Biden needs to be willing to respond aggressively if Russia crosses the line, said Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee.

“Should Russia — or the criminal hackers that Putin allows to freely operate within his borders — threaten American hospitals, utilities, or other critical infrastructure, the U.S. must consider using all instruments of state power in response to such blatant aggression,” Langevin said in a statement Thursday…

“I talked to a Russian friend who has connections the FSB” — Russia’s Federal Security Service — “and he said, ‘after the 2016 election interference, we kept waiting to see what the Americans would do back, and when they didn’t do anything, we decided we had overestimated the risk,’” said James Lewis, the director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.