GOP rep: DNC hacking ‘most successful covert action’ in Russian history

Russia’s alleged hacking campaign during the 2016 election “will be considered the most successful covert action operation in the history of Mother Russia,” Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) wrote in an op-ed Sunday.

In an article for the Cipher Brief, Hurd argued that the hacking campaign against Democratic Party email accounts, dubbed “Grizzly Steppe” by investigators, created a “wedge” between President-elect Trump and the intelligence community.

“‘Grizzly Steppe’ created a wedge, whether real or perceived, between the U.S. President, the Intelligence Community (IC), and the American public,” wrote Hurd. 

Intelligence assessments stating that Russian hackers intended to help elect Trump have angered the president-elect, who has repeatedly blasted the agencies on Twitter.

Hurd says responding to the alleged hacking should be a non-partisan issue.

{mosads}“Despite my status as a Republican member of Congress, I believe that a cyber attack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is a cyber attack on one of our democratic institutions. If the United States does not challenge Russia for breaking the rules of the international order, Moscow will do as it pleases,” he wrote.

A slow response from the United States, wrote Hurd, continues a history of inaction by Obama administration tantamount to “roll[ing] out the red carpet,” dating back to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “Russian Reset” and the administration’s policy on Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria. 

The United States’s lack of a cybersecurity framework to handle the Russian efforts to bring chaos to the election is emblematic of the problem, wrote Hurd, because “[a] global strategy needs to be met with a global strategy.”

“Each incident of Russian aggression—and our refusal to confront it—is troubling in isolation,” he wrote. “Taking them all together paints an even bleaker picture of global affairs.”