| | |  | BY ERIC GELLER | With help from Sarah Owermohle and Myah Ward BEYOND CTRL-ALT-DELETE — It seems like it was just yesterday that we led POLITICO Nightly with a look at potential solutions to the rising tide of ransomware attacks. And here we go again, after another high-profile cyberattack exposed more frailties in the world’s computer systems. Unlike the Colonial Pipeline hack, the ransomware attack on the IT software management vendor Kaseya doesn’t appear to have threatened critical infrastructure. Still, it highlights the difficulty of curbing the activities of Russian cyber criminals, who can effectively terrorize businesses around the world with impunity from sanctuaries in Russia and other former Soviet states. And while President Joe Biden has said that he feels “good about our ability to be able to respond” to these attacks, the truth is that his options are limited, challenging and fraught with peril.
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A laptop affected by a ransomware attack. | Getty | If intelligence agencies link criminal ransomware gangs to Russian front companies, the Biden administration could hit them with massive financial restrictions. But while sanctions are the easiest, least costly tool in Biden’s arsenal, they may also be the least effective. After all, years of sanctions have seemingly done nothing to discourage Russian government cyberattacks. And sanctions could prove to be especially toothless against cyber criminals, who haul in their profits through Bitcoin and other digital currencies that bypass the traditional global financial system. Biden officials are reportedly reevaluating the United States’ use of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Biden could also push for new regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges, which are popular with hackers because they don’t play by the same rules as banks and other mainstream financial institutions. Many experts say the international community should require these companies to follow “know-your-customer” laws and implement other anti-money-laundering tools. With the exchanges’ help, it would be much easier to block ransom payments and starve out the hackers. But such an effort would require nearly global participation — and any hold-out countries would instantly become attractive headquarters locations for resistant companies. Another option would be for like-minded nations to adjust trade deals and other partnerships to punish countries that harbor cyber criminals. The Russian economy depends heavily on energy exports, mostly to Europe, and canceling those contracts could significantly destabilize Vladimir Putin’s government. But the dependency runs both ways: European society relies overwhelmingly on energy imports from Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, usually a staunch U.S. ally, has resisted White House appeals to cancel a planned natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Biden could even authorize the release of embarrassing or damaging information about Putin, the Russian president’s oligarch allies or the Russian state. U.S. intelligence agencies have undoubtedly collected extensive amounts of such information. The Obama administration considered this option when responding to Russia’s election interference in 2016. But, as Obama ultimately concluded, this approach could backfire. It could be seen as condoning behavior that the U.S. criticized when WikiLeaks engaged in it, or it could prompt Putin to respond in kind. The most aggressive options on Biden’s plate are offensive cyber operations, whether aimed at knocking out ransomware gangs’ websites or causing chaos for Moscow as the price for its inaction. There is some precedent for a digital strike to relieve the pressure of the ransomware scourge: In 2018, U.S. Cyber Command knocked out a Russian troll farm to tamp down on election disinformation. But hacking ransomware operators could entail significant risks, such as accidentally crippling innocent bystanders’ online infrastructure. Plus, even after a successful U.S. strike, resilient criminals would quickly resurface. Disruptive attacks on Russian government systems, meanwhile, could interfere with spy agencies’ attempts to gather intelligence by monitoring those systems. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at egeller@politico.com, or on Twitter at @ericgeller.
