, Columnist
How Trump Got Putin Wrong on Cybersecurity
The idea that Russia and the U.S. work out the rules of engagement in cyberspace isn't crazy.
A splendid idea, really.
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One of the many challenges of dealing with Donald Trump is that he sometimes misunderstands things. The fallout from Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday shows just how problematic that can be.
Trump tweeted upon his return from Hamburg that he and Putin "discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded." That sounded alarming. Indeed, most commentators took the tweet to mean that the U.S. president was thinking forming a joint cyber defense mechanism with a foreign leader accused by U.S. intelligence services of hacking the 2016 presidential election. People were predictably outraged.