I was thinking about this the other day ...

I think when most people think about computer "hackers" they have something 
in mind like the 1983 movie "WarGames" where a high school kid, played by 
Matthew Broderick, accidentally "hacks" into a U.S. military computer and 
nearly launches World War Three.

Sure, that was a cute, fun, feel-good, summer movie, but that's not what 
were talking about today.

Major countries' governments are spending billions, yes billions with a "B", 
to develop sophisticated capabilities to reach accross the internet and 
corrupt or wreck other countries through their computer systems through 
economic and infrastructure attacks. They are using a lot of their top level 
computer science PhDs and professional programmers to achieve this.

I can tell you as a computer professional myself, this is a VERY serious 
threat.

I don't understand why our government isn't taking this more seriously. In 
fact it has even cut back on our defenses against it.

Why is President Trump still pretending the Russians didn't - and aren't 
still - hacking at us? I don't get it.

It's as if after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt had said "I 
don't care what the generals and admirals say, Tojo (the Japanese prime 
minister) told me it WASN'T them, so that's good enough for me."

No - it isn't. It shouldn't be.

We don't need to go to war with Russia to harden our defenses.

Certainly, we're capable of the same sorts of things. I think the recent 
indictments which named specific Russians by name shows what capabilities 
we've got. And remember how during the first Gulf War we shutdown Saddam's 
Radar systems that way.

So some would argue, if everybody's doing this what's the big deal? Well, 
yes, except I'd like to think we're the good guys in this movie, we're for 
freedom, liberty and democracy. The Russians and Chinese are about enslaving 
people under the iron heel of totalitarian repression. I don't think they're 
quite the same thing. And I don't want them here.

Look, I'm okay with my fellow citizens occasionally picking elected 
officials I may not like, but I'm sorry, I don't want the Russians doing 
that.