In the US (and a few other places in the world), the NSA has capabitilites that private hackers don't, because they get to place their equipment on the backbone

In the US (and a few other places in the world), the NSA has capabitilites that private hackers don't, because they get to place their equipment on the backbone. The Russian version of the NSA has no special access in the US, so what Russian government hackers can do, any private hacker can do. Any private hacker can damage national security just as much (or more) by selling the data to the highest bidder(s) or releasing it publicly. Because of this, there is no difference for national security whether Russian government hackers did it, or anyone else. The only piece of useful info is that the systems were hacked and how they were hacked. The attribution is just for show (and as always in these cases, not very reliable either).