Joe Biden chose to make the “grave risk to our national security” resulting from the reported cybersecurity hack a central issue of his press conference yesterday, in which he attacked President Donald Trump for his “irrational downplaying of the seriousness of this attack … [which] we cannot let go unanswered.” Citing the convincing “evidence” that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Attorney General William Barr “suggest [sic] that Russia is responsible for this breach,” and Russia’s supposed “long history of reckless and disruptive cyber activities,” Biden demanded that the Trump Administration “make an official attribution” on who ran the “attack.”
Trump has refused to go after Russia, Biden said, but he is so “pleased” to see “leaders in both parties in Congress speak out loudly and clearly on this attack.” He thanked “prominent Republicans in the Senate particularly, for speaking out,” calling it “a sign that with a new administration, we can confront these threats on a bipartisan basis with a united front here at home.”
Biden declared that any administration of his would view cyber threats as a form of “unconventional weapons,” and “work with our allies to establish clear international rules and mechanisms to enforce them and consequences for those that violate them,” something he said President Obama had proposed when the two were in office before. And he promised to put in “the right people” to secure control over U.S. cyber networks.
