‘It won’t simply be sanctions’: Biden adviser threatens to punish Russia with ‘tools seen & unseen’ for SolarWinds hack

The Biden administration will soon deliver a sweeping response to the SolarWinds breach, so the usual suspect, Russia, understands where Washington draws the line on cyberattacks, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.

During his appearance on CBS' Face The Nation program on Sunday, Sullivan was asked about what US President Joe Biden's team was going to do about the SolarWinds hack, given that sanctions have proven to be ineffective against Moscow.

The adviser replied by saying that the American “response will include a mix of tools seen and unseen.” He didn’t specify what those ‘tools’ might be.

And it will not simply be sanctions because, as you say, a response to a set of activities like this require a more comprehensive set of tools, and that is what the administration intends to do.

“It will be weeks, not months” before the US prepares retaliatory measures against Russia, Sullivan stated.

We will ensure that Russia understands where the US draws the line on this kind of activity.

The SolarWinds breach was reported in December, becoming one of the largest and most sophisticated cyberattacks to date. The hackers were able to insert software backdoors into a widely used network-management program, distributed by the Texas-based SolarWinds company. This allowed them to compromise the systems of more than 100 commercial firms globally, as well as nine US government agencies, with the breach only discovered eight or nine months later.

READ MORE: ‘Largest-ever the world has seen’: Microsoft president claims 1,000+ software engineers must have worked on SolarWinds breech

Washington insists that such an operation could not possibly have been carried out without foreign government support, while US intelligence and security agencies declared that the hack was ‘likely Russian in origin.’ This echoed evidence-free mainstream media claims as well as their own language in ‘assessments’ about the 2016 election. Moscow has denied any involvement in the SolarWinds breach, calling it “yet another unsubstantiated attempt” by the US to scapegoat Russia.

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