(1) NAKASONE: U.S. FALLING BEHIND ENEMIES IN CYBERSPACE: Former Cyber Command and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone said the U.S. is falling increasingly behind foreign adversaries in cyberspace because the U.S. is unable to secure its networks, and unable to leverage cybersecurity software available today.
Nakasone said future cyber threats will become more dangerous, and the U.S. is seeing “the beginnings of the bleed from the non-kinetic to the kinetic for cyber operations.”
Why It Matters: The “bleed” of non-kinetic to kinetic cyber operations is a dangerous escalation. The U.S. development of a cyber deterrence strategy was an attempt to determine what cyber attacks fall above and below the threshold for armed conflict, and keep cyberwarfare below that line. Cyberattacks becoming more kinetic increases the risk that cyberattacks could occur above the threshold for armed conflict, and the difficulty of attribution increases the risk that a kinetic cyberattack could be misattributed. - R.C.
