REVEALED: Putin’s Cyberattack on Ukraine May Spill Over Into NATO Countries, Even U.S.

Gary Hart predicted some years back that the next major “war” would be cyber It looks like his prediction is now coming to pass. The FBI has called upon the U.S. private sector to prepare itself for potential Russian cyber attacks, as the tensions in Ukraine escalate and threaten to spill out into all-out conflict in Eastern Europe.

Axios reports that “Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), said in an interview today that Vladimir Putin’s actions during the next few days risk triggering NATO’s Article 5 collective defense principle.” This would greatly escalate the level of engagement and also the theater of conflict way beyond what was generally expected when Putin began his saber rattling.

• In a 2021 communique, NATO affirmed the alliance would weigh whether to trigger its Article 5 mutual defense pact over a cyberattack “on a case-by-case basis.”

• It said the response “need not be restricted to the cyber domain.”

Details: Warner foresees two ways a digital war could draw in NATO countries, including the U.S.:

1. Putin deploys cyber weapons inside Ukraine that take on a life of their own and spread to NATO member states. This has happened before — most notably in 2017, when Russia’s NotPetya malware was unleashed in Ukraine and ended up causing billions of dollars in damage to companies worldwide.

2. Putin retaliates against the West’s toughest sanctions by ordering direct cyberattacks targeting infrastructure inside the U.S. and other NATO allies. The U.S. government issued an alert this week urging businesses and agencies to protect their “most critical digital assets,” citing “the potential for the Russian government to consider escalating its destabilizing actions” beyond Ukraine.

What they’re saying: “If you’re suddenly having 190,000 troops attack Ukraine, chances are, if he’s coming in that hard kinetic, that the cyberattack will not be a single piece of malware,” Warner told Axios.

• “It could spread to America, could spread to the U.K., but the more likely effect will be spreading to adjacent geographic territory … [such as] Poland.”

• “It suddenly gets into a gray area about, what would the Polish people’s reaction be? What would NATO’s reaction be? What would America’s reaction be? Nobody’s physically shot at [American troops], but they could come in harm’s way.”

This brings the war home. We all live in cyberspace. Invading Ukraine may be an abstraction to a lot of people, having little or nothing to do with their regular lives but if our cyber structure comes under attack, life could be hell and very fast.

The “denial-of-service” attacks reported in Ukraine during the past two weeks were significant but it could get so much worse.

• Fears of cyberwarfare “spillover” are entirely reasonable, since many forms of malware are designed to multiply and overwhelm targets and continue wreaking havoc.

• They rarely have “off” buttons by design — and they don’t recognize international boundaries.

We are in trouble plenty here. And here’s the Mango Moron’s take on it. I wouldn’t even bring him up now, but he thinks this is all a lark and a farce and the bottom line is, if he can talk this way and the GOP still supports him, with what is happening in the world right now, I despair. I purely despair. The time for stupid games is over.

Trump waded back into the Putin is "smart" territory:

"I mean he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions, I’d say that’s pretty smart."

He said of Ukraine: “great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in. This would have never happened.”

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) February 24, 2022

Words fail me. What a fucking moron. But he’s flying out various places this week making endorsements. The GOP continues to sell America down the river in real time.