cyber techniques to conduct their mission. this is a big deal to close down our consulate in st. petersburg. i lived in russia, there s a lot of fake news there. we do rely on our people on the ground to report back on what they re seeing in russia. we re going to miss that. the russians can track what s going on in the united states fairly easily, but it s not quite the same for us. there s also another piece of this. richard engel has new reporting on what s happening in syria. he recently met with u.s. forces there. yesterday president trump said time is running out for the u.s. mission in syria, but america s local allies out there are concerned that we re going to end up cutting and running, leaving them to essentially fend for themselves. if the u.s. pulls out of syria without a plan, and that leaves a vacuum that will be filled by russia, what happens next? it will make it russia s largest troop deployment since world war ii. well
international security and diplomacy analyst, the former nato supreme allied commander. admir admiral, we appreciate your time during the holidays. thank you. my pleasure, peter. even before the election back in october, i was reading some of what you wrote. you said that putin s brazen attack on the u.s. democracy means that president obama has to respond with a firm hand. is thissed adequate or appropri? i think it s pretty close. we don t know what s happening under the surface of the water, if you will. what i hope is happening is that the administration is clandestinely using cyber techniques and tactics to go after high level russian level finances and going after the gru tactics they re using to suppress people in their own nation. we don t have to reveal all of that, but we need to be firm. russia will keep pressing like a bayonet into mush until they hit
vladimir putin as we ve seen in other administrations, they start out rosy and become a train wreck. which point of contention between the u.s. and russia and many mentioned do you think will spark that deterioration of relations? well, i tell you, i need to play off what ryan just said which is spot on. our president in the new administration have to embrace the notion that if we want to cooperate with russia, that is a form of what we called 20 years ago day tant, if we want to move into that moving forward, we need to do it around what exists today as an ungoverned common, which is what cyber net cyber security is all about. there are no protocols that exist for that. i would argue where we are today is not dissimilar to where we were 30 or 40 years ago where we can really put at risk the infrastructure of another nation through the use of very aggressive cyber techniques.
scary. it s nen inside the electric control systems and some of our friends and allies around the world for two years. that s thanks to hacking they ve engaged in. the russians, chinese, maybe north koreans have been very aggressively targeting, it appears, our electric infrastructure and the means of controlling it through cyber techniques. it was unusual. as i understand it, one of the provinces was not blacked out. a major city that relies upon power from iran continued to vm
finance, communications, power, aerospace and defense. i think the united states needs to respond more than pro-partially as president obama said. i think we need to be thinking about creating structures of deterrence not just against north korea. what do you suggest? the case of north korea we have apparently already disrupted what passes for their internet system. it s laughably small. i think it s north koreas is engaged in a symmetric warfare against us. we need to turn the tables on them. put them back on the list of state terrorists, really enforce the existing financial sanctions we have got against them. work with others to do the same. and i think demonstrate whatever way we can politically and through other cyber techniques and sanctions that we are not going to tolerate this. signal we have to go beyond north korea, it is to russia and china and others don t do this to us. what kind of conversation should would he be having with china and russia in light of these eve