Will U.S. Sanctions On Russia Impact ISS Operations?
Obama orders Russia expulsions, sanctions for interference in 2016 election, Reuters
“President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and sanctioned Russian intelligence officials who Washington believes were involved in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election. The measures, taken during the last days of Obama’s presidency, mark a new low in U.S.-Russian relations which have deteriorated over serious differences on Ukraine and Syria. “These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior,” Obama said in a statement from vacation in Hawaii.”
Joint DHS, ODNI, FBI Statement on Russian Malicious Cyber Activity, FBI
“This activity by Russian intelligence services is part of a decade-long campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. government and its citizens. These cyber operations have included spearphishing, campaigns targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations; theft of information from these organizations; and the recent public release of some of this stolen information.”
– Cold War Echoes On Earth And In Space, Earlier post
– How Long Will ISS Remain Isolated From Terrestrial Politics?, Earlier post
It’s important for the left hand to know what the right hand is doing, but never to interfere. Public revelation of Russian hacking and interference in the election will hurt Russia on the world stage, Breaking off collaboration in an unrelated area like space will only make us appear petulant, while continued collaboration will give many individual Russians the understanding that we are not blundering fools and that possibly it is their government that isn’t putting its cards on the table.
Mr. Trump is in a tough spot. If he admits the accusations of Russian interference are true, he risks looking illegitimate. If he continues to disparage the intelligence agencies that reported the Russian actions, he will be inviting more of the same. Moreover, if our own government starts playing fast and loose with the truth, and we get used to saying it’s OK, because we like having a strong leader, and if our leaders start disparaging press reports they don’t like, then before long our credibility will also suffer and the world will not pay attention to our accusations.
The “Russian interference in the election” consisted of them leaking internal Democrat Party e-mails which showed John Podesta and many top Dems in a very bad light.
You may have noticed — I certainly have — that all the complaints from the Dem side revolve around how the e-mails became public, not their content.
That’s significant. As any cop will tell you, when a suspect responds to an accusation with questions about process (“Who told you that?”) and not a denial of the substance of the accusation, then he’s almost certainly guilty.
In this case, my hunch is that all will be hunky-dory on the ISS in the interregnum. In due time, there will be a new NASA Administrator and cooperation in space will continue.
and how many republican emails showing republicans in a bad light were released?
None, possibly because of better communications security. The Dems, including HRC, acted extremely foolishly in this regard.
Lesson for all of us.
I agree with you about the DNC and Mr. Podesta. My system has been hacked three times in about 24 years, and each time it was due to an oversight on the part of the administrator, i.e. me, in not updating software to eliminate known exploits.
However HRC’s server was properly secured and was never hacked and was actually more secure than the unclassified State Department email system system her email would otherwise have been stored on, since it used the same security procedures and software but far fewer “administrators” had access to it.
None that I know of. Wikileaks seems to have only received info from the internal source at the DNC about DNC matters. GOP loyalty and security seems to be better.
ETA: Actually, I seem to recall some internal info regarding Cruz trying to engineer some unethical outcomes with GOP delegates going into the convention.
As I said, I am genuinely interested in any evidence you can cite to support the assertion that the emails posted by Wikileaks were provided by a source within the DNC. I’ve googled several blogs saying this but none provided any evidence.
It’s not my goal to inject politics into this discussion, however if you wish to do so I feel obligated to explain that Mr. Trump invited the Russians to steal not just Democratic Party emails but also emails from Secretary Clinton’s email server. Mr. Trump also claims the evidence demonstrated by both the FBI and CIA of Russian actions is false. Trump presents no evidence at all to support his claim yet his supporters uncritically accept his statements.
Of course, the Russians did not release the material they collected from Republican campaign servers, since it was their goal to help Mr. Trump. This is clearly in their interests considering his admiration for Mr. Putin as a “strong leader”, following his conquest of Crimea, eastern Ukraine and (with particular brutality) Syria.
Had this been the plot of “The Manchurian Candidate” it would have been rejected as unbelievable.
To be fair, very little actual evidence of Russian government involvement has been released. It’s not just Trump and Putin who are asking people to uncritically accept their statements.
