President Trump is attacking his own intelligence officials via Twitter after they openly contradicted his ongoing false claims during Tuesday's congressional testimony regarding threats around the world.
Trump is focused on Syria, Iran, and North Korea and has not commented yet on the matter of ongoing Russian aggression detailed in the IC's threat assessment report.
Mr. Trump famously clashed with the spy agencies over their conclusions that Russia was behind the hacking and influence operations that marred the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, the new director of the Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone, told the Senate committee that the American efforts to blunt Russian interference in the recent midterm elections had been successful, though he gave no details — an effort Mr. Trump has never discussed.
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“We’re now living in yet another new age, a time characterized by hybrid warfare, weaponized disinformation, all occurring within the context of a world producing more data than mankind has ever seen,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee’s chairman.
Foreign enemies “want to see the United States weakened, if not destroyed,” he said. “They want to see us abandon our friends and our allies. They want to see us lessen our global presence. They want to see us squabble and divide. But their tools are different.”
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The written threat review also found that Russia’s ability to conduct cyberespionage and influence campaigns remains similar to its efforts in the 2016 American presidential election. But, it said, the bigger concern is that “Moscow is now staging cyberattack assets to allow it to disrupt or damage U.S. civilian and military infrastructure during a crisis.”
It specifically noted Russia’s planting of malware in the United States electricity grid. Russia already has the ability to bring the grid down “for at least a few hours,” the review concluded, but is “mapping our critical infrastructure with the long-term goal of being able to cause substantial damage.”
Taken together, the report paints a picture of threats vastly different from those asserted by Mr. Trump.
Some Republicans appear willing to break with the president on national security matters but they are not doing enough to stop his pro-Putin agenda.
NYT:
Nearly two weeks ago, more than two-thirds of House Republicans voted to overturn the Trump administration’s move to ease sanctions on Russian companies linked to a prominent oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska. And last week even more House Republicans voted to bar Mr. Trump from withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as he privately suggested to aides several times last year.
The administration quietly lifted the sanctions on Deripaska's companies Sunday afternoon, and a member of the Trump Transition Team joined the board of one of them.
On North Korea and Iran, Intelligence Chiefs Contradict Trump (NYT)
A Growing Chorus of Republican Critics for Trump’s Foreign Policy (NYT)