A rogue country is one which does not comply with the standards and rules of civil conduct. President George W. Bush in his January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech cited Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the Axis of Evil. In addition to those three he had a list of three other countries which he thought of as pariah countries. Those are, or were, Cuba, Libya, and Syria.

            Today Iraq should be dropped from the Axis and replaced by Russia. We know some of Russia’s evil activities. The destruction of the Ukraine is the current news lead but Russia has done the same to Chechnya in 1999 and 2000. They literally destroyed cities. Russia has sliced off part of Georgia and the Crimea from the Ukraine. Russia just announced it has annexed about a fifth of Eastern Ukraine.

            To secure Russia’s place in the new Axis of Evil, Russia is buying weapons from Iran and North Korea. Putin has locked in Russia to Iran and North Korea while a few other pariah countries have been careful not to criticize Russia while getting Russian food aid. With Russia’s seat on the Security Council, Putin can protect Iran and North Korea from the United Nations actions to rein in their rogue nation actions.  

Every American intelligence agency has said Russia was involved in trying to get Donald Trump elected. We may never know how much Trump’s campaign was involved innocently or guided by Russian agents and their social media bots. We know Mariia Valeryevna Butina was involved in gaining support for him and splitting America apart. It was her job as a Russian spy. We know that the Attorney General Barr revised the Mueller Report about the campaign involvement. Mueller has said “The President’s written answers were not completely truthful.”

The British public is just finding the Russians were very involved in the referendum deciding whether the United Kingdom would stay or leave the European Union. The vote was less than 4% difference. The social media was heavily for the split and much of it was bots from Russia’s bot farms. A bot farm is where lots of people sit in front of computers coming up with stories for or against a candidate or issue.

They tried to keep their stooge in power in Ukraine but he lost and ran to Russia. They have influenced elections in several East European countries by convincing people the Syrian refugees were killers and rapists who would take over their countries and impose Sharia law. (They have caused many Americans to believe Detroit is using Sharia law.) Sound familar?

No, our elections aren’t pure because voters don’t give enough time searching for the truth by fact checking the stories they read on the social media. Far too many Americans believed the most outrageous stories from Russian Bots. Remember the great pizza restaurant child sex ring run by the Clintons? Thousands of people believed that one.

What is so hard to understand? The news is full of Russian hacking of our utility computers. Obviously the nuke plants are critical but power networks are very critical. Even the fossil fuel stations and water system plants are computer controlled. Many of the chemicals used to make our drinking water safe is poisonous if too much is put in the water lines. On the other end is the computer running the sewage systems and we don’t want that one blocked up!

Air gaping means the computer operating the station, plant or system is self contained. That means no social media games, personnel records, purchasing, or anything not absolutely required to operate. No carryover of updates or added operating programs without them being extremely thoroughly checked to keep viruses out of the operating systems. It is always answering an e-mail, a game, or one recent hack was a job application.

If we can’t protect ourselves now, how can we expect to be sure we can flip a light switch or open a water faucet and get the desired result during a troubled time? Maybe the hacks over few years did not do anything now but left a virus with a time delay. If we are going to let computer programs run our lives, we need to air gap all the military, public and private systems!