rhetorically, as important as that. , but also with a cyber response of the same magnitude or greater. “

Agencies are not ‘optimized for defense’

Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, later told Tapper in the program that federal agencies are not currently ‘optimized for defense’ and that part of the reason his former agency didn’t discover the hack earlier was a bill. those particular authorities to aggressively exterminate opponents have not yet been signed by Trump.

“There is a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act … sitting on the president’s desk waiting for his signature … that CISA, my old desk, would give authorities to really aggressively hunt and search. go to these adversaries and that’s what we’ll have to do to get certainty on the other side of this, ”said the ex-cyber chief.

Analysis: Trump's actions show that he is still only for himself
Trump, who fired Krebs last month after rejecting the president’s baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, has remained preoccupied with his election defeat against Joe Biden for the past few weeks, having only publicly disclosed several days after the report. responded to the cyber hack. .
The president held a contentious Oval Office meeting on Friday in which his attorney Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, held a heated back and forth with some of Trump’s aides over Powell and Flynn’s more outrageous suggestions to reverse the election. to make. .

Flynn had suggested last week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to reverse the election, and at the meeting White House aides pushed back on the idea of ​​appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations made by Trump’s own administration. turned down.

Romney, a frequent Trump critic, condemned Trump’s continued efforts to invalidate the election results.

“It’s really sad and embarrassing in many ways because the president could be writing the final chapter of this administration right now with a victory round on the vaccine,” Romney said during his CNN interview, referring to new coronavirus vaccines. .

This story was updated with additional details on Sunday.

CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi, Kevin Liptak, Jennifer Hansler and Nicky Robertson contributed to this report.

.Source