U.S. competitors and adversaries are probably” mystified,” says the Atlantic Council’s Mathew Burrows, by President-elect Donald Trump’s refusal to accept a CIA assessment that Russia is behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and his disinterest in daily intelligence community briefings. The Cipher Brief spoke to Burrows to learn more about how adversaries may view this development.
The Cipher Brief: How do the United States’ competitors and adversaries view this development?
Mathew Burrows: They may be mystified. That may be their first reaction on why he would spurn not only this report, but also his obvious disinclination to have many briefings with the CIA. He’s been rather dismissive of CIA intelligence—I mean having CIA on your side is usually seen as a pretty big thing. I think that’s going to be the first thing that people wonder about.
Second, they’re going to worry that he won’t benefit from the intelligence and is going to be more of a loose cannon, because he won’t be grounded in what is actually happening. The daily briefs are a good way for presidents to get an understanding of what others are thinking about, both enemies and friends. What are the key issues? What are the rising threats? So that’s going to be a concern, and the adversaries may see this as giving them an advantage, because he won’t have that intelligence by his side.
TCB: What might an adversarial government make of such aggressive actions between Russia and the U.S—two major global actors?
MB: There are not many countries that have the capabilities of Russia—China maybe, but China has struck its own cyber agreement with the U.S. on what it can and cannot do. I think adversaries are going to be waiting and watching to see the degree to which there may be an agreement between the U.S. and Russia—just like what we had with China. Adversaries are also going to look more broadly to see if Trump actually gets concessions out of the Russians, not only on this issue of hacking, but more broadly on their actions in the Middle East, on Ukraine—other problems. All of this is extremely closely watched by European nations, but Central Europeans I think really worry about whether Trump is as invested in their security against Russia as past presidents have been. If there is no effort to try to rein in Russian hacking, then it will be seen as Trump not caring about what Russia can do elsewhere.
TCB: It’s still early on, he’s still only the president-elect, but do you think they’re viewing this as an opportunity that can be exploited?
MB: They’re wondering what the next move by Washington is going to be. If Washington makes no effort here to—just as we did with China—to rein in their hacking, if the U.S. makes no movement, then they will see Trump not dealing the way he should with Russia. Basically this is something where Trump needs to get Russia to drop or rein in that kind of cyberattack.
TCB: Looking at other cyber actors, such as Iran or North Korea, how might this change the espionage practices of other countries now that Russia has had such success?
MB: I wouldn’t put it as just Russia, I would add what China was doing before—they present opportunities. Of course, we engage in some of these operations ourselves—against Iran, obviously with the Stuxnet virus (which disrupted Iran’s nuclear program). What they’re worried about would be that all of this gets out of hand, and that unless you get some rules here, set some parameters, the cyberattacks escalate. They will be looking to the U.S. to see how Trump and Putin sit down and settle some of these differences. If Trump seems to be giving more than Putin, then people will assume that Trump has been hoodwinked. They’re looking at a number of different factors.
I don’t think it’s just the hacking, it’s also how Trump responds to things like Russia putting nuclear tipped missiles in Kaliningrad or what he does about growing Russian influence in the Middle East. There are a lot of different issues—this is one of those.
TCB: The Obama administration has been slow to respond to Russia’s involvement in the hack, and Trump has disregarded the CIA’s findings outright. What is the danger of lacking a unified message and response that can act as a deterrent?
MB: It’s not as if we launch an air attack or something. But just as Russian hacking seems to be getting more and more out of hand, there has to be some way of setting some rules of the road. If Trump doesn’t attempt to try to rein it in, I think it does become more like a free for all, and obviously we have the means to potentially retaliate in kind, but you’re sliding then into a real disordered world. It’s actually not in anybody’s interests—or least not for states, it could be for non-state actors—to have a really disordered world. What Trump needs to do is basically negotiate, set down some red lines, set down some parameters, but also not deal just exclusively with this problem. There are a whole set of other issues that are as serious or more serious where we have differences with Russia. We really need to sit down, just as we did in the Cold War, and lower the tension on not just this hacking issue, but on a lot of other scores as well.
TCB: And how hopeful would you say you are for that possibility?
MB: I think all the signals Trump and his team are sending show he is serious about wanting some talks and some negotiations. He thinks that he can deal with Putin. So, I’m hopeful that there will actually be talks. President Barack Obama didn’t seem to want to talk to Putin. We had Secretary of State John Kerry, who was trying to put together an agreement on providing more humanitarian assistance in the Syrian conflict, getting some cooperation with the Russians, but towards the end, Obama himself didn’t seem to want to deal at all with Putin. I think it’s better that you have negotiations. We’ll see if Putin really wants to deal.
