150+ Government Agencies Hit in Cyber Attack

 BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Given that they are going to be meeting, President Trump and President — I’m sorry — President Biden and President Putin, in Geneva next month, on the heels of yet another cyberattack, we have seen multiple already over the past several years from Russia. Russia, of course, saying that they need to investigate, they need more information. But they aren’t denying this either. And they’re not curtailing it. What do you make of this ahead of the meeting? And do you think it should still go on?

SUSAN GLASSER, “THE NEW YORKER”: Well, I’m glad you brought up this Biden-Putin summit. It’s, in a way, not what anyone expected in the early months of Biden’s tenure, including perhaps Biden himself. They would like nothing more than not to have to deal with Russia right now or not to have to deal with another Mideast war and Prime Minister Netanyahu right now. This is an administration, just like the Obama administration, and in a way the Trump administration, that has said, we need to desperately focus on the challenge posed by China, and that’s the far more overarching threat of the 21st century. Well, of course, Vladimir Putin doesn’t like to be put in a box. And I think the reluctant conclusion of the Biden White House — now, you can disagree with this. I think there’s some internal dissent as well. But I think their reluctant conclusion is they have no choice but to engage the president’s time with Vladimir Putin. Look at this enormous buildup of over 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, the crackdown domestically. Biden, I think, thinks that he’s going to deliver a message of toughness man to man with Putin. Other than that, I have to say, it’s unclear, what is the point of this meeting? There’s not a large positive agenda right now between the U.S. and Russia. And I don’t anticipate — experts don’t believe that there really is a lot specific that can come out of it. And to your point about Belarus, it seems to me that, in this unprecedented act of essentially a state-sponsored airline hijacking the other day, that Belarus has managed to get itself on the agenda in the Putin-Biden summit in a way that it probably wasn’t before.