By Brian Becker

June 19, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  Five years before Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel to investigate the allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and had conspired with the Trump campaign, the Pentagon had been waging secret cyberattacks against Russia’s electrical grid. The cyberwar against Russia began in 2012. The timing of the cyberwar against Russia is significant. It was thus not triggered by Russia’s intervention in Syria (2015) or the Crimea referendum in June 2014 that resulted in Crimea leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia.

During the past year the attacks have accelerated “with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before,” according to a new report published by the New York Times based on three months of private interviews with Pentagon officials.

Officials in the Pentagon decided to conceal the details of the operation from Donald Trump out of fear that he might not allow the more advanced offensive attacks to take place. Barack Obama, according to the report, had initially not allowed a full out offensive cyberwar. Obama signed off on the less aggressive cyberwar tactics against Russia but feared that an escalation would make the U.S. infrastructure too vulnerable to counter-attack.

Was Bolton in the Pentagon’s loop?

Trump was kept in the dark but one could reasonably conclude that war lunatic Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the religious zealot who occupies the post of top diplomat, are fully plugged in by the military cabal that now functions as the real power in Washington.

“Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid,” two unnamed Trump officials told the NY Times [because] “he might countermand it…” Who are those two officials?

An important backdrop for this alarming revelation is the Pentagon new military strategy/doctrine announced in December 2017 that profoundly reorients U.S. military and foreign policy so as to prepare the country for “major power” conflict with Russia and China in the coming years.

This is offensive not defensive war

The New York Times article makes explicit that the cyberattacks against Russia are an offensive, not defensive, operation. They are an act of war. Using Orwellian language the commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, characterized the operation as a “defend forward” measure against Russia penetrating “deep in an adversary’s networks,” according to the Times.