I’ve had my own server on the internet since 1992 (pre-html), so I have had some experience with hacking attacks and with tediously going through the logs and piecing together what happened. To me the evidence released in unclassified form by the intelligence community, including the distinctive intrusion signature, is consistent with a professional and well-funded attack originating in Russia. This is not the work of amateurs. Unfortunately the evidence won’t fit in a tweet, so it may be that few Americans will read it.
https://www.us-cert.gov/sit…
I particularly take issue with Mr Trump’s assertion that: “The whole age of [the] computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on.” http://time.com/4619337/don…
This remark seems calculated to encourage the public to reject critical thinking entirely and just accept anything that appeals to our preconceptions and emotions as the “truth”.
In my experience the age of the computer has made it possible for each of us to know what is going on more accurately than at any time in the past, if only we are willing to think rationally and examine each issue from all sides, objectively and with an open mind.
I also didn’t think much Mr. Trump’s remark about computers making “it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on.” I do think it’s gotten harder, not easier, in the past five or ten years. The quantity of information, and the quantity of bogus information, has increased to the point where rational thinking and objectivity isn’t enough. Spending a fair amount of time finding what you want in a flood of data, and verifying that information, is also necessary. Or maybe my ability to search and filter is just too old fashioned.
But, in terms of the evidence of Russian government hacking, the document you cite (released yesterday) is all the evidence we’ve seen. Out of 13 pages, one page is an introduction with claims that the Russian government is involved in hacking. Two pages describe the methods allegedly use by groups identified as APT28 and APT29. The last sentence of page three simply states that “actors” (and only by implication APT28 and APT29) are associated with Russian intelligence. Page four is a list of what they claim are “alternate names” for “Reported Russian Military and Civilian Intelligence Services.” The rest of the document is devoted to advice on preventing attacks.
That’s not evidence. That’s more detailed claims and allegations. I’d agree that the described methodology implies the groups involved are professional and well funded.
I would be willing to believe the same groups (or groups using essentially identical methods) have hit other targets, selected in a way which appears to make them pro-Russian. But I have not seen any evidence to this affect, simply the statement that evidence exists. I’d also be willing to believe these groups have been traced back to Russia (although, again, I’ve only seen the claim, not the evidence.)
I’d really like to know how they can prove the attacks originated there. You can ssh into a computer in Russia from anywhere in the world. So, honestly, I can’t say I’ve seen compelling evidence that the Russian government was involved. I can see a motive, and some suggestive information, but I have not seen any solid facts or proof.
I’ve seen a fair amount of amateur hacking from the point of view of the target. I don’t absolve the Democratic Party officials. According to press reports the FBI warned the DCC about Russian hacking attempts months ago. With better security they might have prevented the intrusion. And had Mr. Podesta been more suspicious of the forged message that intercepted his password, his gmail account might not have been compromised.
But an insider would have had much easier ways to access the emails and would be unlikely to be familiar with such sophisticated external cyberattacks.
The DCC server wasn’t even attacked directly from Russia, but from a computer compromised from Russia in a third country. An American hacker would not have needed to compromise a Russian computer. If for some obscure reason he decided to do so, and his goal had been to make it appear the Russians were hacking the DCC, he would have attacked the DCC server directly from the Russian IP address. However it would have been simpler just to make a direct attack from the US using a forged Russian domain.
The FBI/CIA report provides a consistent and credible explanation for the reported cyberattacks.
Well, if they used one cut out (a bit of information I did not find in the FBI/DHS report), they could have used more than one. I could invent a reason, and if this ever ended up in court (very unlikely) I would expect a defense attorney to make up a good one. I guess that’s where we are talking past each other. I’m thinking in terms of evidence which would stand up in court. You are probably thinking in terms of more proof than 140 characters from the President-elect. I’d agree with that.
I agree legal proof is difficult, but international incidents involving spy agencies don’t usually end up in court… The bizarre chain of events by which the information was delivered to Wikileaks could only have been devised by a Soviet spy from the Cold War era.
The Democrats and the Obama administration are the entities making the initial, and thus far unsupportable claim of Russian “hacking”. Even Wikileaks (whom actually dropped the info) says it was an internal leaker from the DNC that supplied the server data. You’re relying on the cache of the Obama administration to tell yourself that this data was “hacked”, hoping it turns out to be true.
