Fireside Chat, Interview
Richard A. Clarke, National Security Expert and Author
- Dick Clark, former President's Counterterrorist Coordinator, co-authored The Fifth Domain (2023) as a sequel to 2014's Cyber War, noting that predictions made a decade ago—such as hackers targeting physical infrastructure and military organizations acting as state actors—have materialized.
- The "NotPetya" attack, initially mistaken for a ransomware variant, was a Russian military intelligence operation that compromised Ukrainian tax software updates to distribute malware causing total data destruction.
- The attack was intended as collateral damage in Ukraine but spread globally via VPNs, halting pharmaceutical production in New Jersey and freezing operations at 75 major shipping ports worldwide.
- Total economic losses exceeded hundreds of millions of dollars, though many major U.S. corporations (e.g., Hyatt, Delta, Boeing) suffered no breaches despite having significant Ukrainian operations.
- Analysis of the "dog that didn't bark" revealed that companies avoiding breaches utilized a specific stack of defensive technologies rather than luck.
- Successful defense requires the integration of endpoint detection, machine learning, tight network segmentation, and multi-factor identity access management tied to individual protocols and applications.
- Defensive strategies also increasingly employ deception and stealth tactics to neutralize threats.
- Critical infrastructure and U.S. military assets remain vulnerable despite high spending, with the Defense Science Board and Government Accountability Office identifying significant cybersecurity gaps in the F-35 fighter jet and new Navy ships.
- Civilian logistics and supply chain systems supporting the military are also flagged as high-risk targets that could fail during a conflict with a cyber-literate adversary.
- Cyber conflict carries a high risk of unintended escalation into kinetic warfare due to the perception that cyberspace involves no physical casualties.
- The U.S. maintains a policy (dating to the Obama administration) reserving the right to retaliate with kinetic weapons (missiles, bombs) in response to cyber attacks based on the magnitude of the effect rather than the domain of the attack.
- Recent examples include the U.S. cyber attack on the Russian Internet Research Agency and the retaliatory hesitation following the shooting down of a U.S. drone by Iran.
- Election security threats for the 2020 cycle are projected to be "information operations" rather than direct voting machine manipulation, mirroring 2016 strategies.
- Russian actors utilize voter data and social media to suppress turnout among specific demographics, a tactic shown to have influenced the 2016 election margins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
- In 2018, Russia penetrated voter databases in 38 states; while states claim nothing occurred, the breach could facilitate disruption tactics such as changing polling locations or removing voter names to induce long lines and suppress turnout.
- Voting machine infrastructure presents unique challenges due to proprietary source code that prevents state and federal auditing, with some states still lacking paper backups for election results.
- Federal Election Commission leadership has vacated, and Mitch McConnell opposes federal security standards, leaving election systems fragmented and vulnerable to attacks designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results.
- Private IT security firms are voluntarily assisting candidates, but no federal standards exist to ensure uniform security across the nation.
- The long-term optimistic outlook relies on defensive technologies outpacing offensive capabilities to resolve the current period of "critical instability."
- This requires sustained investment from venture capital, private equity, and government-sponsored research to ensure defensive "shields" surpass offensive "spears."
- The primary strategic goal is to render cyber attacks on critical infrastructure (power grids, gas pipelines) impossible to execute successfully, thereby preventing accidental escalation to kinetic war.