Yesterday, Elizabeth Neumann, the former Assistant Secretary for Threat Assessment at Homeland Security for the Trump administration mentioned in an interview that Homeland Security presented the intelligence community with 75 recommendations to deal with the cyber security threat, most of which were ignored. She rightly points out that one cannot be sure that had these recommendations been heeded the attack would have been thwarted. However, she argues that some recommendations were essential — absolutely necessary, if not sufficient. The most important of these was that the President make clear that there would be severe consequences for such an attack in order to deter it. He declined to do so.

Today we learn from Secretary of State Pompeo that Russia was the likely culprit and a short time later Donald Trump downplays that assessment. What does Russia have on Trump? It appears that incompetence is not a completely separate issue from corruption.