Solarwinds 'Hack' causes DNI Ratcliffe to miss December 18th deadline on foreign election Interference. Not Good.
The most worrying piece of information dropped late last night. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced that it will miss the December 18th deadline to report on foreign interference into the 2020 US presidential election. This report was to be produced no later than 45 days after the election date.
To many, this is the last opportunity for President Donald Trump, to somehow grab victory from the jaws of defeat. The delay in the production of this report does not help his cause.
Now, many Trump supporters are taking this announcement as a good sign, that it signals the ODNI have so much evidence of foreign interference in the election they just need more time to verify and compile it all. I am not at all confident in this type of synopsis.
Earlier in the week, the intelligence services announced that the federal government had a mega security breach of it’s network infrastructure and all government agencies were advised to shutdown a network monitoring piece of software called Solarwinds.
Solarwinds ostensibly ensures the integrity of an organization’s IT infrastructure. It monitors and reports problems. It is not unlike a cyber fact-checker in that regard. And similiar to the fact checkers in our news and social media, Solarwinds, it seems, has been hijacked. The scale of the breach would indicate not just foreign interference but foreign government interference. Just how long have foreign actors had access to Solarwinds and how much data have they stolen?
This could take weeks if not MONTHS to quantify.
This ‘hack’ is most probably the reason, for the delay, in the final production and release of the ODNI report on foreign interference into the 2020 election. The response to the Solarwinds breach is being coordinated between ODNI, CISA and the FBI. Obviously all three are also involved heavily in the production of the foreign election interference report. Hence, yesterday’s press release regarding the delay.
The signal, as opposed to the noise, of this infrastructure breach is that the scope of it must be so large as to require a massive investment of human capital to address it - from all the intelligence agencies. In normal circumstances you would expect that the ODNI would be able to both produce the election interference report and handle a security breach of government technology infrastructure.
Now, It could well be that the Solarwinds hack will end up in the actual ODNI report, that this breach of government tech infrastructure is itself part of the 2020 election interference campaign. What we can say with some confidence is that the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, is a big Trump ally. So I would expect the report to be produced soon - unlike the hugely disappointing AG Barr/Durham probe.
Ratcliffe, proved his stellar loyalty to President Trump, over and over again, during the 2019 House of Representaives impeachment donkey show. He was one of the loudest critics of Adam Schiff and the sham show trial that was performed in front of the House Intelligence committee and US public a little over a year ago.
That impeachment saga had one under-reported benefit for President Trump that may be the saving of him. It conveyed to him the people in the Republican party that genuinely had his back and John Ratcliffe is definitely one of that number. Others include:
Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Mark Meadows and Lee Zeldin.
It is fortunate that President Trump has such a crucial supporter in the ODNI at this critical moment. I suspect a Barr-type individual holding down this office might slow walk the report and Solarwinds hack until January 21st, i.e. past a point where the information garnered could be used.
Even as it is though, Director Ratcliffe will have a difficult task ensuring that the intelligence agencies under his remit bend to his will and timing. As we have seen, the first deadline has been missed. The President needs this foreign election interference report before Christmas for it to be of use to him in his continuing struggle to prove election fraud and thereby set-up a second term in office.
Written by: G
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