Should America retaliate against Russia for the SolarWinds Cyberattack?
Putin ordered the SolarWinds cyberattack on America, a risky bet on his part, for he knows the National Security Agency, NSA, can launch a digital counter-offensive that could penetrate and cripple every major sector of the Russian state, society, and economy, with deniability and redundancy.
It was a unique cyberattack, one in which separate entities like the U.S. Treasury Department and Iowa State University were forced to deal with the same security problem. The depth and breadth of the SolarWinds hack is still unknown. It is named for a Texas-based company that was used as a staging ground for this only-one-of-its-kind Russian espionage mission that is so pervasive that experts still are not sure who was affected and what was stolen.
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands… maybe hundreds of thousands of companies, schools, intelligence agencies, think tanks, government agencies… and individuals like you and me have been affected by this Russian worldwide hacking campaign.
I wonder, should we retaliate? If so, how? I’d enjoy hearing your views on this issue.