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Trump Proposes Joint 'Cyber Security Unit' With Russia, Then Quickly Backs Away From It (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

In a series of tweets yesterday, President Trump proposed "an impenetrable Cyber Security unit" with Putin "so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe." The news came as a shock to just about everyone who got word of it, including congressional members of his own GOP party. Less than 24 hours later, Trump decided against it, tweeting: "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!" Ars Technica reports: "It's not the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it's pretty close," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, said of the plan. Senate Republican Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted that "partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit."' Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump and the Russian president decided at a meeting during a Group of 20 nations summit in Hamburg, Germany, to embark on a joint "cyber unit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on cyber security together." But on Sunday, after it was clear that the plan was going nowhere, Trump took to Twitter and said no deal. That didn't stop Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, from introducing on Monday an amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that would bar a US-Russian cyber accord. He said: "Donald Trump's proposal to form a 'cyber security unit' with Putin is a terrible idea that would immediately jeopardize American cybersecurity... Trump must acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and take strong, meaningful action to prevent it from happening again in future elections."

3 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Treason is an idea afterall... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a picture of Donald Trump in the dictionary, right next to the word "Treason"

    Donald Trump and many members of his administration and campaign are known traitors. They colluded with Russia's attack on our country.

    You keep tip-toeing around the definition of treason while not actually providing it. This is because you know you are supporting a treasonous Russian puppet.

    You support known traitors like Donald Trump and his crime family, because you are a traitor yourself.

  2. Re:Treason is an idea afterall... by jbengt · · Score: 2, Informative

    So we're using "briefly occupying the same room as someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who...who knows someone in the Russian government" as the legal definition of "adhering to the enemy" or "collusion" or whatever else?

    No. But if you believe that's all that happened, perhaps you'd be interested in buying this bridge I have.

  3. Re:Treason is an idea afterall... by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Informative
    I assign a more than 50% chance that Donald Trump or people close to him have engaged in criminal acts related to collusion with Russia to deliberately interfere in US elections by illegal means. RICO would be one of a number of potential statutes that are relevant. However, that's not "treason." Treason is defined in Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Three_of_the_United_States_Constitution :

    Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

    Since the US has active trade and diplomatic relations with Russia, it is extremely hard to call interacting with them treason. More generally, it is a bad idea to label people are "traitors" because they disagree with you on who a traitor is. The recursion here gets very bad very fast.