US general says efforts to combat Russian meddling aren't going well
The US has no unified approach to defend against a digital incursion, he said.
Despite the Mueller investigation indicting 13 Russian nationals who ran social media accounts across multiple social media platforms to interfere with the 2016, the US has no unified multi-agency strategy to protect against Russian cyberattack. That's according to the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, in a meeting with the the Senate Armed Services Committee today.
"I don't believe there is an effective unification across the interagency, with the energy and the focus that we could attain," Scaparrotti told the committee, according to Reuters.
And despite the US spending over a year peeling apart Russia's influence on the 2016 presidential election, Scaparrotti wasn't satisfied with the US government's understanding of the country's cyber infrastructure. "We're getting a better understanding of it, (but) I would not characterize it as a good picture at this point, not satisfactory to me," he said.
Without comprehending the full scope of Russian capabilities, there continues to be surprise when the country does things like hack the Olympics, which the White House condemned. But the country's online meddlers didn't just infest social media -- they slipped into forums like Reddit and collected personal data on US citizens, too. Without a coordinated strategy, this infiltration could be repeated during the 2018 midterm election, which is just eight months away.
