It appears that the U.S. no longer considers Russia a significant cyber threat, according to multiple new reports on a drastic policy reversal that has taken hold under the new Trump administration.
The cybersecurity outlet The Record originally reported that under Trump’s new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Cyber Command has been ordered to “stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” The outlet cites three anonymous sources who are familiar with the matter. The order reportedly does not apply to the National Security Agency.
The policy shift represents a complete 180-degree turn from America’s posture over the past decade, which has consistently considered Russia one of the top cybersecurity threats. Credible reporting and government investigations have shown that Russia has hacked into U.S. systems countless times.
The Guardian has reported that a memo recently circulated to staff at America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) established “new priorities” for the agency and, while mentioning the threat of digital incursions by China and other enemies, failed to mention Russia.
“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries. With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cyber security personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this,” a source, who was familiar with the internal memo, told The Guardian. “People are saying Russia is winning. Putin is on the inside now.”
Another anonymous source, who said that CISA staff had been “verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats,” expressed concern for the shift: “There are thousands of US government employees and military working daily on the massive threat Russia poses as possibly the most significant nation state threat actor. Not to diminish the significance of China, Iran, or North Korea, but Russia is at least on par with China as the most significant cyber threat,” they said.
The U.S.’s new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, recently fired about 100 National Security Agency employees after they were exposed for having sexually explicit chats on work computers. “They were brazen in using an NSA platform intended for professional use to conduct this kind of really, really horrific behavior,” Gabbard told Fox News.
As far as layoffs go, the NSA purge is a drop in the bucket for America’s signals intelligence agency. One of the intel community’s biggest outfits is reputed to employ at least 20,000 employees but has been estimated to use as many as 50,000. In general, despite Trump’s promise to smash the “deep state,” America’s dark and powerful national security state has remained largely untouched since he took office, with his administration’s wrecking ball DOGE content to spend most of its time smashing agencies that dispense services to the public.
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