Biden must call out Putin’s clandestine war

The following is from a Washington Post editorial:

American diplomats and intelligence officers were targeted in Cuba and China with a mysterious attack that began with a loud noise, a pain in the ears, a headache and dizziness. It was followed by visual problems, tinnitus, cognitive difficulty and lasting health troubles. Two CIA officers were hit with the same malady while traveling in Australia and Taiwan. A Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Talibanlinked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan — including U.S. troops. A prominent U.S. cybersecurity firm was targeted in a breach that saw the looting of valuable hacking tools. The Democratic National Committee's computers were raided by Russian military intelligence to disrupt the 2016 election.

All the above incidents occurred between 2016 and this year. While there are murky aspects and unanswered questions about each of them, taken together they look increasingly like a concerted effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to wage asymmetric warfare against the United States. It is warfare using unusual weapons — including directed, pulsed radio frequency energy— as well as cyberattacks.

Putin may be seeking to score political goals, such as forcing Americans out of Afghanistan, disrupting the U.S. election or spoiling U.S. rapprochement with Cuba. Or his attacks may serve tactical ends: weakening U.S. cyberdefenses; tormenting U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers serving abroad.

President Donald Trump, for reasons that have been mysterious, never confronted Putin about his dirty tricks. Presidentelect Joe Biden must do so. Although there are important issues to tackle with Russia, including an extension of the New START accord, Biden should make clear to Putin that he will not tolerate these or any other attacks on Americans abroad by Russia's unleashed intelligence agencies.

A study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for the State Department on the Cuba and China attacks has now been released. The authors declared that the misery inflicted on the U.S. officials is “consistent” with directed pulse radio frequency energy. They recalled “significant research in Russia/ussr into the effects” of such directed energy in the past.

Like a good veteran KGB officer, Putin offers denials. But it is time for these black operations by the Kremlin to be seen for what they are and called out by the new U.S. president.