First thoughts

WE’RE STILL watching clips of the press conferences and reading through the news accounts, but our first thoughts about the Biden-Putin summit this week came from these deep-in-the-story paragraphs from a wire report. You may have read them, too:

“During the discussion, U.S. officials also submitted a list to Russian counterparts containing 16 U.S. sectors that Washington believes should be ‘out of bounds’ and ‘off limits’ when it comes to destructive cyber-warfare attacks.

“The list includes the food and agriculture sector, financial services, communications, defense industrial base and other industries. ‘This was given as a list to President Putin,’ said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“Biden said the two agreed to task experts in both countries ‘to work on specific understandings of what’s off limits and to follow up on specific cases’ in each country.”

But if the West in general and the Americans in particular are giving lists to the Russians about what is “off limits” to cyber-attacks, doesn’t that imply that there are certain situations in which we’d put up with them? Why not just send the message that the Russian government shouldn’t protect criminal computer hackers who try to get into any American system or industry? Setting boundaries about what’s out of bounds implies that there is something in-bounds.

Who thought this policy would be wise?