Sen. Mitt Romney says a newly discovered massive hack into government data was the high-tech equivalent of “Russian bombers repeatedly flying undetected over the entire country.”
And he is blasting President Donald Trump for not protesting or punishing Russia for it.
“Not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really quite extraordinary,” Romney told OlivIer Knox on SirusXM radio on Thursday.
In a tweet, Romney also called the silence and inaction by Trump “inexcusable.”
He explained on Sirius that while Russia was not dropping bombs, their hack showed “that our cyber warfare readiness is extraordinarily weak, that they think so little of our ability to fight back from a cyber standpoint that they do this with impunity.”
In short, he said it shows that “our national security is extraordinarily vulnerable.”
It raised questions about whether hackers could have obtained data ranging from nuclear secrets to COVID-19 vaccine data. Officials said it may take weeks to years for digital sleuths to determine exactly what was accessed and stolen.
U.S. government agencies, including the Treasury and Commerce departments, were among dozens of public- and private-sector targets known to have been infiltrated as far back as March through a commercial software update distributed to thousands of companies and government agencies worldwide. The Defense Department said it had used the software, but doubted it was hacked.
Romney said Thursday that it is “past time for a national security reset that prioritizes cybersecurity capabilities and defenses.”
The president in turn has often criticized Romney.
