The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger

Digital warfare was new stuff for him; as the conversation went on, it wasn’t clear he had ever heard of the American cyber operations against Iran. His main interest was to demonstrate, on cyber and all other issues, that he would be tougher and more decisive than Barack Obama, even if he wasn’t quite certain what Obama had done in the cyber arena. He made an argument that, as with so many other things in Trump’s worldview, America was blowing its lead: We’re the ones that sort of were very much involved with the creation, but we’re so obsolete, we just seem to be toyed with by so many different countries, already. And we don’t know who’s doing what. We don’t know who’s got the power, who’s got that capability, some people say it’s China, some people say it’s Russia. But certainly cyber has to be a, you know, certainly cyber has to be in our thought process, very strongly in our thought process. Inconceivable that, inconceivable the power of cyber. But as you say, you can take out, you can take out, you can make countries nonfunctioning with a strong use of cyber. I don’t think we’re there. I don’t think we’re as advanced as other countries are, and I think you probably would agree with that. I don’t think we’re advanced, I think we’re going backwards in so many different ways. I think we’re going backwards with our military…we move forward with cyber, but other countries are moving forward at a much more rapid pace.