New Biden Cyber Strategy Poses a Threat to Private Sector

By Julio Rivera,

Last week brought some news that was mostly seen as a formality. Joe Biden will be running for reelection in 2024.

If there has been one recurring theme in the past 27 months of the Biden Presidency, it’s been the lack of accountability for the lackluster results across many aspects of government. From foreign policy to the economy, America finds herself in a weaker position then it was prior to COVID.

One major failure was the botched Afghanistan pullout in the summer of 2021. As a result of poor planning and shortsightedness, the entire operation became a deadly and unorganized endeavor. There was the suicide bomber attack at Kabul airport that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US soldiers. There was also the utter disregard shown to the estimated 78,000 Afghans who worked for the American government that were left behind at the mercy of the Taliban by the Biden administration, according to a report from the non-governmental organization the Association of Wartime Allies.

Even though the Afghanistan exit took place more than half a year into Biden’s term, the recently released review of the US exit from Afghanistan that was made public on April 6^th offered this ridiculous assertion: “The departing Trump administration had left the Biden administration with a date for withdrawal, but no plan for executing it.”

Joe Biden’s blame shifting tactics were also apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden, in large part, had ran his campaign on stopping the virus. “I will not shut down the country,” then-candidate Joe Biden promised in 2020. He proclaimed, “I will shut down the virus,” and “I will beat this virus” at the limited appearances he made while largely “campaigning from the basement.”

Biden even blamed COVID-19 deaths on Trump personally several times during the campaign, in his attempts sway voters into thinking that the former president possessed the ability to stop the worst pandemic in 100 years, or that Biden himself could somehow wave a magic wand that would paralyze the virus. In reality, it took the first 9 months of 2021 for COVID deaths to surpass the total for 2020. This was despite former President Trump’s “Operation Warpspeed,” that brought access to vaccines to most Americans in 2021.

President-elect Biden also blamed then still-sitting President Trump for what has been repeatedly pointed to by experts as the most wide-ranging hacking incident in history – the SolarWinds attack.

Sticking to the “Trump and Russia narrative” that has still not completely dissipated in some circles, Biden implied that the Trump administration was attempting to shield Russia from blame when he stated that the attack “certainly fits Russia’s long history of reckless, disruptive cyber activities,” and added “the Trump administration needs to make an official attribution. This assault happened on Donald’s Trump watch.”

Most of the hacking activity that has been mentioned in the media during the Biden era has centered around the Ukraine conflict, with both sides launching attacks since the earliest stages of the war. Although there many cyber operations occurring half-a-world away from the US, there are still domestic targets being victimized on a regular basis, whether or not we hear about them from the Biden-loving mainstream and/or corporate media.

In 2022, ransomware attacks affected 106 state or local government agencies, which represents a sizable increase from the 77 attacks in 2021, with 25% of those 106 incidents resulting in data theft.

2022 also saw a multitude of underreported attacks against the United States perpetrated by state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups. Among the hacks were regular cyber-attacks against US defense contractors originating from Russian state-sponsored actors. Additionally, Iranian Advanced Persistent Threat actors known as APT 34 targeted organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States with the support of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

So, to curb the relentless onslaught against America, the Biden administration has recently rolled out a new National Cybersecurity Strategy. Although this strategy claims it will “rebalance the responsibility to defend cyberspace by shifting the burden for cybersecurity away from individuals, small businesses, and local governments, and onto the organizations that are most capable and best-positioned to reduce risks for all of us,” according to global compliance law firm Gibson Dunn, private businesses “can expect to see direct liability, new regulations, and lawsuits from the federal government” if the current proposal is adopted.

The Gibson Dunn alert also warns that “increased (government) enforcement may also be complicated by multiple agencies pursuing the same actions, resulting in the potential for companies having to deal with overlapping and uncoordinated inquiries.”

In simpler terms, the new strategy may create a nightmare situation for private companies struggling to keep their doors open in the midst of a faltering economy by having what has largely been an ineffective executive branch forcing additional compliance standards and costs. This is the last thing many American businesses can afford to do, and if they get it wrong, can see themselves penalized into bankruptcy.

The day-to-day traps that ensnare Americans online are difficult enough to navigate. From rogue pop-ups to “Big-Tech” enabled malvertising, every click is a potential trap. So, with the Biden administration’s track record being less than sparkling, business owners should worry that they too may be unfairly scapegoated and find themselves facing penalties as a result of poorly written bureaucratic legalese.

Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, Editorial Director for Reactionary Times, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, has been published by many of the most heavily trafficked websites in the world.