‘No new evidence of Russian hacking, contractors behind initial claims must be probed’
The “evidence” of alleged 2016 Russian election hacks, provided to the US government by private contractors of questionable credibility, contains only baseless assumptions and creates international tensions, ‘Inside Cyber Warfare’ CEO Jeffrey Carr told RT.
“There’s apparently no new evidence at all regarding any technical proof that Russian government was directing the hacking, or Russian employees did the hacking or controlled it. There’s no new evidence, and the evidence that has been shown does not connect the hacking to any intelligence agency,” Carr said.
No evidence might actually be needed, since people tend to gobble up what’s presented to them, without really thinking about it, Carr said.
“You would like to believe that everyone examines the evidence and thinks critically, but of course that’s not true. I don’t think that’s true anywhere, certainly not true here. I’m sure you all experience the same, it’s just how people are. We don’t do a lot of our own thinking, we let the headlines tell us what to believe and we never question beyond what our pure group agrees with us on,” Carr stressed.
“It is pure speculation on the part of the Crowdstrike, an American cyber security company, which by the way just created a report out of thin air, apparently entirely fabricated, that GRU is responsible for planting a piece of malware into Ukrainian artillery app which resulted in the loss of 80% of Ukraine’s D-30 howitzer cannons,” said Carr. “That was nonsense, Ukrainian ministry said it was nonsense, Crowdstrike, as far as I know, has not retracted what is clearly an invented scenario, used to support the claim that the GRU hacked the Democratic National Committee.”
READ MORE: ‘Propaganda intended to incite Americans’: John McAfee to RT on ‘Russian hacking’ claims
Since the shaky basis of the report was presented by a company of rather questionable credibility, the whole “investigation” should be scrapped, Carr believes.
“So, this is a company upon whose basis the intelligence committee is examining the technical evidence. To me that just should throw the entire affair out as baseless,” he stressed.
An investigation into how exactly private contractors managed to sell the US government baseless assumptions, creating international problems out of nothing, should be the next step, Carr told RT.
“I think there should be commission that reviews the technical evidence which is being sold to the US government by and for profit by the cyber security companies like Crowdstrike. I think this deserves a deeper investigation, because based upon invalid assumptions and lack of proof they have created an international strain in international relations between the US and Russia,” said Carr.
“It’s one thing if we have strained relations over Ukraine, or we have we have strained relations over some other Syria… There’s no question that we’d have a disagreement in a very serious event. But to literally invent a crisis and sell it the way they do to the US government, and try to silence the people who question it. This deserves an investigation here in the US and I hope they will do it.”
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
