Joe Biden has repeated it ten times, and probably ten times too many: there will be no American troops on the ground in Ukraine, because this country does not belong to the Atlantic Alliance and cannot therefore benefit, in case of attack on its territory, of the mutual defense agreement provided for in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. But be careful all the same. Axios publishes the confidences of Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who evokes a possible response from NATO if Vladimir Putin, without even violating the borders of neighboring countries members of the alliance, such as Poland or the Baltic countries, decided to launch a cyberattack that would affect these nations. Even unintentionally. Warner cites the example of the 2017 attack on Ukraine by the Russian malware NotPetya. The virus had spread around the world, inflicting billions of dollars in damage to public services and businesses.
This time, in full invasion of Ukraine, the members of the alliance, if they consider themselves victims of Kremlin hackers, might retaliate and get involved in the conflict, at least initially on the Internet. “No action plan has been presented, in order to maintain strategic ambiguity, explains Warner to the online media. But the United States, like the NATO countries, have stored malware for years and might use it. I would bet on a strong reaction from Washington.”
Spy hunt
Is it to appease China in these troubled times? The US government has just abolished the famous “China Initiative”, a plan to fight once morest Chinese economic and scientific espionage launched by Donald Trump in 2018, which had never succeeded, the NPR confirms it, only to sow terror in the research departments of universities and to arouse racist suspicions towards employees or researchers of Asian origin. All for lousy results.
The vast majority of indictments resulted in either dismissals or
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Philippe Coste
