Politicians Love to Hear Word ‘War’ in ‘Cyberwar’ but Not People – Inventor

The Wall Street Journal cited speakers saying that US President Donald Trump has rolled back a series of rules regarding the deployment of cyber weapons in a bid to loosen restrictions. Radio Sputnik discussed key points of the Trump's new possible policy with Gary Miliefsky, a renowned cybersecurity expert and founder of cybersecurity companies.

Sputnik: In your view, what key points are we most likely to see in the 'replacing' policy President Trump may put forward?

Gary Miliefsky: I think that the summary of it all is that Congress has pushed the White House to get more offensive in cyber-attacks. I think the President is removing and reducing restrictions; if we recall the 2013 Edward Snowden leak, he had leaked the bureaucratic classified law procedures for retaliating or initiating offensive cyber-attacks; and I believe that the President is removing that process to make things more swift.

READ MORE: Trump's Cybersecurity Directive 'Graded as a Fail' – Security Expert

Sputnik: The critics of the original policy argued that the restrictions were detrimental to launching the attacks quickly; what’s your take on that?

Gary Miliefsky: I have a bigger picture view where I really think we need a cyber Geneva Convention where the US, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran – the countries that are attacking each other or spying on each other using cyber tools, can come together and agree on a better and safer way to do things. I don’t think it will happen soon; in normal wartime you don’t shoot bullets that are hollow point at your enemies, that’s part of the Geneva Convention, we have hollow point bullets in cyber malware floating around in all directions. And guess who ends up being the victims? It’s the citizens of all these countries.

Sputnik: What feedback do you think this move is likely to receive from the political parties in the country?

Gary Miliefsky: I think politicians like to hear the word ‘war’ in ‘cyberwar’ and ‘warfare’ but most citizens are tired of it. I think that politicians are going to learn that we don’t want to fight; we want to make friends, we want to have peace. We’re tired of wars and cyber warfare is just detrimental and will remind all the politicians (we can’t). Think about the WannaCry attack; it made children wait in line to go to the hospital for operations and it was just in the UK. These kinds of attacks are dangerous so going on the offence just escalates problems. I hope we all cool off and find a way to come to terms and create a cyber Geneva Convention.

Sputnik: The move is also described as a necessary measure to counter the alleged Russian meddling in American domestic affairs; what impact can this have on Russia-US ties overall?

Gary Miliefsky: I don’t think that attacking each other on the Internet is a positive thing at all. As for this whole Russian meddling in the election, a Russian group allegedly spent $100 thousand on Facebook and they outmarketed Hillary Clinton’s $100 million campaign. I don’t know anyone in America who changed their vote. To be honest, America has been polarized – 50% goes one way and the other 50% goes the other way. There’s nothing Russia, China or anyone could do to affect how people are voting in this country.

 

 

 

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.