President Donald Trump is moving us toward an overt shooting war with Iran while ignoring a covert shadow war that has been going on now for more than a decade. According to Jim Sciutto in his recently released book “The Shadow War,” China and Russia are engaged in covert tactics to gain dominance over the United States and are achieving their objectives.
China and Russia are using cyber tactics to interfere in our elections and sow discord through Facebook and Twitter to divide us. Both China and Russia push the envelope to the edge of a shooting war. Russia ignores Ukrainian sovereignty by occupying the Crimea. China steals our defense technology and both are preparing to destroy our defense satellites.
Sciutto explained that President Trump repeatedly undercuts U.S. assessments of Russian malign activities by contradicting U.S. policy positions regarding Russian acts of aggression. For example, Trump has said the Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia.
Trump sows political division among us, causing increased political and social polarization, exactly as China and Russia have planned. According to Sciutto, Russian bots generate thousands of controversial and misleading social media posts that are picked up by the alt-right and from there go to Fox, “bleed through Hannity, to Fox & Friends” and, precisely as China and Russia intended, the controversial and misleading information is retweeted by Donald Trump.
“His performance next to Putin during their July 2018 summit in Helsinki proved a watershed moment, sparking bipartisan outrage at his failure to confront Putin in person on a whole range of Russian aggression,” Sciutto writes.
One can easily conclude that President Trump knowingly or by sheer absence of forethought aids the Russians in their cyber war against us. After climate change, the China and Russia shadow war is the greatest threat that exists for our country.
Jim Chiddix
Waterville
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.