You state that the “Russians did not release” similar info from GOP servers, under merely the assumption that the DNC and Obama are telling the truth. Considering that Wikileaks has released the only verifiably true information from the server, and the opposition has spun and bluffed from the very beginning of all of this, I think you’re backing the wrong horse.
As far as the ISS goes, unless the Obama administration itself does something radical to alter the legal framework of ISS cooperation, the ‘nauts are all likely rolling their eyes as most of us are right now, waiting for it to all settle down.
Possibly you could document your assertion that Wikileaks says the leak came from the DNC? Possibly you are referring to this, an anonymous blog that contains only opinions? http://www.washingtonsblog….
I’ve examined the wikileaks website without finding any suggestion that the information came from the DNC. As I said, unless we stop claiming that our opinions are facts, meaningful debate is difficult to say the least.
That accusation came from a former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray.
http://www.washingtontimes….
“WikiLeaks figure says ‘disgusted’ Democrat leaked Clinton campaign emails”
There are a few problems with that story.
First, the source is a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan. It does also say he is a former associate of WikiLeaks’ founder and that he lost his post for misconduct. I can think of better sources on US DNC employees’ conduct.
Despite never saying he actually works for WikiLeaks, it implies he was personally handed the information. Odd since it was in electronic format. Worse, it says the handoff was in a wooded area near American University. If that’s the Washington D.C. campus, I grew up near there. If memory serves, there are no wooded areas within about a mile of it.
Finally the Washington Times story gives the Daily Mail as their source. The Mail is a British tabloid which mainly publishes celebraty gossip and the sort of stories which used to appear in the Weekly World News.
If I didn’t find the FBI/DHS report compelling evidence, this story certainly isn’t going to do it for me.
I agree. Murray is a once-promising British diplomat who was dismissed for making unauthorized (although possibly accurate) statements about torture of political prisoners by a US-supported regime in Uzbekistan, and maybe also for spending too much time drinking at strip clubs in Tashkent. A crusader for what he sees as the truth, but also unreliable and with a history of mental illness. Someone who could easily be talked into a role as a whistleblower, because that is the role in which he sees himself.
Now, “someone” contacted him out of the blue in Britain and arranged for him to physically travel across the Atlantic from the UK to Washington DC just to go to a “wooded area” where he met an “intermediary” he did not know, to be handed a physical package that he was told came from “disgusted DNC members” who he also does not know, supporters of Bernie with “legal access” (by unstated means) to the personal gmail account of HRC campaign manager John Podesta.
Murray apparently has no idea who the courier was, let alone the original sources, yet he confidently says “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”
Murray would have been unheard of to disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters such as myself. His association with Assange was similarly obscure until now. But apparently both tidbits were well known in diplomatic and intelligence circles.
Now, why on Earth would a naive Bernie Sanders supporter have gone to such lengths just to get some embarrassing information to the US press, when the information was already in electronic format? On the other hand, if you were a well known former Soviet KGB officer, now perhaps a national leader, and you wanted to provide some hacked information to Wikileaks to be released to the US press with no obvious link to yourself, who would you call?
====================================
“Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said in the report by the Daily Mail that he flew to Washington for a clandestine handoff with one of the email sources in September.
He said he received a package in a wooded area near American University. “Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” Mr. Murray told the British newspaper. “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”
Here is an article that came up:
https://www.intellihub.com/…
It discusses and quotes a number of Wikileaks contacts, including Assange himself, stating that the DNC info was not received from Russia.
I don’t believe that’s true. I’m not aware of Trump actually asking anyone to hack active servers. That was a media creation. The closest thing was regarding information the Russians might have gotten in the past from Clinton’s defunct server presumably then disconnected and under FBI control.
I heard Trump make the remarks. He asked the Russians to give him Clinton’s missing emails. He presumably thought it was a joke, but it sounded like he clearly wouldn’t mind if they actually did it.
If you don’t think every country capable of hacking into other countries’ computer systems does this you are sadly mistaken. US officials visiting France a few years back were told not to turn on or use their Blackberries because French intelligence was hacking them. Any nation’s intelligence agency that doesn’t do this is purely negligent.
Could you explain the difference between this (hacking computers to find embarrassing or politically harmful information) and breaking into offices to plant bugs and acquire similar information? The later because quite an issue, when the president’s reelection campaign got caught doing it in 1972.
