A former intelligence expert said President Donald Trump's summit next month with Vladimir Putin should including barricading the Russian leader from hacking our elections, not asking him to stop, The Cipher Brief (TCB) reports.
Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman told TCB that the U.S. has to treat Russian cyber-terrorism the same way we protect the Baltic states from Russian aggression - deterrence.
"If we just ask (Putin) not to do it, then he’s just going to keep doing it. If we say don’t do it, and at the same time we hurt him, then he might stop. Or we deter him," Hoffman wrote for the TCB.
"We’ve made it really clear that we’ve got a deterrent in place to protect the Baltic states. That’s what it takes," Hoffman said. "Russia just keeps pushing, and when they push a little bit, and the door’s unlocked they just walk right in, and steal everything.
"You’ve got to make it clear that there’s a barricade, that’s easily visible and you’ve got to rap them on the knuckles every now and then, otherwise they are going to steal your lunch," Hoffman wrote.
Hoffman also said that spying efforts from both countries will kick into "high gear" ahead of the July 16 summit in Helsinki.
"The President is going to say 'OK, what are the Russians going to bring to this meeting? What are they saying about the top 10 things I care about?' So the onus is now on our intelligence community to go out and collect that intelligence, steal those secrets, to inform the President and his team," Hoffman told TCB.
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