Yet another case of if I do it, it is ok but if you do it on me, it is not ok.
The above was the headline in the New York Times for the week ending 16 June 2019. The report said the US is escalating cyber attacks on Russia's electric power grid and has placed potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system and is intended partly as a warning and also to put the US in a position to conduct cyber attacks should a significant conflict arise with Russia.
The placement of the malware into the Russian electric power grid were conducted under new legal authorities in the military authorization bill, known as John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2019 and passed by Congress in 2018 where under the law, the defense secretary can authorize, without special presidential approval, routine "clandestine military activity" in cyberspace. Funny thing quoted in the report was two administration officials told the Times they believed President Donald Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the US computer code being implanted inside the Russian grid by his people.
For the past several years, the US government has consistently and persistently accused Huawei of being spies for the Chinese government through their products. They also accused countries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran of conducting illegal hacking into websites of American organisations and to steal sensitive and pertinent proprietary information.
The US government is in actual fact doing the same what they always accused the foreign countries of doing on American assets - planting malicious malware into the network and system of these countries and spy on them.
As the saying in Bahasa Malaysia goes - the US government 'cakap tak serupa bikin'. Indeed all of us are living in dangerous times.
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