After 15 years of being hacked, often severely, by Russian government sanctioned, if not government owned operators, the nations of Europe has finally gotten around to responding. With sanctions.

The European Union and the UK said the sanctions would target Russian military intelligence officers, hackers, and private companies that support the Kremlin’s cyberattacks.

As if the sanctions’ targets would care. Those folks, their companies, and their backers will just find other ways to operate. Money isn’t all that much of a critical item for their operations, and the resources they really need are largely untouched by sanctions.

We do get this sort of thing, though, in addition to those sanctions: after years of Russian hacks against the French Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs and their networks,

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he would summon Russia’s ambassador in France in the coming days.

For what? Le goutier sans vin? No rush in any event; whenever is fine.

How about, instead, you know—work with me on this; it’s a new concept for some—maybe fighting back and hitting directly Russia’s hack networks, and the computer networks of Russia’s intelligence agencies and defense establishment?

Sanctions alone accomplish very little, as years of them already applied against Iran, northern Korea, the People’s Republic of China—and Russia—clearly demonstrate. Those nations and street gang-run areas have not changed their behavior in the slightest, for all that their pace has been reduced.

What’s necessary is direct responses targeting their ability to operate at all. Get into their networks and erase data in some, insert false data in others, and inject sleeperware in all of them, the last to be triggered at a useful time in the future.