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Then this week, researchers at FireEye, a Silicon Valley firm, released their work detailing a similar campaign by Russian hackers that also targeted NATO, and a long list of victims that included the governments of Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Eastern European governments and militaries, and journalists writing on issues of importance to the Russian government.
“This is no smash-and-grab, financially motivated Russian cybercriminal,” said Laura Galante, the threat intelligence manager who oversaw the research at FireEye. “This is Russia using their network operations to achieve their key political goals.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/w...ld-war-tradition-testing-the-other-side-.html
The problems with Russia have been mounting for years now. And while he has chided for saying it, Mitt Romney was nonetheless correct when he said that Russia is America's #1 geopolitical threat. However, President Obama disagrees, saying that Russia is only a regional threat. Senator McCain called Russia a gas station. The sanctions placed on Russia because of Crimea and Ukraine has only solidified the government's resolve, just as it always has. The Russians are wanting to play tit-for-tat with us just as we did during the Cold War. That War has been mentioned many, many times within the last few years. Like, spying is at Cold War Levels. Military movements that are unusual in scale. A craving for the return of the Soviet Union is not represented just by the leadership of Russia but by its citizenry as well. Diplomatic relations are not on solid ground, and by all appearances, are getting actively worse.
This of course, makes sense since the Soviet Union collapsed, but what's now known as Russia maintained so much of its original foundation that made them our counterweight on the world stage, like their spying apparatus, which has added a potent cyber capability, and as always, a large nuclear arsenal and capable fighters with lots of resolve, who will be propagandized into unceremoniously hating us.
While the seriousness of this issue is currently being downplayed, which is perhaps for other reasons than what is being said publicly, the scenery is nonetheless there, just as it has been since the Soviet Union fell. Their government collapsed, but the U.S., The West and NATO did not subjugate the people through occupation. So while they lost power and influence, they still had enough to cause us problems nonetheless. The Cold War just went on the back burner for a while, but it really isn't back there anymore.