PerspectiveHow not to prevent a cyberwar with Russia

Published 18 June 2019

In the short span of years that the threat of cyberwar has loomed, no one has quite figured out how to prevent one. As state-sponsored hackers find new ways to inflict disruption and paralysis on one another, that arms race has proven far easier to accelerate than to slow down. But security wonks tend to agree, at least, that there’s one way not to prevent a cyberwar: launching a pre-emptive or disproportionate cyberattack on an opponent’s civilian infrastructure. Andy Greenberg writes in Wired that as the Trump administration increasingly beats its cyberwar drum, some former national security officials and analysts warn that even threatening that sort of attack could do far more to escalate a coming cyberwar than to deter it.