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actually says they have evidence that Russia did all this hacking or as Trump says China did? Or I mean, it could be some third party hacking collective, anonymous or whoever. But the degree of certainty the media is portraying here seems completely out of whack with what we know about this.
Larry Wilkerson
Paul, it sort of reminds me of when we said we knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or for that matter, when we said there was a missile gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as [John F. Kennedy] Kennedy was running to beat Nixon for the first time as president"and we found out that there was a missile gap, it just worked the other way. We were so far ahead of the Soviets that they had to try a very dangerous gamble of getting missiles into Cuba to kind of give them a little strategic balance. I'm always a suspect of these sorts of things. I will say this, I think I have enough inside information that General Nakasone at the NSA did a marvelous job of thwarting Russian attempts to interfere once again with U.S. presidential elections in November, and that if there is anything going on, it might be a little payback signal that Putin and his cronies are trying to send, but I don't know that. And I agree with you, there's absolutely nothing in the public domain, nor that I've heard in the back channels, that would indicate that the gravity of this situation is such that the press, including The Guardian today, is making of it.
Paul Jay
And I can't understand the motivation for it. I mean, Putin is not insane. You can't think that you would do this to the United States, not get figured out, even if they got away with it for nine months. He's got to know that eventually it comes out and there's got to be retribution and they start this cyber arms race of attacking each other's infrastructures and such. I mean, I can never underestimate, again, the role of irrationality in history, because I always figured the United States wouldn't invade Iraq. I said it doesn't make any sense, it's crazy sh*t. If the United States invades Iraq, all it's going to do is strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East. It's just not rational, there's no evidence they have weapons of mass destruction and they're not going to do it because that's not even in the empire's interests. Well, they did it. So irrationality has its own role to play here. So who the hell knows what? But you agree with me in the public domain, at least we don't know if it's Russia, China, or somebody else?
Larry Wilkerson
We don't even know if it happened, in my view.
Paul Jay
Right.
Larry Wilkerson
I do think that we're looking at a future where we're going to continue to test these waters, as it were, and we're going to do more and more offensively as well as defensively, and the offense is what bothers me, to open this, Pandora's box into a new realm of, shall we call it, warfare. And I think that is exceedingly
dangerous, principally because we are so vulnerable. We would have to have far more complex, expensive, and difficult to be assured of, defenses because we probably have the most vulnerable society on the face of the Earth to this kind of warfare. And that what makes me think we ought to be very circumspect about how we open up this realm of warfare.
Paul Jay
The other thing, again, this is me trying to be logical in a sometimes illogical sphere, but why would the NSA let it be known that they knew? Why would you go public with something like that?
Larry Wilkerson
Yeah, I think in this regard it was an attempt to, shall we say, attract the new administration, which they at that time were fairly convinced was going to be the new administration, and to build a set of bona fides with them and a comfortable relationship with them that would allow them to not evade supervision so much as continue to march in the direction that they're marching in.
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