Russia and Cyber Attacks – USA Gov Policy

One of the strategies employed by the United States that kept us safe for generations was our commitment to developing and deploying the most advanced military technologies. Doing so deterred other states, including Russia, from engaging in a hot war with the US as there was no possibility of winning when faced with America’s military might. For the six decades following WWII, we maintained a technological lead of three-to-four generations ahead of adversarial states, including Russia and China. In recent years, however, we have witnessed a decline in American military strength relative to that of other countries, although the US today still remains the dominant world power.

New technologies, including cyber warfare, have eliminated the need to field an expensive, conventional army on a geographically defined battlefield to conduct war. Where the US was once the undisputed technological leader, it is now being challenged by poorer, less sophisticated nation-states willing to remove enormous resources from their struggling consumer economies to bolster AI and cyber warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin recognizes the advantages of cyberattacks over conventional ones and has acted to advance his country’s cyber capabilities. According to political analysts in Washington, Putin views the US as Russia’s main opponent and cyberattacks as his preferred method of engagement with the US. It is not only cost effective for Moscow, it comes with a level of deniability that makes a response in kind difficult for those attacked.

The state source of a cyberattack often is cloaked and difficult to identify. Sometimes, as often is the case with Russia, it is state-linked criminal organizations conducting the strike. While financially devastating, the attacks to date fail to meet the threshold set by Washington for a conventional military response. In reaction to a string of recent Russian cyberattacks, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One Wednesday that while Biden had not decided on a course of action for responding to the ransomware attack on software company Kaseya and other potential attacks last week, “there would be more to come.” She added, that “in terms of operational considerations, obviously it is not in our interest to preview those or preview our punches as I like to say. The president has a range of options should he determine to take action.” The statement appears to suggest that the President has yet to make a decision of not when or how, but if to respond to the Russian threat.

Cybersecurity experts have linked the most recent threat to the Russian-based “REvil” cyber criminal group. This is the same organization the FBI linked to the ransomware attack in May on JBS USA, the nation’s largest beef provider. Last month President Biden during his first summit meeting with President Putin gave him a list of important American sites and requested Russia not attack them. Given the ongoing ransomware and other cyberattacks, Putin appears to have dismissed outright President Biden’s request to avoid critical American infrastructure. It is incredulous that in a few short decades the US devolved from a superpower able to field its military in two theaters of war simultaneously to a nation-state where its commander in chief hands over a list of critical infrastructure to the communist leader of an adversarial state and asks him not to attack.

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When queried about the Biden-Putin policy discussion, Psaki said: “What they did discuss is the fact that the president reserves the right to respond against any ransomware networks and those that harbor them. That continues to be his policy.” Reserves the “right”? Since when must the United States ask another country for permission to respond to an attack? In recent weeks the US experienced the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack which shut down the fuel pipeline supplying the East coast, the Solarwinds cyberattack, attempts to access secure US government sites, and numerous strikes on the American private sector. Biden’s sanctions on Russia are not working. Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported Russian government-linked hackers compromised the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) third party technology services provider, Synnex. Psaki said the Administration will investigate and “make an assessment” of this incident.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, when organizations typically are lightly staffed for the holiday, private security analysts in Washington estimate that Russian-based hacked breached more than 200 companies in the United States alone. The cybercriminals did offer to provide a “key” to repair the breach in exchange for $70 million. This latest series of Russian attacks was so large that in a written statement the FBI said while it was investigating it, the scale is so large it “may make it so that we are unable to respond to each victim individually.” President Putin appears to have found a modus operandi that allows him to conduct a new form of Cold War in which he holds the upper hand with a feeble Biden Administration.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Thursday, she presents key updates on Russia.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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