American Public Reticent to Retaliate Against SolarWinds Hack
As the United States moves towards developing a more comprehensive doctrine that could delineate when cyber operations do or do not justify a retaliatory response, public attitudes about these questions should remain a point of consideration.
As our understanding of the damage incurred by the SolarWinds hack grows, the question remains: How will the United States respond? In reaction to the recent, widespread hack engineered by Russian intelligence, President Donald Trump and President-Elect Joe Biden have taken drastically opposing stances. On December 17, Biden condemned the hack, in which Russian operatives leveraged vulnerabilities in SolarWinds and FireEye technologies to steal information from Fortune 500 companies, the Pentagon, the Treasury, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, and more. Biden has pledged his commitment to cybersecurity and stated his administration would “not stand idly by in the face of cyber