https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/cyberfollies_at_homeland_security.html
Russia, China, and the balance of the world’s bad cyber-actors won’t stop attacking American commercial and infrastructure targets like the Colonial Pipeline and JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company, until we make them pay an unacceptable price. Unfortunately, Congress and the federal government accept that grave risk.
America is a sitting duck to cyber-criminals and state actors, who easily harvest our intellectual property, degrade our communications, create false information that influences our politics, and erode our national will from keyboards abroad.
Yes, cyberspace operations are the new nuclear weapons and can be scaled from pinpricks up to attacks that cripple entire countries. The threat is so serious that it ought to capture the attention of every American.
The tip of the threat is cyber-crime, which costs the world perhaps $6 trillion annually, but more worrisome are state-sponsored cyber-attacks. After all, cyber is an invisible weapon to impose a cost and consume resources. No wonder our enemies in Moscow and Beijing host significant offensive cyber-armies and a variety of cyber-proxies that sow discontent and keep America tied down — an effective strategy.
President Joe Biden’s promise to put Russian president Vladimir Putin on notice for harboring cyber-criminals is an empty threat. Putin knows that America offers easy cyber-targets, such as last month’s ransomware attack, which locked up Colonial Pipeline’s computers, leaving East Coast gas tanks empty for more than a week.