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | NIGHTLY EXCLUSIVE: AMERICANS BACK IMPORTING CHEAP MEDICINES … EXCEPT FROM CHINA — Sarah Owermohle emails Nightly: There is broad support among American adults for importing less expensive medicines from foreign countries according to a new POLITICO/Harvard poll slated for release next week. The idea of drug importation from Canada has long been floated by Democrats and more recently, former President Donald Trump, who finalized a rule that would let states import medicines across the northern border. But overwhelming majorities of Americans say we don’t need to restrict cheaper imports to Canada (which has pushed back on the policy). Nearly 80 percent of respondents back Canadian imports, 73 percent endorse shipping from the U.K., 67 percent say they want imports from the European Union, 58 percent want Mexican imports to be legal, and 58 percent are fine with drugs from Japan. But most respondents, 61 percent (including 58 percent of Democrats), say drug imports from China should be illegal. The poll of 1,009 randomly selected U.S. adults was conducted from June 22 to June 27 and has a margin of error of 3.8 percent. Despite these numbers, don’t expect action anytime soon. While Trump cleared the path for states to set up drug importation programs, no governor has filed a proposal to start one. And again, Canada wants no part of this. Plus, China provides U.S. pharmaceutical companies roughly 7 percent of their stock of active pharmaceutical ingredients, the key materials that make certain medicines. So the country is already significantly involved in American drug manufacturing. The Biden administration withdrew a Trump-era importation rule today, saying no one had applied to use it. The rule — issued in Trump’s final months in office — would have let people personally apply to import insulin from other countries. Biden has said that he wants to revitalize U.S. drug manufacturing, especially for key generic medicines that saw shortages during the pandemic or have become pricier because of few competitors. But his administration has also moved to dismiss a lawsuit against Trump’s broader rule that lets states import medicines, signaling that Biden is willing to use a range of methods, including importation, to bring costs down.
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TODAY: Power is shifting in Washington and in communities across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. The Recast is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | — Biden defends U.S. withdrawal: Biden issued a forceful defense today of his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan and denied it was inevitable that the Taliban would eventually topple the U.S.-backed government in Kabul. In a question-and-answer session with reporters following a brief address from the White House, the president expressed faith in Afghan leaders while effectively washing his hands of America’s longest war, which he said would formally conclude at the end of next month. — Tokyo Olympics to be held without fans: The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which start on July 23, will be held without spectators because of a new state of emergency over Covid-19 in the Japanese capital. Japan’s Olympics Minister Tamayo Marukawa made the announcement today following discussions with International Olympic Committee officials and competition organizers. — Delta variant said to be far more widespread than federal estimates: The more-transmissible Delta coronavirus variant is believed to be significantly more widespread than the current federal projections, according to two senior Biden administration health officials with knowledge of the situation. CDC data released late Tuesday shows the Delta strain accounted for more than 51 percent of new Covid-19 cases from June 20 to July 3. But the reality on the ground is likely much higher because states and private labs are taking weeks to report testing results to the CDC, the officials said. — Harris announces expansion of voting campaign: Vice President Kamala Harris today announced a $25 million expansion of the Democratic National Committee’s “I Will Vote” campaign , a move intended to increase voter registration, turnout and protections. The announcement comes a week after the Supreme Court upheld restrictive voting laws in Arizona, and after 17 states have enacted dozens of new laws this year that restrict voting access, according to the most recent tally. Nearly 400 restrictive bills across 48 states have been introduced.
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| CAN WE INTEREST YOU IN A SHOT TODAY? HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra opened the door today for more backlash to the Biden administration’s Covid vaccination push when he said “it is absolutely the government’s business” to know which Americans have been vaccinated against coronavirus. Becerra said later today that his comments were “taken wildly out of context,” while clarifying that the U.S. does not have a database tracking who’s had the shot. Republicans have blasted Biden this week for saying his administration needs to send people “door-to-door” to help Americans get vaccinated. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today that the door-knocking is done by doctors, faith leaders and other community volunteers, not government officials. The administration’s renewed push also includes setting up clinics at workplaces and urging employers to offer paid time off for vaccinations. Nightly’s Myah Ward asked public health experts whether door-knocking is an effective vaccination strategy, and what else the administration should do to target hard-to-reach populations at this stage in the pandemic. “Making vaccines available to individuals with the greatest convenience, which is exemplified by a one-on-one, door-to-door approach, may persuade some to become vaccinated. The days in which mass vaccination centers were the best way to get the population vaccinated are long gone as the numbers of those who were eager to be vaccinated have fallen. Door-to-door vaccine approaches, in order to be optimal, should ideally involve familiar trusted community members and primary care physicians — having vaccines in primary care offices should also be routine. Full FDA approval of the vaccines is also something that will