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Daniel has confirmed that the account was “an accurate rendering of what happened” in his staff meeting. He said his bosses at the NSC — he did not specifically mention Rice in his testimony — had concerns about “how many people were working on the options” so the “decision” from his superiors at the Obama White House was to “neck down the number of people that were involved in developing our ongoing response options.”

Daniel added that “it’s not accurate to say that all activity ceased at that point.” He and his staff “shifted our focus” to assisting state governments to protect against Russian cyberattacks against state and local election systems.

But as for his work on developing cyber deterrence measures, “those actions were put on a back burner and that was not the focus of our activity during that time period.”

 Instead, Obama officials chose another course of action after becoming frustrated that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill would not endorse a bipartisan statement condemning Russian interference and fearful that any unilateral action by them would feed then candidate Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged. They chose a private “stern” warning by Obama to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in China in early September 2016 to stop his country’s campaign to disrupt the U.S. election.

Obama officials were also worried that a vigorous cyber response along the lines Daniel had proposed could escalate into a full scale cyber war. And, they have since argued, they believed that the president’s warning had some impact, noting — as Daniel did in his testimony — that they saw some tamping down in Russian probing of state election data systems after Obama’s private talk with Putin.

But Nuland testified that while the Russians were “a little less active” in September after the Obama warning, Russian activity picked up again in October when the Russians accelerated their social media campaign using phony Facebook ads and Twitter bots.

“We saw an increase in what they were doing in social media,” Daniel agreed. “They shifted their focus.”

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Nuland also revealed, in response to questions by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, another previously unpublicized dimension to the Russian attack. That summer, Collins said, FBI officials advised the committee that Russian diplomats were traveling around the country in areas they were not — under diplomatic protocols — permitted to visit , apparently to collect intelligence. Asked by Collins if she believed this was part of the Russian so-called active measures attack on the election, Nuland responded, “I do.”

After the November 2016 election, in which Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Obama did impose new sanctions on Russia’s intelligence services and expelled diplomats. But Nuland testified that most in the administration saw that as only a beginning of what needed to be done. “It’s fair to say that all of us in the process assumed what was done in December and January would be a starting point for what the incoming administration would then build on.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-fbi-seizes-control-of-russian-botnet&quot; rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">has been discovered infecting home office routers</a> and allowing hackers to intercept internet communications. He said this was a “type of malware we haven’t seen before” and shows “the intent of the Russians to continue their cyber activities.”" data-reactid="77" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The Wednesday hearing by the intelligence panel did not touch steps the Trump administration has taken — or in many cases, failed to take — to respond to the Russian election attack. But both witnesses emphasized that there is new urgency to the issue to developing proposals to do so. Daniel noted that a malicious new Russian botnet – known as a “VPN filter” — has been discovered infecting home office routers and allowing hackers to intercept internet communications. He said this was a “type of malware we haven’t seen before” and shows “the intent of the Russians to continue their cyber activities.”

Nuland also noted that other nation-state actors have learned from the Russian playbook, singling out the Chinese who, she said, are now conducting influence operations and disinformation campaigns in Australia, Taiwan and other countries in the region. All this, she said, calls for new U.S. government measures, including the creation of a multiagency “fusion center” — modeled after the National Counterterrorism Center created after the Sept. 11 terror attacks — to collect intelligence and expose “state-sponsored efforts to undermine our democracy” and the appointment of an “international coordinator” to develop coordinated responses with U.S. allies.

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