1 big thing: The U.S. cyber offensive
After years of bitter complaints about cyberattacks from foreign adversaries, a new report describes an aggressive U.S. cyber plan against Russia, a show of long-understood American prowess on the leading edge of warfare.
- What’s happening: Experts tell Axios that the leak, published Sunday in the New York Times, may intend to signal the damage that Russia could suffer in its confrontation with the U.S. But the disclosure also risks exacerbating already-fraught relations.
The big picture: Over the last half-dozen years, the U.S. has been on the receiving end of some of the most damaging hacks in history, climaxing with Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
But now, in a high-profile story, the U.S., under tremendous military, economic and diplomatic pressure globally amid the multi-front brinkmanship of the Trump administration, has been depicted as a formidable cyber actor:
- In its piece, the NYT reported that the U.S. has placed “potentially crippling malware inside the Russian [electric] system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before.”
- In another report, in 2016, the NYT described a plan called Nitro Zeus, in which American personnel would use vast U.S. cyber capabilities to “disable Iran’s air defense, communications systems and crucial parts of its power grid,” in addition to the Fordo nuclear enrichment site. The lead byline on both stories is David Sanger, a national security correspondent.
Both reports resemble a lower-level 21st century version of the “mutually assured destruction” policy between the U.S. and the Soviets that prevailed during the Cold War. “With the 2020 election heating up, and Russia's cyber offensive continuing, I can well imagine policymakers wishing Americans to know what their government is doing in response," Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, tells Axios.
- Previously, U.S. officials have described Russia inserting malware to sabotage U.S. infrastructure like power plants, water supplies and energy pipelines.
- While neither nation is known to have actually flipped off the power switch in the other country, Russia did shut off the electricity in Ukraine in December 2015.
- And in August, the U.S. attacked the Internet Research Agency, the group responsible for much of Russia’s hacking of the 2016 U.S. election.
Speaking by email, James Lewis, director of CSIS’s Technology Policy Program, said that the leaks may in part reflect unhappiness by some U.S. officials with Trump’s Russia stance, and “a desire to lock in a more confrontational policy.”
- Chris Meserole, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, agrees. "The White House and intelligence community don’t see eye to eye on the threat Putin poses, particularly in cyberspace, so the leaks are designed to tie Trump’s hands while also communicating to the Kremlin that Russia is even more vulnerable to cyber attacks than we are.