President Joe Biden (D) seems to have identified a long-standing error regarding our nation’s response to espionage.
President Biden’s decision…to punish Russia for the SolarWinds hack broke with years of US foreign policy that has tolerated cyber espionage as an acceptable form of 21st century spycraft[.]
Espionage is espionage, spycraft is spycraft; the tools used are irrelevant to these simple facts.
Congressman Jim Langevin (D, RI) is continuing the misapprehension, though.
The SolarWinds incident that the administration today attributed to the SVR has had all the trappings of traditional espionage that, while unfortunate, has not historically been outside the bounds of responsible state behavior…. Mr Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should “explain the contours of their new policy,” Mr Langevin said.
Not so much. While the SVR’s activity was, perhaps, not outside the bounds, neither was Biden’s response on this occasion a “new policy” so much as it may be the beginning of a correction of an erroneous policy. Most nations jail domestic spies and expel foreign spies (often jailing them domestically before expelling them at the ends of their sentences).
Biden is on track to getting this one right, for all that he needs to do more.