Enlarge / Will Barack Obama order a major cyber-reprisal against Russia for election hacks before he leaves office? A CNN report suggests the response will be a softball. (credit: Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
[Update 2:20 PM ET: The Obama administration has announced sanctions against Russia, including the ejection of 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the US, and legal and financial sanctions against Russia’s GRU and FSB intelligence services and top military officers. More details will follow in a separate story.]
According to a CNN report, officials within the Obama administration have said that retaliatory measures against Russia for interference in the US election will happen very soon—perhaps as early as today. But the response is expected to be “proportional” and include diplomatic measures and sanctions. It’s not clear whether there will be any sort of response in kind against the Russian leadership’s computer systems and data.
A proportional response, however, likely won’t do anything to deter future efforts to use hacking and information campaigns to affect US politics or other aspects of government. That’s according to Dave Aitel, the founder of the security firm Immunity and a former NSA research scientist. In a recent interview with Ars, Aitel said he believed that the US would take some sort of retaliatory action in the final weeks of Obama’s presidency. “We’re in a unique position where [President Barack] Obama can lay a haymaker down,” he said, “and then Trump has to stand up. And Obama has nothing to restrain him.”