Jack Goldsmith discusses on Lawfare the problems of cyber warfare and the three options the United States can pursue: better defense, better offense, or make a deal. He points out that amidst the outrage (mostly, from my own observations, from liberals) over the Russian manipulation of the recent election, the United States is not exactly an innocent:
But perhaps nothing is as threatening as the pledges and activities associated with the U.S. “Internet Freedom” initiative, which (among other things) involves funding and technical support to empower citizens in authoritarian states to circumvent censorship and promote speech there. Russia views this initiative as “a U.S. strategy to intervene in [its] domestic politics through cyber means,” as David Fidler notes. …
In short, China and Russia, among our most potent adversaries, see efforts to weaken their control over their networks as a direct threat to their core sovereign interests. They view it in the same way that we view the intervention in our election.
This latter point is surprising to many. A casual consumer of the news in the United States would think that the United States is the main victim in the confrontations going on in the cyber realm. It is indeed a victim. But the United States is also widely perceived around the world as the greatest threat in the cyber realm. It has, as President Obama bragged last Fall, greater offensive cyber capabilities than any other nation. And it is perceived abroad to use these capacities aggressively. Stuxnet, now widely attributed to the United States, is one example. The Snowden revelations were an even bigger deal. They provided clear, extensive, concrete evidence about the numerous impressive (and, to many, shocking) ways that the United States penetrates and collects information in foreign networks. And of course the United States isn’t taking all of the information stolen from foreign networks and putting it in a box. It uses the fruits of its espionage and theft to bolster every element of its foreign and defense policy, and its national and economic security.
It’s also worth noting, in this context, the many episodes in which the United States has intervened in foreign elections. I summarized some of the evidence in posts last summer. A study by Dov Levin found that during the Cold War, the United States intervened to influence foreign elections over twice as often (69% to 31%) as the Soviet Union. In many of these cases the United States “weaponized information” to sway the election. U.S. electoral intervention continued after the Cold War. A prominent example is its support of the populist Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 Russian presidential election.
Which may or may not affect Trump, who I find quite hard to predict. Goldsmith recommends option #3, entering into a non-aggression pact with those countries we perceive as messing with us:
Selecting A & B sometimes results in C.
One response to [#3] that I hear in conversation is some version of: “The United States should be able to have its cake and eat it too.” On this view, the United States is the strongest nation in the world militarily and economically, and should not have to give up any of its cyber and related capabilities in exchange for relief from adversary cyber and related actions. We have to get tougher, act more aggressively, and the like. I am surprised by this reaction because in other contexts—most notably, nuclear weapons—the United States perceived a clear advantage from giving up offensive capabilities in exchange for the threat reduction of reciprocal concessions. But in any event, the “tough guy” line of thinking is belied by events of the last five years or so, which has made clear that problems of attribution, escalation, and digital vulnerability mean that no matter how powerful we are at the moment, we cannot in fact have our cake and eat it too in this context.
Oddly enough, in this instance I am somewhat happier that Trump is the President, rather than his VP, Pence. (On the Kelvin scale I’m still very unhappy.) Why? I perceive Pence, for all his smooth-talking ways, to be one who has let his religious impulses run rampant. When one is certain that God is on your side, you don’t compromise, you don’t negotiate – you try to put the hammer down. You burn your opponents at the stake, if I may be so rash as to take note of history. Anything less and you’re not doing the Will of God. A sure recipe for rampaging through the china shop, breaking everything you desire, all the time gasping that this is the right way, God’s will, all that irresponsible crap.
On the other hand, note carefully one of Jack’s historical notes – the United States perceived a clear advantage from giving up offensive capabilities in exchange for the threat reduction of reciprocal concessions. And then recall Trump has promised to “rebuild” our nuclear weapon stockpile. It puts a damper on my trivial bit of optimism above, doesn’t it?
