President Joe Biden warned the next “real shooting war” could come in the aftermath of a cyberattack from one of America’s adversaries — a shocking prospect in light of his abysmal track record on the issue.
The president gave a 26-minute speech Tuesday to workers at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Virginia.
Sounding every bit of his 78 years of age, he delivered his remarks to the intelligence agency and spoke of the threats facing the nation, including cyberattacks from Russia and China.
“You know, we’ve seen how cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, increasingly are able to cause damage and disruption to the real world,” Biden said.
“I can’t guarantee this, and you’re as informed as I am, but I think it’s more likely we’re going to end up — well, if we end up in a war, a real shooting war with a major power, it’s going to be as a consequence of a cyber breach of great consequence. And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.”
This is tough talk considering that America has already been the victim of several cyberattacks since Biden has taken office with nothing of substance done to stop them.
Earlier this year, the administration refused to issue sanctions after it was found that an attack on the Microsoft Exchange email server likely originated from Chinese hackers.
In mid-May, Russian ransomware hackers shut down the Colonial Pipeline, leading to gas shortages from the nation’s capital all the way down to Florida. The showdown only ended when the company paid the hackers a reported $4.4 million.
Still, Biden continued his tough-guy routine, denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose nations seem to churn out hackers.
“When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem — he’s sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else.”
Biden disparaged the nation’s economy and said that Putin “knows he’s in real trouble, which makes him even more dangerous, in my view.”
He later pivoted to China, boasting he “spent more time with Xi Jinping as a world leader than anyone else has.”
“I traveled 17,000 miles with him,” he went on to say. “I’ve sat with him, with me and just an interpreter — each of us have a simultaneous interpreter. He is deadly earnest about becoming the most powerful military force in the world, as well as the largest — the most prominent economy in the world by the mid-40s — the 2040s. It’s real.”
It appears Biden understands the threat, but when push comes to shove, he does nothing about it — and that’s a problem.
Much of America’s infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking, even if only through private companies.
In June, a cyberattack on the food processing company JBS cut off 20 percent of America’s meat supply when the company was forced to shut down its processing plants due to a ransomware hack, with the nation’s largest meatpacking company paying hackers $11 million to get back up and running.
America’s water supply is shockingly vulnerable as well, with NBC News calling it “50,000 security disasters waiting to happen” just last month after cybercriminals attempted to poison the San Francisco Bay Area water supply via a water treatment plant hack.
And while the power grid is less exposed due to its current 72 percent investor ownership, a proposed nationalization of it has the same potential for exposure to hacks.
The Biden administration has yet to subdue America’s adversaries, and speaking about the possibility of a “shooting war” does little to help the cause.
Of all the problems Democrats pretend can be solved through diplomacy, this is one that actually benefits more from solid foreign relations than saber-rattling — and as America withdraws from Afghanistan, it seems asinine to even bring up the prospect of a boots-on-the-ground war.
Biden needs to get a handle on the cybersecurity threats from abroad before it even has the potential to turn into a shooting war — and God help our nation if it does.
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