The Biden administration will use all instruments of national power—up to and including military action—to neutralize cyber threats to the United States.
Ensuring that the United States used a whole-of-government approach to combat cyber threats was necessary to deter adversarial actors, be they nation states or individuals, said acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden.
“We should be confident that the power won’t go out because a rogue nation or terrorist launched a cyber attack to disrupt our way of life,” Walden said on March 2 during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a security-focused think tank.
“When our adversaries threaten our national security and public safety, they need to know that we are going to use all instruments of national power to stop them.”
The strategy shifts U.S. cyber policy towards a more aggressive stance by categorizing cyber threats not only as criminal challenges, but as national security threats, opening them up to an integrated response from the whole of the U.S. government, including the military.
“The United States will use all instruments of national power to disrupt and dismantle threat actors whose actions threaten our interests,” the document states.
“These efforts may integrate diplomatic, information, military (both kinetic and cyber), financial, intelligence, and law enforcement capabilities.”
To that end, the strategy also acknowledges that nation state actors, communist China foremost among them, present a clear and present threat to the United States’ national security.
“[China] now presents the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks and is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”
“Their reckless disregard for the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace is threatening U.S. national security and economic prosperity.”
As such, Walden said, the United States was adapting its cyber policy to better allow it to evolve to threats with rigor and, ideally, to deter would-be threat actors from ever following through with an attack on U.S. infrastructure or citizens.
“We have nation state actors that sometimes allow cybercrime actors to act with impunity, and maybe even act with direction,” Walden said.
“If we build a secure and resilient cyber foundation, we can pursue our boldest national goals with confidence.”
Likewise, Walden said that the United States would need to integrate its national approach to cyber security across government agencies and work closely with allies and partners abroad to create a freer, more equitable cyber infrastructure as an alternative to what the strategy refers to as China’s “vision of digital authoritarianism.”
“Technology does not itself represent a values system,“ Walden said. ”It carries with it the values of its creators and operators. Technology can bring great advancement… but it can also be used by anti-democratic forces to suppress or to misinform.”
“We have to directly define and assert our values in the way that we build our digital world.”
