So far I haven’t seen any evidence that this attack points to Russia beyond speculative statements. I understand the US looks weak if it doesn’t call someone out though, as the fireye report indicates a nation state was behind this attack. If the US blames China -> political suicide, Iran -> war, Russia -> no consequence.... We are both each others bogeymen.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Russia.

Hey I replied to your comment in the other thread to address your point.

The US is in a new cold war and losing BADLY. In a few years, it will be even more clear that Trump is a traitor and beholden to Putin. It will take a decade to undo the damage if that's even possible. When Biden takes office, the US needs to bring the US's full political weight down upon Putin and completely rethink how "defense" money is spent. If the US doesn't transition away from traditional defense and weapons to cyber-defense and cyber-weapons, the US is doomed. Russia isn't the only one ahead of the US on this. The US is an ostrich with it's head in a hole.

You're being downvoted by the community because it sounds like partisan nonsense, but everyone needs to understand - by downplaying Russia's involvement, Trump is getting his supporters to think there's no need to go after Russia for this attack, which in turn gets many members of Congress to think there's no need to go after Russia for this attack.

There is a serious problem here. Our national interests are not being served by Trump, with countless examples to point at.

Occasionally "partisan nonsense" turns out to be absolutely true. Time will tell. I'd like to hear a rational explanation from Trump supporters as to why he's downplaying this, why it took so long to respond at all, and why he's diverting blame to China and attempting to split up the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. He's contradicting his own people. Who does that benefit?

Not a Trump supporter, but I’ve been trying to find direct evidence as to this attack being from Russia and I haven’t found anything beyond speculative statements. Even if this attack isn’t from Russia, they’re the best country the US can blame because there are no political repercussions if they’re wrong. We don’t conduct any trade with them (unlike China) and have already laid down heavy sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Russia.

Right I saw that but his statement was rather short and vague, my point is I haven’t seen them directly cite how it was Russia. Microsoft beautifully described the attack itself in a blog post recently, I’m pretty ignorant with cyber security but I wonder why they can’t show the connection to Russia with more rigor.

> Even if this attack isn’t from Russia, they’re the best country the US can blame because there are no political repercussions if they’re wrong.

But the US isn't blaming Russia, the media is.

> But the US isn't blaming Russia, the media is.

Mike Pompeo isn't Secretary of State of CNN.

This is so incongruous. First we had Russia in league with Trump, now we have them hacking the government.

Its like the 2016 election had massive fraud due to the results and now the 2020 election couldn't possibly have any fraud at all.

The "hack" of the 2016 election wasn't voter fraud. It was Russia hacking Clinton's emails and the DNC, exactly like Trump asked them to. In addition, Russia engaged in massive ad campaigns using bots and troll farms that benefited Trump. Literally no one ever accused Russia of changing votes or engaging in voter fraud. This is why it's so difficult to discuss anything on the internet. You've done no research at all.

Russia #2 according to Hillary:

https://www.axios.com/16-things-hillary-clinton-blames-for-h...

I really don't think Russia is at fault for these cyberattacks. They learned painfully that they couldn't beat us economically.

China, OTOH, is just now learning that lesson.

Clinton's comment that you highlighted isn't at all incompatible with Mc_Big_G's explanation. The Russian influence on the 2016 election was via use of advertising as a propaganda vector and compromising email servers, not compromising the voting mechanisms or machinery directly.

No reason to risk the blowback from changing even a single vote if you can instead just convince millions of Americans via micro-targeted advertising that a con artist who lives in a gold-plated room atop his skyscraper is somehow their savior from sclerotic government, or that the same con artist is less corrupt than his political opponent (having no political track record in which to generate a history of corruption).