Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg. It lasted for more than two hours and Trump has announced, on his return home, that the two of them had discovered common ground on the question of cyber security. He dropped a hint that the two superpowers could go to the extent of creating a unique group to handle cyber security. This would have come as a surprise to those who are involved in intelligence activities on both sides.
The positives of the meeting
CNN reports that subsequent to talks with his Russian counterpart, President Donald Trump feels that there was no interference of Russians in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
Soon after the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed the media that Trump accepted the assurances of Vladimir Putin that there was no Russian involvement in the 2016 American election. However, back home, experts declined to comment on the statements of Lavrov.
From reports, it appears that hackers may have been involved in the apparent meddling in the US elections. This is the impression one gets from the tweets of President Donald Trump. In one of his tweets, he indicated that the Democratic National Committee was hacked in the run-up to last year's election. He had discussed the subject in depth with Vladimir Putin and the two have concluded that they could join forces to create an impenetrable Cyber Security unit to prevent election hacking and other negative matters.
Joint Cyber Security unit
Computers play a vital role today and every country has its own cybersecurity system where there are hackers who follow certain ethics and are guided by the policies of their governments. They are known entities and are ethical hackers but the problem is from unethical hackers who can wreak havoc on any system for their selfish motives.
Hence, the thinking of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is praiseworthy.
Such joint effort is not new to the United States or to Russia and the International Space Station is proof of that. American astronauts go to the ISS on Russian Soyuz spaceships and carry out joint exercises aboard the Skylab for the benefit of mankind.
Therefore, that logic can be extended to fight common and invisible enemies or unethical hackers.
When there is a battle on the ground, the warring factions know each other and one can keep track of the other. They can be prepared to face an assault because they usually get time to prepare a defense but, cyber hacking is unpredictable because the attack comes without any prior information and the hackers are invisible. If the joint cyber security team becomes a reality, it would be a boon to the whole world because waging a war against an unseen enemy and winning it is next to impossible unless the effort translates into a common cause.
