The White House is looking to take a “proportional” response to Russia’s alleged hacking of U.S. political party organizations and effort to interfere in the election campaign.
"We obviously will ensure that a U.S. response is proportional. It is unlikely that our response would be announced in advance. It’s certainly possible that the president could choose response options that we never announce," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters last week.
Vice President Joe Biden said the response would be “at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.”
“We’re sending a message,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Over the weekend, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti that this marks an “unprecedented” threat by the United States.
"U.S. unpredictability and aggression keep growing, and such threats against Moscow and our country's leadership are unprecedented, because the threat is being announced at the level of the U.S. Vice President,” he said. “Given such an aggressive, unpredictable line, we have to take measures to protect our interests, somehow hedge the risks."
Earnest said there are a “range of responses” available to President Barack Obama. The Cipher Brief’s Mackenzie Weinger spoke with Matt Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, to get his take on what such a response might look like.
The Cipher Brief: What might a proportional response involve? What are the range of options the Obama administration and the intelligence community could be considering?
Matt Olsen: We know that the intelligence community has come out and said they are confident that the Russian government was behind this cyberattack. Now that the administration has conclusively determined that the attacks are attributable to not just Russian actors, but to the Russian government, there’s a whole set of options that the administration should consider.
The administration should look at the full slate of responses, including economic sanctions, diplomatic action, law enforcement responses — so all of those would be on the table. The options would include, but not be limited to, taking action in cyberspace itself. I think the administration is likely to consider some kind of financial sanctions under a new executive order that gives the Treasury Department the authority to freeze the assets of people tied to attacks like this. I also think that criminal indictments can play a significant role in responding to these types of attacks, even though we may be unlikely to actually bring anyone from Russia to trial here.
TCB: What’s the significance of openly announcing this intention? It will likely be done covertly and not acknowledged, according to Earnest, but they’ve made this public statement, and there was an article on NBC News saying the CIA was looking at cyber options. So what’s the point of doing this part publicly?
MO: One of the considerations is, by making this statement publicly that Russia was behind the attack and then saying they are looking at proportional responses, it is a way to signal to Russia or any adversary that this is an attack the government takes extremely seriously. We know that in many cyber attacks it can be difficult to establish “attribution.” Here, where the intelligence community has been able to attribute the attack to the Russian state, taking the step of calling out Russia by name is an appropriate step to help achieve some degree of deterrence from future such attacks.
TCB: Can you take us at all behind the scenes of what might be happening? The Obama administration is saying, ok, we want to make a response. What happens within the intelligence community? Can you go into any of the steps that might be going on right now, or generally how the process works?
MO: The process would begin with turning to the agencies with operational responsibility, including FBI, CIA, and NSA, in coordination with other elements of government and the intelligence community, and engaging in a wide-ranging discussion about available options. The goal is to provide the president with a great degree of latitude in selecting a particular approach or combination of approaches that achieve the goals of deterring this activity and punishing the actors for it. So the goal within the administration at this point would be to review the different operational capabilities that we will have and the lawful authorities that we could bring to bear to help tee up a decision for the White House on the best approach.
One other factor that I think will be important is to understand that the Russian interference with our elections is part of the broader context of Russian actions around the world, both in cyberspace and on the ground. The government will look at how will we respond to this particular attack, but this will be part of the broader response to Russia given its aggression in Ukraine and in Syria. I think we need to look at this as not just an isolated incident of a cyberattack. This is part of a broader campaign of Russian foreign interference, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, now affecting us more directly here in the United States.
TCB: How high is the potential for escalation here? And does this in any way, given that it’s in the cyber realm, set a potential precedent within the national security community?
MO: There will be concern about the potential for any response to lead to an escalation. And in particular, a cyber response that could be viewed as being inconsistent with norms that the U.S., along with the rest of our allies, are seeking to establish in the way that cyber capabilities are deployed around the world as an element of national power. There’s a real issue about ensuring that we are living up to and acting consistently with the norms we are seeking to establish, even as those norms are really in their most nascent stages of development. So, in any discussion of what is a proportional response, one of the key considerations will be the degree to which the U.S. response would potentially lead to escalation or be inconsistent with those developing norms.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief.
