mike: we of course less than three months for midterm elections. there s a lot of buzz about cybersecurity. what about the cyber threat from china? while a number of reports in the past few days have indicated that the chinese have a sophisticated hacking campaign. focusing upon the government of alaska. and alaska has important trading ties with china, china is actually the biggest source for market for alaskan exports. the chinese have been targeting the alaskan government in recent months. this should be a cause for real concern. we have a cybersecurity threat not only from russia but also from iran, north korea and increasingly from china as well. we have to deal with the chinese threat in the same way we have to deal with the rising threat posed from russia as well. we have to be on our guard
european leaders because those are his main trading partners. russia s business with the u.s., russia s trading ties with the u.s. are not insubstantial, but they are puny compared with its ties with europe. sanctions alone will hurt and it will hurt some of the billionaires who make up his inner circle, but it won t make a significant dent to russia s immediate economic situation until the europeans join in. so president obama s greatest challenge right now is to persuade the europeans to go along with him on economic sanctions. that s going to be hard. the europeans need russian gas, as we ve been saying for a couple months, they need russia to buy european goods and services and the european economy is hurting and they can t really afford a big hit that sanctions in russia would deliver to both russia of course but also to europe. and that s the nub of the problem. and putin knows it.