On Lawfare Jack Goldsmith admits to perplexity about publicly identifying North Korea as the perpetrator of the WannaCry computer attack:
I’ve been trying to figure out why the U.S. government thought it was useful to attribute the “WannaCry” attack to North Korea. WannaCry was a global ransomware attack that hit hundreds of thousands of computers, cost billions of dollars in damage, and compromised U.K. healthcare computers in ways that “put lives at risk.” In a Tuesday, Dec. 19 press conference following up on a Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed, White House Homeland Security Advisor Thomas P. Bossert proclaimed the attribution and stated that other countries and private firms agreed, although as is typical, he provided no public evidence. (The Washington Post reported six months ago that the NSA attributed WannaCry to North Korea; the United Kingdom publicly attributed the attack in October.) Bossert also bragged about the United States’ great response to the attack, which left U.S. computer systems largely unscathed. In the process, he had to dart around the embarrassing fact that the WannaCry attack was based on an exploit called “Eternal Blue” that was stolen from the NSA. (As Marcy Wheeler noted, he didn’t do a very good job.) This embarrassment might have been worth it had there been a good reason for making the attribution public. But Bossert didn’t provide a good reason.
Jack makes the mistake of thinking the domain of the announcement – cyberwarfare – defines the goals of the announcement. I don’t think it does.
The Trump Administration has been, not to put to a fine point on it, a continuous example of incompetency, chaos, and destruction, mitigated only by a non-partisan bureaucracy constructed to deliver services to the American people, and a military with which he’s been unwilling, or perhaps unable, to interfere. This announcement serves as a counter-example of competency. Keep in mind that President Trump’s greatest successes have been those in which he’s put on a show, not those where he’s delivered the goods.
This announcement is the show. This is where he proclaims, via a proxy, that he’s a success, and it’s more believable than these occasional farcical Cabinet meetings.
Sad for him, it’s also rather weak tea. But perhaps the audience doesn’t realize it.
