Intelligence director hints non-state actor was behind cyber attack

Last week the United States was hit by a major cyber attack targeting some of the most popular sites on the internet like Twitter and Netflix, grinding them almost to a halt.

While the culprits have not yet been identified Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seemed to suggest on Tuesday to an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that a non-state actor was behind the attack.

“That appears to be preliminarily the case,” he said.

“A non-state actor?” moderated Charlie Rose interjected.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t want to be conclusively definitive about that yet,” Clapper responded.

The hour-long conversation focused primarily on Russia and its increasingly deteriorating relationship with the United States. Clapper said Russian president Vladimir Putin was a “throwback” to the czars and whose vision of a strong Russia is “extremely important to him.”

While the US and Russia have been at odds with each other for the past few years over the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, things escalated this past summer after several US intelligence agencies blamed Russia for hacking into the email accounts of several members of the Democratic National Committee.

During the debates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump clashed over Russia’s role in providing Wikileaks with the emails that have done severe damage to the Clinton campaign, including forcing the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

“There’s a history here for the Soviet Union and Russia to interfere in elections,” Clapper said. “In theirs and others.”

When pressed if he thought Russia could actually influence the results of the upcoming presidential election, Clapper said he doubted it due to the decentralized nature of American elections.

“It makes it very hard to affect the outcome,” he said.

Clapper was also asked about a potential no-fly zone in Syria, which the Clinton campaign has proposed.

Unlike the no-fly zone in Libya in 2011, this one would undoubtedly face opposition from Russia at the UN Security Council.

Clapper wouldn’t rule out that Russia could potentially fire at some of the American planes who would have to enforce it.

“I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft, if they felt that was threatening to their forces on the ground,” he said.

Russia recently deployed air defense systems in Syria, which Clapper called “very advanced and very capable.”

“I don’t think they do it and deploy unless they have intent to use it,” Clapper said.