diminish vaccine hesitancy.” — Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security “The best approach is the other measures President Biden proposed in that same speech, which are mobile vans, bringing vaccinations to work places, asking employers to give paid time off for vaccines, providing free child care and transportation for vaccinations, community messengers and providing the shot in local pharmacies and doctors offices. I don’t think going door-to-door is necessary and could be considered an invasion of privacy.” — Monica Gandhi, infectious diseases expert at the University of California at San Francisco “The problem we are facing is a social and logistical one more so than a biological one at this point. We need to get more shots into arms. The Biden administration’s door-to-door efforts, as well as bringing vaccines to workplaces and clinics, and pushing for paid time off for vaccinations is critically important. In global health, we face the ‘last mile’ problem — getting health interventions to hard-to-reach populations by whatever means necessary. We are facing the same here, and all efforts to bridge the ‘access’ gap are crucial right now. There will still be some who refuse vaccines altogether — I don’t expect we will reach 100 percent, nor will we need to in order to further control the epidemic.” — Abraar Karan, infectious disease fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University “Increased spread anywhere provides opportunity for the virus to evolve further, with new strains that could be even more deadly than Delta. We can save tens of thousands of more lives by taming the virus through vaccinations. Going door-to-door to offer information and facilitate vaccination for unvaccinated people can help address lack of access in many communities. But it’s equally important we address vaccine hesitancy, along with the polarization, politicization and misinformation that comes with it. We need to reach all unvaccinated populations in different geographic communities, of different races, age groups, political affiliations and genders by using the right messages and messengers, tailored for each group. Different populations will be more receptive to receiving vaccine information and the vaccine itself in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all to reach the unvaccinated.” — Tom Frieden, former CDC director and president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of the global health organization Vital Strategies “President Biden’s proposal to send health workers into communities to help with vaccination efforts is good public health practice. Simply hoping individuals will show up on their own at clinics or pharmacies is not sufficient. Taking vaccines out into the community allows us to reach people who may be willing to be vaccinated but have so far been unable — e.g., those who are homebound, don’t have ready access to computers to figure out where to go to get vaccinated, don’t live near a vaccination site, or have questions about vaccines that they haven’t been able to get answered. Though much attention has been given to people who may be deeply opposed to getting vaccinated, we must remember that there are also people out there who have not yet been vaccinated simply because they need more help or information. The privacy of personal health information is an important concern. But it’s not a violation of privacy to go to communities and provide education about the safety and benefits of vaccination and vaccines to people who want them.” — Jennifer Nuzzo , epidemiologist and director of the Outbreak Observatory at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security “There are obviously groups of people who continue to be hesitant, so if we can have one-on-one discussions with these people to understand and address these concerns on a granular level, then maybe we can turn the tide in communities where vaccine uptake has not been ideal and prevent future surges. I hope that these door-to-door initiatives will not only encourage individuals to get vaccinated, but also provide more information about what lingering concerns remain in the public so we can better address them on a national scale to increase vaccine uptake.” — Krutika Kuppalli, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina
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| | | THE GROUP NOT MAKING IT TO CITY HALL — In April, when Andrew Yang’s name was plastered across news sites and the onetime presidential candidate topped polls in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, it seemed like a sign of changing times: Here was an “ABC” (American-born Chinese) hoping to seize the top seat in the nation’s largest city — and standing a real chance of winning. But several months later, Yang finished a distant fourth in the mayoral primary, becoming the first serious contender to drop out. For many Asian Americans, the loss came as little surprise. Despite a boost in visibility for AAPI issues over the past few years and recent successes at the congressional level, Asians are underrepresented in the mayoral seat, compared with their share of the urban population, editorial intern Joel Lau writes. Asians are America’s fastest growing ethnic group. In the past 20 years, the Asian American population has nearly doubled, to 23 million people. Of these, more than 97 percent live in metropolitan areas as of 2016, compared with 81 percent of white people. Asian Americans’ share of the population is particularly high in many coastal cities: 34 percent of San Jose, Calif., is Asian, for instance, as is 14 percent of New York. Yet, when it comes to municipal contests, Asian Americans consistently underperform, even compared with other minority groups. While Asian people make up 7 percent of the U.S. population overall, they made up just 2 percent of all elected city officials as of 2020. By contrast, Black people, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, held 21 percent of municipal seats. Of America’s 100 most populous municipalities, just three were led by Asian mayors in 2019 — all in California. Even looking at the 25 large cities with the highest proportion of AAPI residents, just eight have ever elected an Asian chief executive — again, all in California. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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