Why Russians Hacked the White House

We have to wonder why the press is speculating about why the Russians hacked the White House.  It isn't a secret and should not be a surprise to anyone.  The anwser is simple:  The Russians are keeping up with the Chinese who started hacking the administration while it was still running for office.  Why the White House didn't mention that the Russians are not the only ones hacking them, is not a big surprise to anyone.  

Governments want to influence thought leaders who influence the President.  Most of them are in the White House or nearby and communicate regularly with him.  Almost everyone knows who some of them are - but few know all of them.  Watching who communicates with him and who he responds to is a good place to start.  

I was pretty surprised that the President's schedule was not classified, so it was on an unclassified network.  Some of the White House "expaliners" would be quick to say that everyone knows where the President is going to be on a given day, so there is no point in making it classified.  That would only be a half truth, something we are used to from anyone in that kind of position.  "Our version of the truth" is the essense of public comments being made.  This is what Press Secretaries are supposed to do and it is expected of them.  

The President's schedule is a combination of things including meetings, some with foreign dignitaries, some with members of Congress, and some with civic groups on the White House lawn.  The fact that the President is meeting with them tells anyone with access to the information who is influencing the President and how often they have that access.  Because it relates to foreign relations, that kind of thing is usually classified until the meeting is made public.  Nobody cares, except the Secret Service, that he is meeting with technologists from Silicon Valley today.  

Since the President is not likely to know why he is meeting with technologists from Silicon Valley and would like to make sure the meeting is important and not just a publicity photo, he needs talking points.  Most of the press stories on this hack mention those talking points being on the network that was hacked.  So, not only do the possessors of this information know who he is meeting with, they know what he will be saying to them.  The Russians and Chinese have both hacked several foreign governments so they can match up what he will say, with what the visitor will say.  

Our government doesn't seem to remember why we have secrets and why we protect them from other governments.  This particular administration needs what we used to call "calibration" on the subject of protecting information that needs protecting.  They are especially good at it if someone tells something to the press about how a particular debate was structured.  Those people are found and removed, but they are not so good at protecting really big secrets, like where the President is going to be, who is meeting with, what they are going to be talking about, and what his position will be.  Time to adjust to the fact that we can't protect our own computer networks even in places like the White House.