The United States recently pointed the finger directly at Russia, accusing it of launching cyber attacks to undermine the upcoming presidential elections. A new report claims that the country is now planning to retaliate in the same manner. The Central Intelligence Agency is reportedly preparing to launch a cyber attack against Russia. Such actions are obviously never really disclosed to the media so it would be best to take this with a grain of salt.
NBC News reports that it has heard from several sources that the White House has asked the CIA to come up with multiple “clandestine” cyber operation options that it can choose from. The sources didn’t go into the specifics about what these options might be but the report mentions that the premier intelligence agency already has a trove of documents that can expose Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “unsavory tactics.”
Several CIA officers are mentioned in the report as claiming that the White House has worked with the CIA on multiple occasions in the past to consider similar options but the government would apparently always drop the idea. The authority to give the go-ahead on such an operation lies with the president and even if he gave the go-ahead at some point, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever hear about it.
It’s not like Russia wouldn’t be keeping its mind open to the possibility of a retaliation by the United States and that it wouldn’t be preparing itself for such an action, one thing we can be sure of is that it’s not going to play out in the public domain.
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