MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Biden does not rule out real war with guns and bullets against world superpowers who perform or support cyberattacks

Putin knows he is in real trouble economically, “which makes him even more dangerous,” Biden said

US President Joseph Biden Tuesday pointed out that Moscow was already meddling with his country's 2022 mid-term elections and that these actions may lead to an actual war with guns and bullets.

 ”I think it is likely that we will end in a war, a war with real shots (...) It will be a consequence of computer attacks,” Biden said during a visit to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence.

He added that on July 27 he received information that Russia was already interfering in the legislative elections to be held in the US next year. “Look what Russia is doing with the 2022 elections and disinformation. It is a violation of our sovereignty,” the president said. However, Biden's public reference to something contained in that day's top secret Presidential Daily Brief did raise some eyebrows.

Biden made those remarks before some 120 representatives of the intelligence community in northern Virginia at the ODNI headquarters. He also predicted cyberattacks targeting the United States would escalate and in addition to Russian operations he mentioned state-backed hackers in China.

The President also pointed out he believed it more likely the United States could “end up in a real shooting war with a major power,” as the consequence of cyber breaches which were “increasing exponentially.”

According to US intelligence, Putin would have authorized an attempt to interfere with the election to undermine the chances that Biden would be elected US president.

Putin has “nuclear weapons, oil wells and nothing else,” Biden said, adding that the Russian leader knows he is in real trouble economically, “which makes him even more dangerous.”

Biden also praised the US intelligence community for its superiority over its Russian counterpart. Putin “knows that you're better than his team. And it bothers the hell out of him,” the President added.

Russia's embassy in Washington Tuesday responded that the accusations were unfounded and not backed by facts or concrete evidence.

But Biden also took aim at Chinese President Xi Jinping, who “is deadly earnest about becoming the most powerful military force in the world, as well as the largest and most prominent economy in the world” by the mid-2040s.

The US President made several cryptic references to hypersonic weapons of adversaries, but then he stopped himself: “I don't know, we probably have some people who aren't totally cleared” in the room. He also appealed to his intelligence team of 17 different agencies “to give it to me straight; I'm not looking for pablum … and when you're not sure, say you're not sure.”

Biden insisted he “can't make the decisions I need to make if I'm not getting the best unvarnished, unbiased judgments you can give. I'm not looking to hear nice things. I'm looking to hear what you think to be the truth.” He also underscored it was “so vital that you are and should be totally free of any political pressure or partisan influence.”

This presidential move is regarded as one in which Biden is distancing himself from his predecessor. Former President Donald Trump had sided with Putin's denial of the US government's conclusion that the Kremlin had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.