This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

This, you see, was the precarious state of the Iranian cyber threat when—on January 2, 2020—Trump ordered up a drone strike on General Qassim Suleimani. The United States could have killed Suleimani a thousand times before. But previous administrations had never dared pull the trigger for fear his death would provoke the kind of large-scale retaliation that would lead to war. Iran’s powerful security and intelligence commander was like a second son to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. He led the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, and was responsible for the killing of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans in Iraq over the years. No doubt he had more planned. But inside Iran, he was a hero. “Buckle your seatbelt,” one senior official texted me the night Suleimani was blown to smithereens.