About That Russian Cyberattack: “This is looking much, much worse than I first feared”

The president's inspired entrepreneurial leadership  has inspired a wave of 

entrepreneurship across the moderately damp land, 

in the wet sea and in the drier air

Another big failure of the Trump administration has been, and still is, its failure to even detect, much less block, a massive months-long Russian cyberattack that is still ongoing. US officials are still struggling to understand the scope and strategic goal of this monster. 

Being in his usual emergency ops mode, our president is valiantly ignoring it, blaming the Chinese (or Obama or Hillary, etc.) and playing golf, pardoning murderers, thug cronies and various crooks in his last acts of pay-to-play politics. In other words, our treasonous president is generally being his usual happy-go-lucky immoral, incompetent, corrupt self. And, GOP leadership isn't any better. The New York Times writes: 

Three weeks after the intrusion came to light, American officials are still trying to understand whether what the Russians pulled off was simply an espionage operation inside the systems of the American bureaucracy or something more sinister, inserting “backdoor” access into government agencies, major corporations, the electric grid and laboratories developing and transporting new generations of nuclear weapons.

At a minimum it has set off alarms about the vulnerability of government and private sector networks in the United States to attack and raised questions about how and why the nation’s cyberdefenses failed so spectacularly.

Those questions have taken on particular urgency given that the breach was not detected by any of the government agencies that share responsibility for cyberdefense — the military’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, both of which are run by General Nakasone, and the Department of Homeland Security — but by a private cybersecurity company, FireEye.

And, if past performance is any indication of future stupid, culpable players in the private sector will get off with a golden parachute and generally evade responsibility. The company that is believed to be the Russian attack point, the Texas company SolarWinds, relied on software that was produced in Eastern Europe. The NYT comments on SolarWinds' acts of stupid:

SolarWinds, the company that the hackers used as a conduit for their attacks, had a history of lackluster security for its products, making it an easy target, according to current and former employees and government investigators. Its chief executive, Kevin B. Thompson, who is leaving his job after 11 years, has sidestepped the question of whether his company should have detected the intrusion. Some of the compromised SolarWinds software was engineered in Eastern Europe, and American investigators are now examining whether the incursion originated there, where Russian intelligence operatives are deeply rooted. (emphasis added -- attaboy Kevin, sidestep those pesky questions and keep distributing cheap Russian hacker software) 

Publicly, officials have said they do not believe the hackers from Russia’s S.V.R. pierced classified systems containing sensitive communications and plans. But privately, officials say they still do not have a clear picture of what might have been stolen. 

They said they worried about delicate but unclassified data the hackers might have taken from victims like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, including Black Start, the detailed technical blueprints for how the United States plans to restore power in the event of a cataclysmic blackout. 

All Thompson needs to do is discretely, or blatantly, donate to the president's fund that is fighting to subvert the 2020 election, the Sleaze, Lies & Cash for Trump PAC, and he can get a pre-emptive pardon for whatever bad acts or stupid failures to act he was involved in. One has gotta admire captains of industry like that. What a bunch of brave patriots. Looks like maybe we're gonna have to redo the plans for good ole operation Black Start.[1] 

One can tentatively put the cost of this failure at about $1.5 trillion. The president and GOP should be made to pay for the damages since it was their incompetence and stupid that allowed this to happen. Also, Kevin the patriot should also chip in a few million from his hoard. [2]

Honestly, January 20, 2021 cannot come soon enough. 

Footnote:

1. Fortunately, I just ordered some flashlights, so the neighborhood will be in good shape once the lights go out.

2. I know, I know. This was Obama's fault, and made much worse by Hillary and her cabal of baby-eating cannibal pedophiles. LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!