President Trump’s public skepticism about his own intelligence services’ conclusions on Russian hacking in the 2016 election, combined with an ad hoc approach to last week’s summit with Vladimir Putin, created a political fiasco for the administration and a missed opportunity to address serious cybersecurity challenges with Russia.
Trump, at a July 16 press conference with Putin in Helsinki, cited the Russian’s “strong and powerful” denial of any role in election meddling during their one-on-one meeting, seeming to offer that as a counter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats’ report to the president on Russian interference in the election.
The next day, amid a firestorm of bipartisan criticism, Trump expressed his faith in U.S. intelligence and clarified comments that directly questioned Russian involvement, saying, “I accept our intelligence community conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.”
But the president added, “Could be other people also; there’s a lot of people out there.”
By the following morning he once again cast doubt on the idea that Russia was behind the hacks on Democratic Party entities.
Sources said the damage was done at this point, on at least two fronts: The U.S. intelligence community — on the front lines of the global cybersecurity fight — was severely rattled by Trump’s comments, and there was little tangible gain on cybersecurity from the summit itself.
“A remarkable display of incompetence,” commented one industry source who works closely with federal authorities on cyber issues.
Other well-connected sources said Trump’s comments reverberated through cybersecurity circles.
“The [intelligence] community is pretty unhappy,” said one source who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations. “No silver lining either. … It’s all bad. Morale is truly affected.”
The episode prompted Coats to put out an extraordinary statement defending the work of U.S. intelligence agencies against criticism from the president.
“The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the president and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security,” Coats said in a statement not cleared in advance by the White House.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said: “The Senate Intelligence Committee has reviewed the 2017 [intelligence community] assessment and found no reason to doubt its conclusion that President Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. elections with the goal of undermining faith in our democratic process. Russia has conducted a coordinated cyberattack on state election systems, and hacked critical infrastructure. They have used social media to sow chaos and discord in our society. … Any statement by Vladimir Putin contrary to these facts is a lie and should be recognized as one by the President.”
Meanwhile, the summit itself appeared unstructured and produced no breakthroughs or publicly acknowledged next steps on cybersecurity.
Amid the uproar over Trump’s comments, the White House last week put out a fact sheet on “protecting our elections and standing up to Russia’s malign activities.” The document pointed to Trump’s 2017 cybersecurity executive order, work underway by the Department of Homeland Security to help states defend their election systems, and expulsions of Russians and various sanctions and legal actions, among other steps taken to counter Russian aggression.
But it did not contain any new initiatives or mention any commitments from Russia to alter its behavior.
Just days before the Putin summit, Trump signed a NATO declaration that sharply targeted Russian cyber aggression, after the U.S. president’s high-decibel rhetoric toward the European defense partners before and during a NATO summit had ratcheted up concerns that he might cause irreparable damage to the alliance on the eve of his Putin meeting.
The president displayed “a destructive attitude during the NATO summit that could undermine his position going into the Putin summit,” commented former State Department cyber coordinator Christopher Painter. “But the communique had strong language on cybersecurity and cyber threats. That was all very good.”
Painter added, “The communique communicated a position of strength. The question is, how much of that will Trump communicate to Russia.”
But the NATO statement appeared to be overshadowed, for the president, by the Justice Department’s July 13 indictment of twelve Russian military intelligence officials for hacking activities aimed at the 2016 elections.
Trump at his press conference with Putin lambasted the Mueller investigation that produced the indictments and seemed intrigued by Putin’s suggestion that U.S. officials interview the indicted Russians while Russian officials interview U.S. intelligence officers in a separate matter.
One overarching problem in Helsinki, according to various observers, was that there was little preparation or stage-setting for the discussion with Putin on where to go next on cyber issues.
By contrast, Painter noted that former President Obama raised cyber issues for the first time at a 2013 summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, kicking off a two-year process that led to a landmark cyber agreement between the leaders in 2015.
“The China deal wasn’t a one-off,” Painter said. “It was the result of a long-term effort and constant pressure. The key was consistency.”
Looking at the current situation with Russia, Painter said, “So far with Russia, the cyber issue has been raised inconsistently and in odd ways.”
A firm message on where the United States draws the line on behavior in cyberspace “must come from the president and must be constantly reinforced from throughout the government,” Painter said.
Charlie Mitchell is editor of InsideCybersecurity.com, an exclusive service covering cybersecurity policy from Inside Washington Publishers, and author of “Hacked: The Inside Story of America’s Struggle to Secure Cyberspace,” published by Rowman and Littlefield.