Well, there’s a small difference. One can give you info in real time, the other is delayed.
Welcome to the world of 2016.
I assume you are familiar with the legal precedent the 1972 election set? The one about a president knowing about someone doing this sort of thing, and getting caught trying to cover up his involvement?
The motives of a foreign power, versus an individual or group of hackers, is the real issue. Dirty laundry in internal political emails are to be expected. It’s telling (put kindly) that those who may have benefitted, the Trump campaign and allies, are not interested in further investigation.
Even a person who is sceptical of Russian government involvement SHOULD be interested in such possible foreign interference in a US election, at a common sense level. Enough to say let’s investigate further, let’s wring the Intel and analysts thru a rigorous process of checking and re-checking.
Such an approach, as with Intel back in the day on weapons of mass destruction, is a common sense step for anyone in a position of leadership. It baffles the mind that any stance, especially by an incoming President, would be otherwise.
“It’s telling (put kindly) that those who may have benefitted, the Trump
campaign and allies, are not interested in further investigation.”
Can you honestly propose that the Dems would say that if they had benefitted? I don’t think that can be said truthfully.
The Dems ran a sloppy campaign with a terrible candidate on a platform of “The Past Eight Years, Part 2” — and Trump won. It’s no more complicated than that.
If it makes you feel better, keep in mind that since the elder George Bush left office in 1993 — 23 years ago — neither party has held the While House for three consecutive terms.
Were the tables turned I would say the same. The reactions of some in a political party will be, well, political, but the basic issue of potential foreign interference or meddling in a US election should draw a common sense reaction from people to further investigate. A reaction of a leader of any party, benefitting possibly or not, to say otherwise, should make people question the integrity of that leader.
Your tacit approval of foreign attacks on this country brings into question your patriotism.
I wonder what do top men in both these countries are really thinking and what they really say to each other (like back in the days when NASA began there were certain details most people didn’t know, i.e. photos from Corona).
It seems HSF part of NASA is reaction to political events. NASA scooped up NACA and started Mercury program after Sputnik. Apollo program started after Gagarin. Shuttle program started because we couldn’t have just USSR with people in space. Space Station became real because we didn’t want unemployed rocket scientists go to work for unfavorable countries. Hmmm, what next?
addl edit: I’m also thinking there have been many times in history when a country’s leader(s) were not truthfully told by their intel people of what’s really going on, or they rejected the truth. And what a difference in historical events that happened.
The others I agree with, but that one is wrong. If you want an external political reason behind the Shuttle program, it was because the Russians very pointedly stopped playing Space Race when the US beat them to the moon. They focused on small stations. Without the external rivalry, and with issues like Vietnam dominating public opinion, the US could no longer justify a giant space program like Apollo (peaking at 4% of Federal spending, 8 times the current level.)
The Shuttle program was sold to Nixon as a low cost “space truck”, to be quickly turned over to private operators, after which the space industry would develop like aviation in the 1930s, and NASA would go back to being like NACA.
Had the Russians decided to build a base on the moon, the US probably would have continued Apollo. Had they pointed towards humans on Mars, the US would have shifted to that. When they instead said, “Race? What race? We are doing science,” the US political will collapsed in on itself.
In our current age if one doesn’t think many other nations are trying to hack in both to figure out what our politicians are doing and to influence our elections it is pretty naive. We know our country has been trying to influence foreign elections for many years including recently in Israel. What absolute faux shock and outrage that another country is doing to us what our country is doing others. The lack of topflight security on servers is the fault of the owners of the servers. The lack of awareness that servers can be hacked is even worse.
Your comment reminds me of the British system in which foreign diplomats are much less the product of political winds and more the instruments of (very) long-term policy.
Isn’t NASA in something of an analogous situation? We’ve discussed ad nauseum the notion that the Administrator should enjoy the autonomy of a long appointment.
On the subject of ‘believing’ our combined security and espionage services: I’m inclined to place my confidence in these career officers.
Why in the world should any agency Administrator “enjoy” a long appointment?
My point exactly, although several have argued in favor, citing chiefly continuity.
Russia’s economy is feeling the sanctions. By helping Trump get elected and then Trump picking someone like Tillerson as Sec of State can help get the sanctions lifted.
