Tom Donilon was national security adviser to President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2013. In 2016, he chaired the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.
We now know that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a comprehensive effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. This mission involved the cybertheft and strategic publication of politically sensitive emails, the placement and amplification of misinformation on social media, overt propaganda and efforts to penetrate the systems of dozens of state election authorities.
This is not speculation or political posturing; it is the public and high-confidence conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community. And it is wholly consistent with past Soviet and Russian use of “active measures” — intelligence operations meant to shape an adversary’s political decisions — with the strategic goal of undermining the integrity of and confidence in the West. Modern technology has only increased the speed, scale and efficacy of such actions.
This would be alarming even as a one-time occurrence, but as former FBI director James B. Comey recently warned, “They will be back.” The fact is that, so far, Putin has paid too small a price to meaningfully deter him in the future.
