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

by David E. Sanger

The United States can’t figure out how to counter Russian attacks without incurring a great risk of escalation. The problem can be paralyzing.

in the world of cyber conflict, attackers came in five distinct varieties: “vandals, burglars, thugs, spies, and saboteurs.”

“It’s our job to provide you with the tools to lock up your stuff,” Cook said. At Apple and Google, company executives told me that Washington had brought these changes on themselves. Because the NSA had failed to police their own insiders, the world was demanding that Apple prove their data was secure, and it was up to Apple to do so. Naturally the government saw this as a deliberate dodge. And to some extent it was.

“I never thought I’d be here briefing on a bad Seth Rogen movie, sir,” one of Obama’s aides told him as the plot became clear. “How do you know it’s a bad movie?” Obama asked. “Sir, it’s a Seth Rogen movie….” Laughter broke out in the Oval Office.

In fact, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Federation armed forces, described it in a much-quoted 2014 article in a Russian defense journal (the wonderfully named The Military-Industrial Courier) articulating what is now widely known as the Gerasimov doctrine.

Gerisamov described what any historian of Russian war fighting knows well: a battlefield war that merges conventional attacks, terror, economic coercion, propaganda, and, most recently, cyber. Each component enhanced the others. This blended approach had long helped Russia to project power around the globe, even when it was outgunned and outspent. Stalin was a master of information warfare, at home and abroad, and used it to increase his odds of victory in conventional war. If it confused and divided his enemies at home, all the better.