How Russia Became a Hacking Superpower
Moscow has finally got the geopolitical respect it demanded for years, but only after spooking Washington.
Since the beginning of his first presidency, Vladimir Putin has made it a national priority to convince the West, and particularly the United States, to take Moscow seriously. This goal is largely to blame for the last decade of Russian foreign policy, which has grown more assertive, and militarized. For the longest time, Russia seemed incapable of breaking through Americans’ sense of invulnerability.
When Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin’s boldest aggressive trends were on full display, but Russia remained a distant concern for most people in the U.S. Even Washington refused to view Russian intransigence as a direct threat to American national security. Yes, the Kremlin was creating problems for allies in Europe, went conventional thinking, but the United States was safe.
It was only this year that Vladimir Putin finally captured the American mind, and he owes the feat not to flashy images of Russian missiles and tanks parading through Red Square, but to the quiet actions of people armed with computers.
Continued: https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russia-hacker-superpower-56704
Oh, I see, the Moscow Times posted this:
Published in Moscow btw.