“Rex Tillerson’s Company, Exxon, Has Billions at Stake Over Sanctions on Russia”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016…
Of course there is a worry that the Senate might investigate. So to get around that you appoint McConnell’s wife to a cabinet level position so he will stop any investigations.
http://www.inquisitr.com/37…
“Lindsey Graham: 99 of 100 senators think Russia hackers targeted U.S. election”
http://www.marketwatch.com/…
So only McConnell is blocking the investigations…
I think it is safe to say that the most that can be done is that Obama can issue a dictum that the Russians stay in the Russian segment, which would then be universally ignored.
Lucky we already negotiated the contracts for the Soyuz flights in 2018 and 2019. I suspect the price would now be double.
That would not be a bright idea. As a business man, I suspect Mr Trump would object to changing the terms of a previously signed contract. If Russia wanted to, it might get sticky about the terms of the contract. E.g. what American astronauts can take with them. Do they have to pay extra for a carry-on bag? After all, this isn’t a cargo flight… Those are not the correct terms, but you get the idea. If you upset the other party, they can make life hard on you while strictly staying within the terms of the contract. I suspect Mr Trump would respect that sort of thing. But I also suspect Mr Putin would do nothing of the kind. Today, he did not choose to expel US diplomats, although that would have been a normal and accepted response to the US expelling Russian diplomats. It looks like he is trying to appear as the sane and reasonable person. So messing with the US/Russia collaboration in space would be unlikely.
Maybe but at least they would have some leverage if they hadn’t yet signed the contracts. For example we don’t know what behind the scenes deals may have been made as part of not expelling US diplomats. Or maybe Putin was only thinking about global PR, but generally you don’t grant “favors” without at least hinting about something you would like to see in return. Which is actually good in a way because it means there is still behind the scenes dialogue going on in spite of all the public posturing.
Putin may simply assume Trump will reverse the sanctions as soon as he is in charge.
Just to make a vaguely on-topic comment, I don’t think this will have any effect on US/Russian involvement in ISS. 1957-1958 wasn’t exactly the warmest time in US/Soviet relations, and both countries had no problem cooperating during the International Geophysical Year. Post-IGY work in Antarctica wasn’t significantly affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. So I don’t see recent events affecting ISS.
Agree in principle, although of course the most visible contribution by both the U.S. and the Soviets required perfecting their capability to use missiles to loft objects over long distances. Yes Sputnik and Explorer provided scientific data (Sputnik indirectly) but I don’t think there was a whole lot of “glasnost” going on, at least not for those two projects. I wasn’t aware that there was cooperation between the two on other IGY projects, if so that’s a good thing.
Interestingly China boycotted IGY in protest that Taiwan was allowed to participate. Some things never change.
I was thinking about the IGY work in Antarctica, since my father was involved in that and I am most familiar with that part of the IGY program. Soviet scientists worked at US stations, and US scientists at Soviet stations. There were no reported problems over politics, to the best of my knowledge. That includes reading the unpublished autobiography of the deputy chief scientist for the US Antarctic program, as well as personal conversation with several scientists who were in Antarctica at the time.
The lack of friction shouldn’t be a surprise. Anyone who’s traveled the world will soon discover that it’s governments warring on governments; people are live and let live.
My own experience is chiefly in the Middle East, where as an American I find easy, warm acceptance (and curiosity) among Palestinians and Jordanians. I’ve not been to Egypt in a decade or so but would expect the same.
I don’t really worry about the results. The accusation is about attempts to illegally influence the election. I would still be concerned by an unsuccessful attempt. The released Information may not have had much of an impact, but if it was done with the intent to have an impact, that would worry me. After all, we don’t pardon a bank robber, just because his attempted robbery was unsuccessful.
Living in the rust belt, I can guarantee you that what drove the vote here was going on long before anything the Russians did, starting with the feelings about NAFTA and China getting MFN trade status. Then came “deplorables,” which is when the blue collar/Reagan Democrats in Macomb County MI and outstate totally flipping lost it. Severely. Her campaign here was lost by the end of September.
Local politicos report the MI Democratic Party screamed for help but we’re ignored, then other states offered teams to help with the ground game and Clintons campaign told them no. They believed their demographic analytics rather than the locals.