The big story today, reported in the New York Times, is that the United States has infiltrated Russia’s electric grid. That’s pretty clearly an act of war and one would think a closely guarded secret. Apparently not.

Since at least 2012, current and former officials say, the United States has put reconnaissance probes into the control systems of the Russian electric grid. But now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow…

…Officials at the National Security Council also declined to comment but said they had no national security concerns about the details of The New York Times’s reporting about the targeting of the Russian grid, perhaps an indication that some of the intrusions were intended to be noticed by the Russians.

Don’t you find that odd? Why are current and former officials blabbing to the New York Times and saying they have no problem with the newspaper reporting on this? They obviously want Russia to know that their electrical grid is compromised even though Russia is a nuclear-armed country with some of the most sophisticated and brutal intelligence agencies in the world. It seems reckless to me.

Perhaps this is something Trump wants to tell them? A little tip off to Putin to let him to know he’s got a problem that needs fixing?

If that’s what you were thinking, these officials want you to know that it is most certainly not Trump who is behind these leaks.

Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

This is certainly believable in one sense. Trump doesn’t like to discuss Russia and is uncomfortable with any measure that can be considered aggressive. Compromising their electrical grid would certainly qualify. But if they want to keep Trump out of the loop, they certainly shouldn’t be telling the New York Times about it.

In fact, this seems like a way of informing Trump, perhaps necessitated by the fact that he doesn’t read his intelligence briefings. But wouldn’t Trump get mad and cancel the program?

That will be harder to do now that everyone knows about the program. So, maybe that’s the point. Could the only way to preserve this capability be to tell the world about it so Trump can’t quietly nix it?

It’s not easy having a suspected foreign agent as president.