The United States need to impose real costs on foreign bad actors, said Rep. Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser.
The United States needs to change from a purely defensive to an offensive cyber strategy, and American tech firms can help, said Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), the incoming national security adviser for the Trump administration.
“We need to start changing behaviors on the other side rather than just having this escalation of their offense and our defense,” Waltz said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Waltz said President-elect Donald Trump as well as his pick for U.S. secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), are on the same page in terms of starting to “impose costs on the other side to get them to knock this off.”
U.S. officials and law enforcement have on multiple occasions named the Chinese communist regime as a persistent and top cyber threat to the United States.
Waltz pointed to several high-profile incidents like ransomware attacks and the “Volt Typhoon“ campaign wherein the FBI says Chinese state-backed hackers have gained access to critical infrastructure like energy grids and water systems.
With large-scale campaigns like Volt Typhoon and a similar “Salt Typhoon,” in which Chinese state-backed hackers