Speaking about states wanting things obscures a lot.
I expect that there’s a good chance that Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Cisco, Palantir and maybe a few other private entities are likely to have strong offensive capabilities.
Then there are a bunch of different three letter agencies who are likely having offensive capabilities.
This would greatly surprise me (indeed, I’m not familiar with domestic or international law for cyber stuff, but I would be surprised to learn that US criminal law was the thing stopping cyberattacks on Russian organizations from US hackers or organizations)
The US government of course hacks Russian targets but sophisticated private actors won’t simply attack Russia and demand ransom to be payed to them. There are plenty of people who currently do mainly do penetration testing for companies and who are very capable at actually attacking who might consider it worthwhile to attack Russian targets for money if that would be possible without legal repercussions.
US government sponsored attacks aren’t about causing damage in the way attacks targed at getting ransom are.
And I’m not sure how this would change the conflict landscape.
It would get more serious private players involved in attacking who are outside of government control. Take someone like https://www.fortalicesolutions.com/services . Are those people currently going to attack Russian targets outside of retaliation? Likely not.
Speaking about states wanting things obscures a lot.
So I assume you would frame states as less agenty and frame the source of conflict as decentralized — arising from the complex interactions of many humans, which are less predictable than “what states want” but still predictably affected by factors like bilateral tension/hostility, general chaos, and various technologies in various ways?
Speaking about states wanting things obscures a lot.
I expect that there’s a good chance that Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Cisco, Palantir and maybe a few other private entities are likely to have strong offensive capabilities.
Then there are a bunch of different three letter agencies who are likely having offensive capabilities.
The US government of course hacks Russian targets but sophisticated private actors won’t simply attack Russia and demand ransom to be payed to them. There are plenty of people who currently do mainly do penetration testing for companies and who are very capable at actually attacking who might consider it worthwhile to attack Russian targets for money if that would be possible without legal repercussions.
US government sponsored attacks aren’t about causing damage in the way attacks targed at getting ransom are.
It would get more serious private players involved in attacking who are outside of government control. Take someone like https://www.fortalicesolutions.com/services . Are those people currently going to attack Russian targets outside of retaliation? Likely not.
Oh, interesting.
So I assume you would frame states as less agenty and frame the source of conflict as decentralized — arising from the complex interactions of many humans, which are less predictable than “what states want” but still predictably affected by factors like bilateral tension/hostility, general chaos, and various technologies in various ways?