On March 9, Erica Borghard published an article in Lawfare that on the implications of the SolarWinds breach for thinking about cyber espionage versus attack. Borghard evaluated the Biden administration’s approach to SolarWinds and offered a path forward for addressing these kinds of cyber incidents.
“The distinction between cyber espionage and cyberattack is important because espionage—including spying that takes place in and through cyberspace—is a routine aspect of statecraft. For instance, when the United States discovered in 2015 that China had gained access to Office of Personnel Management networks and compromised sensitive information about millions of federal government employees and their families, James Clapper, then-director of National Intelligence, stated, “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did. If we had the opportunity to do that, I don’t think we’d hesitate for a minute.”
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