At the RSAC Conference in San Francisco, Bulazel — a former NSC cyber policy director in President Donald Trump’s first term — told an audience of cybersecurity practitioners that the U.S. “could respond in-kind” to cyberattacks from China and other adversaries that have targeted various critical infrastructure systems across the nation.
He said the U.S. could “punch back” and argued that the Biden White House and prior administrations had been more hesitant to do this.
“I’d also add that not responding is escalatory in its own right,” Bulazel said, contending that letting adversaries “walk all over you” incentivizes them to continue their activities. “You need to find some way to communicate this is not acceptable.”
The remarks, delivered just over 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term, are the clearest indication from the upper echelons of the White House to date that the U.S. is working out ways to hack back against foreign enemies and rivals. The dynamic has been in discussions for months, as Trump allies and others said the U.S. needed to respond to hacks carried out by Chinese government-aligned espionage groups that have accessed American telecom networks and other critical infrastructure.
One topic raised were letters of marque, a historically maritime legal mechanism used to authorize private entities to conduct warfare against enemy nations. While there have been discussions about it for years, Bulazel called the concept “ridiculous” a ..
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