Some cyberpolicy critics see Biden's sanctions for SolarWinds spying in more cynical terms: an incoherent, knee-jerk response designed to satisfy anyone who'd accuse the administration of being soft on Russia. "This is not an attempt to correct Russia's behavior," says Dmitri Alperovitch, former CTO of security firm CrowdStrike and the founder of the cybersecurity-focused Silverado Policy Accelerator. "This is more about making us feel good that we're hitting back and mostly, frankly, for a domestic audience."
Alperovitch argues that by punishing the Kremlin for careful cyberspying—and lumping it in with a large collection of far worse actions—in fact makes it even harder to rein in the Kremlin. "I'm not opposed to hammering Russia," Alperovitch says. "But it would have been much more effective if we'd focused on one or two things that we really think are beyond the pale and told them if you correct this behavior these sanctions will drop. That's how you achieve effects or at least have a chance of achieving effects. This is not it."
Still, administration officials have argued that even espionage can cross boundaries, especially at this scale. "In some ways the rule isn't new, though it might be new to cyberactivity," says J. Michael Daniel, the president of the Cyber Threat Alliance and the former cyber coordinator in the Obama White House. "Just because there's an acknowledgement that every state conducts espionage doesn't mean you don't respond when those activities get too big and too brazen."
Tom Bossert, the homeland security advisor to former President Donald Trump, echoes that view, and says that he would have taken similar steps to punish Russia had his tenure extended to the SolarWinds campaign. He argues that it falls under the ..
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