U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, and 13 fellow senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee have requested that President Donald Trump prioritize the immediate completion of the nation’s cyber deterrence strategy.
“The lack of decisive and clearly articulated consequences to cyber-attacks against our country has served as an open invitation to foreign adversaries and malicious cyber actors to continue attacking the United States,” the bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote in a March 7 letter to Trump.
The senators specifically cited national defense laws for fiscal years 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2014 that require the executive branch to develop a nationwide policy and strategy to prevent cyber attacks from American enemies. They also noted that during several years of congressional hearings, numerous government officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department, for example, have pointed to the White House as having oversight for constructing the nation’s cyber policy.
However, “to date, despite a rapid increase in cyber activity by both nation-states and non-state actors, no cyber deterrence strategy has been announced,” the senators wrote. “We urge you to end this state of inaction immediately.”
Cyberspace enemies of the United States must “understand the boundaries of what is acceptable in the cyber domain, as well as the circumstances under which we would utilize offensive capabilities to retaliate against cyber attacks,” they wrote, emphasizing the urgency of such a policy throughout their letter.
The lawmakers also pointed out that the country’s intensified dependence on the internet leaves its critical infrastructure and culture – including its electoral process – open to cyber threats, which in turn make the nation’s electric grid, financial system and oil pipelines, among others, vulnerable to being “manipulated, disrupted, and in some cases even destroyed.”
The members urged Trump to provide them with a prompt status update of the federal government’s cyber deterrence strategy, including a timeline on its progress and an expected completion date. The lawmakers also copied the letter to Rob Joyce, Special Assistant to the President and White House Cyber Security Coordinator.