Photo: IC

The timing of the media campaign over the alleged hacking is triggering justified concerns, as well as the lack of any evidence in the public domain to back the assumption, say international observers, adding that it's unwise to pin the whole blame on Russia and China while the US has lots of enemies, foreign and domestic.

While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo groundlessly linked the alleged hacking campaign against American government agencies to Russia on The Mark Levin Show, the White House has backed away from issuing a statement condemning Moscow. President Donald Trump accused the "lamestream media" of inflating the real impact of the supposed intrusion and threw the "Russia did it" narrative into question, while at the same time pointing the finger at China. However, no evidence implicating Moscow, or Beijing, or any other specific actor, has ever been presented to back the claims.

The mainstream media fuss over the supposed hack with no evidence being provided has triggered a lot of questions, says Dr Paul Craig Roberts, an American economist and former assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under President Ronald Reagan.

"How do we know that an attack occurred?" he asks. "Is there any evidence? Why would the Russian government bother?  Was it just a private hack by kids having fun?"

The timing of the "disclosure" concerning the alleged cyber-attack speaks volumes, according to Stephen B. Presser, an emeritus professor of legal history at the Chicago-based Northwestern University School of Law.

"It certainly seems more than coincidental that when there is suddenly increased media attention on the infiltration by the Chinese (e.g. the 'honeypot' trap involving Congressman Swalwell, the Biden-family Chinese contacts) we have reports of Russia allegedly hacking our computers", the academic suggests, referring to Democratic House Representative Eric Swalwell's ties with alleged Chinese spy Fang Fang, reported by Axios earlier this month, and the FBI's ongoing probe into President-elect Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden.

The professor further presumes that the "hacking" story also deflects attention from our social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, "which have perhaps not been as politically objective as they have claimed to be and risk losing the protection against the libel laws which federal law now gives them". In mid-November, the two Silicon Valley giants testified before the US Congress on alleged anti-conservative bias and their attempts to censor the president over his statements about suspected election fraud.

Big Tech's apparent partisan approach prompted President Trump to call for stripping them of the protections provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. As US congressmen failed to insert the aforementioned provision in the bipartisan National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), the president vowed to veto the bill.

Apart from distracting the public's attention from obvious domestic controversies, the US establishment and the military industrial complex "needs a major enemy", notes Dr Roberts.