What most ignore in Mueller's report is cyber threat
By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
One of the least-discussed but perhaps most consequential comments by special counsel Robert Mueller in his appearance before reporters this week was his blunt counterintelligence assessment: “Russian intelligence officers, who are part of the Russian military, launched a concerted attack on our political system.”
Here’s why this judgment is so important: The U.S. military, backed by Mueller’s findings and those of the intelligence community, has responded by developing a tough new doctrine to counter cyberattacks by Russia and other rivals. The premise is that our adversaries are engaged in constant cyberassaults against us, and America should adopt a strategy of “persistent engagement.”
What this means, basically, is that the United States is now in a low-level state of cyberwar, constantly.
This military response to cybermeddling is entirely independent of the usual headline-grabbing issues that surround Mueller’s report, or Trump’s angry tweets about it, or whether the House of Representatives will launch an impeachment investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice. Those political debates will continue, but meanwhile, the military is taking the offensive in dealing with the threat that surfaced so dramatically in the 2016 presidential election.
Driving this new strategy is U.S. Cyber Command, the nexus of the military’s efforts to combat and deter adversaries, from terrorist groups to Russia and China. It keeps a low profile, but it’s worth examining some of its basic policy statements, to get a clearer picture of a conflict that most Americans don’t understand, even after more than two years of media fixation on issues surrounding Russian meddling.
Cyber Command initially stated its new strategy in a 2018 directive that had the classically opaque title “Achieve and Maintain Cyberspace Superiority.” The central theme was that the military cyberwarriors would take the fight into enemy networks (and the gray zones in between): “We have learned we must stop attacks before they penetrate our cyber defenses or impair our military forces.”
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