I've worked in the defense community for the past 20 years, the past three as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia. Over that time, my colleagues and I have watched Russian cyber-operations become far more ambitious and insidious. They've moved from technical denial-of-service attacks—targeting Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008 and against Ukraine’s internet and cellular phone networks in 2014 and electrical grid a year later—to the use of cyber spying and release of captured information to influence publics, including their own. In 2014, during U.S. and European Union negotiations to build a transitional government in Ukraine, Russia made public a wiretapped conversation between my colleagues Assistant Secretary Toria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, Geoff Pyatt, during which Nuland is heard saying “Fuck the E.U.” The objective was to embarrass U.S. officials and increase tension between them and their EU counterparts.

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We know from the most senior intelligence officials that the Russian government hacks and transfer of information to WikiLeaks were conducted at a minimum to cause Americans to lose faith in their political process, and at a maximum to increase the odds that Trump could win the election. And we should heed their words: As a close consumer of intelligence on Russia for three critical years, I know our intelligence on Russia, unlike that on North Korea, for example, is excellent.

Given Russia's capabilities and its recent patterns, it is not at all far-fetched to ask whether Trump is indeed the “puppet” Secretary Clinton mockingly named him in the second presidential debate. Is he financially and politically beholden to Russians close to the government and to the Kremlin itself? If so, is he prepared to accommodate Putin’s interests? Should we expect a robust "reset," in the tense relationship between the two countries, perhaps one that even compromises U.S. interests, like the stability of its allies in Europe, and American values, like democracy and human rights? If the Trump administration attempts one, it is worth noting that whatever the U.S. gives up would likely be very temporary: For domestic political reasons, Putin needs the United States as its public enemy, given Russia’s current and foreseeable economic situation, and Russian presidential elections are coming up in 2018.

Today, we already have enough clues and too much undisclosed information to warrant worry about the puppet scenario. There are signs the Trump campaign was involved in coordinating this release of hacked information—then-adviser Carter Page’s trips and meetings in Moscow, and Russian statements that they were in touch with the campaign. And of course, Trump publicly called on the Russian government to continue hacking Hillary Clinton’s computers during a televised campaign appearance. His campaign dismissed it as a joke; it's not clear everyone did. It may be too much to say that the Kremlin and Russian secret services put Trump on the path to seeking the presidency, but they certainly contributed to getting him there—even perhaps, to their surprise.

Since the election, various senior Russian officials, such as Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, have asserted that they’ve had ongoing conversations with the Trump camp. Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks has denied this. If the Russian officials in this "he said-she said" game aren't lying, it raises the question about what they are discussing or planning.

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There are U.S. government officials who know the answers to these questions; the most powerful among them, with the ability to declassify intelligence, will leave when power is transferred to Trump. It is bad enough that Trump has been labeled the biggest "Pinocchio" of all the presidential candidates by the fact-checkers at The Washington Post. But it would be far worse if his Geppetto, the man holding his strings, was Vladimir Putin—and if the people who were in a position to warn Americans did not do so.