THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

Late last year, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared, “We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians” who carried out the vast hack of the federal government and American industry.

Within hours, he was contradicted by then-President Donald Trump, who claimed it might well have been China.

Cyber-security experts struggled to come to terms with the sheer scale of the attack and the damage done; one called it “the most consequential cyberespionage campaign in history”. Again, Trump chose to disagree, insisting no great harm had been done. Privately, according to the , he said the