A report by the New York Times claims that the Trump administration is using more aggressive digital incursions and new cyber tools to tap into Russia’s power grid to send a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The investigation over a series of months is backed by both current and former administration officials and implies a digital cold war has been underway since at least 2012 when the U.S. first started putting reconnaissance probes into the control systems of the Russian electric grid. National Security Adviser John Bolton confirmed that the U.S. is “now taking a broader view of potential digital targets as part of an effort to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyber operations against us, ‘You will pay a price.’”
