Trump, Seeking To Relax Rules on US Cyberattacks, Reverses Obama Directive (wsj.com)

President Trump has reversed an Obama-era memorandum dictating how and when the U.S. government can deploy cyberweapons against its adversaries, in an effort to loosen restrictions on such operations [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], WSJ reports. From the report: Mr. Trump signed an order on Wednesday reversing the classified rules, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20, that had mapped out an elaborate interagency process that must be followed before U.S. use of cyberattacks, particularly those geared at foreign adversaries. The change was described as an "offensive step forward" by an administration official briefed on the decision, one intended to help support military operations, deter foreign election influence and thwart intellectual property theft by meeting such threats with more forceful responses. The Trump administration has faced pressure to show that it is taking seriously national-security cyberthreats -- particularly those that intelligence officials say are posed by Moscow.

Comments

Re:Oh, here we go ...

[ScentCone]

Now while saying there was no foreign interference, Trump is ...

That's NOT what he's said, ever. He's been - the whole time - referring to the lefty canards that either he worked with the Russians to interfere with something, or that Russian activity actually changed the outcome of the election. That's substantially different than saying that the Russians didn't, in 2016, do exactly the same sort of dicking around in our public discourse just like they always have here and elsewhere.

The investigators working this have now said, more than once, that the Russian activity didn't change the outcome of the election. And there hasn't been a single scrap of evidence that Trump was "working with the Russians" on anything remote connected to any of this. There is, though, now substantial evidence that the DNC and Hillary machine very much DID work with (and pay) foreign entities to work against her opponent, and that the fictional fruit of that effort was then used to launch surveillance on the Trump campaign under the direction of highly partisan DoJ/FBI management and others.