This week, Jamil N. Jaffer of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School debates Bonnie Kristian of Defense Priorities on whether the U.S. should have an offense- or defense-oriented cyber warfare strategy.
We hope you enjoy the exchange.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek opinion editor.
Even worse, in the last six years alone, we’ve seen our adversaries undertake attacks tantamount to acts of war. For example, we’ve seen North Korea and Iran engage in the affirmative destruction of data and the bricking of computer systems here in the United States. And the threat level continues to grow. Just last year, then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats told Congress that Iran is actively “preparing for cyber attacks against the United States and our allies” and is “capable of…disrupting a large company’s corporate networks for days to weeks.” During the same testimony, the DNI noted that “China has the ability to launch cyber attacks [in the U.S.] that [could] cause…disruption of a natural gas pipeline for days to weeks.” Of course, we all know about Russia’s wildly successful covert influence campaign that has undermined public confidence in our elections and rule of law institutions. While the Russian activities are likely to go down in history as among the most effective covert influence operations ever, what sometimes goes missed in all the election talk is the DNI’s assessment that Russia is also actively “mapping our critical infrastructure with the long-term goal of being able to cause substantial damage,” including by “disrupting an electrical distribution network for at least a few hours.”
Though any terminology will have its flaws, cyberattacks are best considered a scalable tactic than can function as a weapon of war, a weapon—like any more conventional weapon—whose use by the United States should be subject to constitutional oversight, constrained by rules protecting innocent civilians and designed for defense.
