President Barack Obama took a hardline during discussions with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 Summit parroting the theory of Hillary and the Democrats that Moscow has nothing better to do than intervene in America’s election.
Following the G20 conference in Hangzhou, President Obama said that the issue of Russian hackers invading America’s cyberspace was a critical issue he raised during the summit amid a bout of anti-Russia hysteria in the United States provoked by claims that Putin has converted Republican nominee Donald Trump into an agent of the Kremlin in addition to concerns regarding the DNC Leaks.
"We have had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past," but he cautioned that the United States would not immediately seek to play into a "cycle of escalation."
It was then that President Obama hurled headlong into threatening a cyber war against Russia saying, "Look, we’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacity. And frankly, we’ve got more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively."
Reid’s claims and the ensuing investigation follow in the wake of the much publicized DNC email dump by WikiLeaks that exposed a concerted scheme by Hillary’s campaign to collude with the DNC and mainstream media pundits to spin false narratives about her primary election opponent Bernie Sanders.
While Russia has denied any involvement in the leak, the Hillary campaign claims that Russian hackers had breached their systems and occupied the DNC server for over a year conflating the issue of a hack and the leak. In previous election cycles, both political parties have been hacked by as many as a dozen countries that seek to garner information on the potential next president of the United States.
Hysteria took full force last week when it was reported that the election systems of Arizona and Illinois were breached by hackers with officials immediately pointing the finger at Russia despite a lack of evidence. What was actually hacked in Illinois, however, was not an election system, but rather a voter file that is already accessible to people online with names, phone numbers and party affiliation – supposedly 200,000 or so records were "exfiltrated" (copied and pasted) which is hardly anything of value to a state actor.
Not only has Russia faced continued insinuation that they are responsible for hacks that have potentially impacted the tone and tenor of the 2016 election cycle, but the country has also come under fire due to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s connection to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who Russia favored.
President Vladimir Putin vehemently denies the allegations of Russia’s involvement in the DNC leak saying "I don’t know anything about it and on a state level Russia has never done this" but regarded the transmission of the information of potential malfeasance by Hillary’s campaign and the DNC as a "public service."
After being poorly received at the airport ahead of the G20 Summit, President Obama created a stir at the summit threatening "consequences" against China while in the country as a guest.
On Monday, President Barack Obama leveled a severe warning against what he views as China’s continued misbehavior in the South China Sea saying that there will be "consequences" if Beijing refuses to back down from its increasingly aggressive behavior that he says is worrying its neighbors.
"Part of what I’ve tried to communicate to President Xi (Jinping) is that the United States arrives at its power, in part, by restraining itself," said Obama in a CNN interview. "You know, when we bind ourselves to a bunch of international norms and rules, it’s not because we have to, it’s because we recognize that, over the long-term, building a strong international order is in our interest. And, I think, over the long-term, it will be in China’s interests, as well."
The statements fell flat given President Obama’s plainly stated goal of minimizing China’s regional influence as part of his "Asian pivot" as well as in light of recent diplomatic friction with a key American ally, the Philippines, whose President accused the United States of treating it as a colony on Monday before erupting in an obscenity laden tirade against the US President. Obama announced that he refused to meet his Filipino counterpart on Monday as a result.
The friction that the United States faces with the Philippines is critical to the dispute over the South China Sea as the island nation was urged by the Obama administration to seek unilateral arbitration before The Hague international tribunal setting into motion the diminution of China’s longstanding claim in the region.
"Where we see them violating international rules and norms, as we have seen in some cases in the South China Sea or in some of their behavior when it comes to economic policy, we’ve been very firm. And we’ve indicated to them that there will be consequences," said President Obama.
The statements by the US President fly in the face of Beijing’s request that the dispute over the South China Sea be avoided for the sake of maintaining a sense of diplomacy at the economic summit.
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