Don’t Pardon the Intrusion – Edward Snowden’s actions immeasurably weakened the United States and strengthened our adversaries.

The most surprising thing about the failure of U.S. intelligence to discover for nearly nine months the SolarWinds penetration of U.S. government agencies, reportedly including the State, Energy, and Homeland Security Departments as well as private contractors, is that anyone is surprised. After all, the National Security Agency, responsible for protecting the communications of the U.S. government, had such a massive hole punched in its capabilities by a breach in 2013 that Michael McConnell, the former director of first the NSA and then the Office of National Intelligence, assessed “This [breach] will have an impact on our ability to do our mission for the next 20 to 30 years.”