The new Wikileaks release of sensitive CIA documents about its cyber capabilities is many things, but perhaps most importantly it is a reminder that the campaign Russia is waging against the West and the United States is an ongoing effort, not something that happened in the past.

Not only does this new release involve Wikileaks, the main outlet for Russia's stolen materials from the Clinton campaign and the DNC, but a big part of the new dump provides previously undisclosed information about the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, the unit assigned by President Obama to respond to Russia's interference in our politics last summer.

I will leave it to the spymasters to eventually explain what happened here and its impact on America's cyber capabilities. For our policymakers, however, a deeper challenge has clearly emerged in recent months – old bad Russia is back with a vengeance, and a broad, whole-of-government response to its new assertiveness is needed.

Consider that not only has Russia taken unprecedented aggression in the homeland of the United States, but it is, right now, waging similar cyber/disinformation campaigns inside of many of our most important European allies. It has escalated its activities in Eastern Ukraine. It has broken a 30-year-old nuclear treaty with the United States, deploying new offensive nuclear capacity that threatens Europe. It has propped up the Assad regime in Syria, helping prolong the civil war there and keeping the destabilizing flow of refugees into Europe. And it is even expanding its activities in places like Afghanistan and Libya.

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In a normal time, Russia's re-emergence would be considered the greatest security threat to America and our traditional allies. But the Trump administration has been remarkably silent on the issue. Despite tweeting on issues ranging from the ratings of his old television show to Ivanka's businesses, the new president has not once gone to Twitter to condemn any of these Russian aggressions. Nor has he even acknowledged that Russia intervened in our politics last year (let alone condemned it) or authorized a collective response to its ongoing efforts to disrupt the politics of our most important allies in Europe.

What has been even more disturbing than Trump's silence on Russia has been his seeming embrace of elements of Russia's foreign policy that in no way advance America's interests. He has repeatedly criticized America's intelligence community, which was instrumental in dismantling the old Soviet Union. He outrageously posited an equivalency between Russia's oppressive ways and America's long championing of democracy. He has encouraged the breakup of the European Union and questioned the utility of the NATO, the military alliance designed to contain Russia's regional ambitions. His idea of cooperating with Russia on combating the Islamic State group in the Middle East is an almost comical parrot of Kremlin propaganda. And he is openly floating the idea of having America walk away from the current global trading system, a system that has been instrumental in the successful advance of American style capitalism and values throughout the world.

And this brings us back to the return of WikiLeaks this week. How can the president, who yelled "I Love WikiLeaks" during the campaign, and whose top staff (including Press Secretary Sean Spicer) openly weaponized the information it leaked against Clinton and the Democrats, now turn around and condemn these new assaults against the U.S.? The Trump administration's challenge was on full display at the daily White House press briefing yesterday when Spicer dismissed the Russian/WikiLeaks operation against the Democrats in 2016 as inconsequential while repeating how grave leaks are to America's national security. As The Washington Post captured this week, the net result is the White House is simply incapable of accurately describing the threat an emboldened WikiLeaks and its allies in Russia pose to the United States.

Whatever we eventually learn about Trump's Russia connection, there is demonstrable evidence that it has already affected the trajectory of American foreign and security policy. Sensing support from the new American president, Russia has escalated its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and Europe with no response from Trump or his administration. The White House's response to the new WikiLeaks assault on the CIA has become distorted by Trump's own support of WikiLeaks in the past. The Trump administration's enormous blind spot about Russia, and its past collusion with Russia's effort to influence American politics, is preventing our government from developing an appropriate response to what is the most serious national security threat facing America today.