Trump’s incoming adviser has said the US should launch a ‘retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia, china and Iran

By Cory Bennett

Politico, April 2, 2018 – John Bolton has spent years imploring the U.S. to go on the attack in cyberspace.
President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser has made this point in a series of op-eds, speeches and appearances on panels and television, arguing that America should deploy its “muscular cyber capabilities” to strike back against digital adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The point, he said, would be to impose costs “so high that they will simply consign all their cyberwarfare plans to their computer memories to gather electronic dust.”
While Bolton hasn’t made it clear exactly what type of digital strikes he would like to see, offensive hacks could mean anything from infiltrating a political opponent’s email account to blocking communications, cutting off networks, shutting down a power grid or even physically destroying machinery, as it’s widely believed the U.S. did years ago when its Stuxnet malware destroyed nearly 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
Just two weeks ago, federal prosecutors accused Kremlin-linked hackers of penetrating the U.S. electric grid and copying information that could allow them to take control of power plants’ computers — and potentially even shut off the lights.
Bolton has been beating the drum for going on the online offense since shortly after North Korea hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment in late 2014. The North Koreans seized the company’s networks and released embarrassing internal emails in retaliation for its decision to produce “The Interview,” a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong Un.
Bolton, who served in the administrations of both Presidents Bush, took issue with then-President Barack Obama’s classification of the incident as “cyber vandalism.” Obama also vowed to respond “proportionally.”
“North Korea’s attack on Sony should be seen, at a minimum, as state terrorism, verging on an act of war, not mere vandalism, as Obama opined,” the former diplomat argued in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review op-ed.
When China infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management in 2015 — pilfering over 20 million security clearance reviews, a historic espionage haul — Bolton admonished Obama for his “cyber silence.”
“Starting now,” he argued in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, “America’s cyber response should be disproportionate.”
Obama administration officials publicly contemplated the risk-reward calculus of launching such retaliatory cyberattacks — former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper memorably told Congress, “I think it’s a good idea to at least think about the old saw about people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.” But Bolton implored the Obama officials to move aggressively.
“Mere tit-for-tat responses indicate an inability or unwillingness to react more strongly and may simply tempt aggressors into more ambitious operations,” he wrote in the same op-ed.
“We need to create structures of deterrence in cyberspace, as we did with nuclear weapons, to prevent future Russian attacks or attacks by others who threaten our interests,” he said in a February op-ed in the Hill. “One way to do that is to engage in a retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia.”
He forcefully made the same point several days later while speaking on a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“I’ll tell you this. I think we ought to retaliate for the Russia cyberattacks on our election process,” he said to applause and cheers from the audience. “I think the retaliation should not be proportionate.”
The Pentagon is in the process of elevating U.S. Cyber Command, its digital warfighting division, to the status of “unified combatant and command,” putting it on par with major divisions like U.S. Europe Command, which oversees military operations throughout the European continent. And this fall, Cyber Command will hit full operational capacity for the first time in its nine-year history.
Bolton also starts amid a heated public debate over how the Trump administration should combat the Russian hackers whom intelligence leaders have said will be back in force during the upcoming election season.
 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis (R), greets John Bolton upon his arrival for a meeting at the Pentagon, on March 29, 2018 in Arlington, Virginia

The White House faced criticism after a spate of congressional hearings at which Trump’s own national security leaders conceded that the administration was “probably not doing enough” to stop the Kremlin’s hackers, as National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers put it during a February gathering.
Rogers, who also helms Cyber Command, told Congress that “nobody’s … directly asked me” how to thwart Moscow’s election meddlers. He also said he hasn’t been tasked with trying to stop the Russian hacks at their point of origin — comments that surprised cyberpolicy specialists.
Bolton is now in a key position to try and change that.
Experts have reached a consensus that the government needs to offer a public policy for how the U.S. fights back against various types of cyberattacks — from low-level hijacking of Twitter accounts to a hack that turns off the lights. To this point, responses to headline-grabbing hacks have been handled largely ad hoc.
“We need to get to the point where we can articulate our offensive capabilities,” said Frank Cilluffo, a longtime adviser to the government on national security policy and head of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. “I get the sense that’s going to be a tier 1 priority issue” for Bolton.
However, in the Wild West of cyberspace, offensive attacks can quickly escalate, putting the U.S. economy — not to mention the the hospitals, water systems and electric grid that power day-to-day life — at risk. Without strict international rules to inhibit foreign governments, the U.S. showing a desire to go it alone on digital strikes could open the floodgates, several cyber warfare experts warned.
Rogers, during his congressional testimony, cautioned that he didn’t want to “over-promise” on how well his cyber warriors could stop Russian hackers in their tracks.
Kenneth Geers, an international cyberpolicy researcher who has worked for the U.S. Army, NSA and NATO, also questioned whether going after Russia might play into Vladimir Putin’s hands.
“You risk exacerbating already vexed relations between East and West, and that might be exactly what Putin wants to consolidate his base at home,” said Geers, who helped strategize the Pentagon’s response plan during Russia’s 2007 cyber assault on its neighbor Estonia.
After leaving government, Carter was candid in his assessment of how fruitless the military’s cyber weapons can sometimes be, highlighting the nascent offensive digital fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“I was largely disappointed in Cyber Command’s effectiveness against ISIS,” the former defense secretary wrote in a report published in October. “It never really produced any effective cyberweapons or techniques.”
Still, many military officials and cyber experts believe ongoing investments and training will help smooth out many issues of effectiveness. Bolton has recommended that the U.S. “substantially increase” its “resources for cyber warfare, both offensive and defensive.”
And Bolton has indicated he feels he has a like-minded president.
When asked during his Fox Business interview whether the government would ever actually launch digital strikes on WikiLeaks, Bolton simply said: “I hope so. It’s a different president now.”