Nations Seek the Elusive Cure for Cyberattacks

Nations Seek the Elusive Cure for Cyberattacks
As James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it recently, “North Korea is both cautious and cunning in its use of force, including cyberattack.” But he added: “The North has been successful only against poorly protected targets, of which there are many, suggesting
that there is a relatively low ceiling for its cyberattack capabilities.”
In fact, the explosion of state-sponsored, sophisticated cyberattacks over the past seven or
eight years has been fueled, in large part, by the expansion of poorly protected targets.
President Emmanuel Macron in France is proposing that government authorities be able to take down “fake news” during elections, declaring in his New Year’s speech
that “if we want to protect liberal democracies, we must be strong and have clear rules.”
Yet those rules clearly could not survive in the United States, where First Amendment protections
would prohibit the government from stepping in and declaring what is fake and what is not.
“President Trump has used just about every lever you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea, to change their behavior,”
Mr. Trump’s Homeland Security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, said when he made the “name and shame” announcement blaming the North.
The Pentagon, in its first nuclear strategy review since President Trump took office, is even proposing to use the threat of unleashing nuclear weapons against a country or group
that delivered a devastating cyberattack against the critical infrastructure of the United States or its allies.
In fact, the election systems in the United States — the foundation of American democracy — were never on the list of “critical
infrastructure” until Mr. Obama’s Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, added them in the last days of the administration.