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I think the question of whether and how to respond to Solarwinds hack is complicated. But it'll be, at a minimum, weeks until government has the relevant information needed to *begin* assessing an appropriate response. Those calling for massive retaliation are just being silly.
The incident response process here alone is massively complicated. This intrusion reportedly involves designated national security systems, non-NSS federal systems, and the private sector. Provision of technical assistance and intelligence and information sharing takes time.
Once the various parties collect and assemble the basic forensics, that needs to be paired with other forms of intelligence to produce assessments with varying degrees of confidence (with agencies squabbling and disagreeing with one another).
Once the process produces some basic consensus (along with non-concurrences), different agencies are tasked with proposing response options within their own legal authorities and technical competence. (Then everyone resumes the disagreeing process).
Basically, there are so many memos and meetings—oh God, the meeeettings—between now and when a White House might conceivably make a decision, that the authors of hot take "hit em' back" op-eds will barely even recall the details of what they were so agitated about.
