A key American defense has failed, and now Russia fears no reprisal for hacking the US

• Russia is accused of bold intrusions into vital US infrastructure (elections, nuclear power plants), actions that one expert says were made without fear of reprisal.
• The US has not offered a strong response to Russian cyberattacks despite being aware of them for years.
• Russia has compromised the US’s ability to enact independent foreign policy with its gains in cyberspace.

For decades, the US has leveraged the world’s greatest conventional and nuclear military forces to become a superpower that no country would dare attack.

But in 2017, the country finds itself under attack by nation-states in a way unseen since World War II amid a failure of one of the most important pillars of American strength: deterrence.

The US intelligence community has accused Russia of conducting cyberattacks on US voting systems and political networks during the 2016 presidential campaign and election. Cybersecurity experts also attribute a series of recent intrusions into US nuclear power plants to Russia.

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