Hostile nations make war on the U.S. every day, attacking critical military and civilian infrastructure. If they were using traditional weapons, we know that our military preparedness would yield a quick and deadly response. Sustained attacks in this new digital world, however, don’t get that intensity of response. Our preparedness continues to be lacking.
In February an article in The Hill, responding to a presentation by FBI Director Christopher Wray, concluded, “The American homeland has been under (hacker) attack for the past two decades, with little in the way of meaningful response.”
“The Department of Defense’s pool of contractors and related resources is under constant threat of digital harassment and foreign influence campaigns,” reported C4ISRNET in October 2022.
“A Chinese, state-sponsored hacking group has embedded itself in critical U.S. infrastructure and is waiting to ‘foment terror’ and ‘societal panic’ through cyberattacks – an effort that military leaders said persists undeterred,” reported Military.com in May.
“We’ve seen this actor – China – grow in scope, scale and sophistication,” Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, the commander of the Cyber National Mission Force, a joint unit that deploys globally to track and “neuter” – as she put it – enemy capabilities, told Military.com. “We’ve also seen that they’re undeterred.”
The Chinese hacker group Volt Typhoon was behind attacks on U.S. bases in Guam in 2023.
Russia-sponsored groups are active also. Reports identified BlackSuit was behind the June attack on automotive software provider CDK Global that disrupted operations at thousands of car dealers; Clop was behind an international attack on MOVEit software; and Revil was behind attacks in Florida and Texas.
Following Chinese and Russian infiltration of the U.S. power grid in 2009, and a Russian hack on NASDAQ in 2010, the FBI in 2012 predicted that hackers would become “the number one threat to our country.”
Six years later, Congress created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security with a mission to strengthen cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. (Uh, hackers breached CISA’s system in January.)
Who are these hackers?
They generally fall into three categories – groups sponsored by hostile nations, criminal hackers pursuing profit, and activists often called hacktivists.
“A series of high-profile cyberattacks from Russia, China and criminal networks in recent years have served as a wake-up call to the Defense Department that cyberwarfare has changed,” reported Politico last September.
DHS sees China-sponsored “malicious cyber actors” among “the greatest and most persistent threats to U.S. national security.”
We don’t label it terrorism yet, though we should. And the now awake DOD should go after digital terrorists as aggressively as it does traditional foreign terrorists.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.