With cyberattacks against the U.S. businesses and the military on the rise, debate is intensifying about the strategy the Obama administration should best adopt in response,
The Wall Street Journal reported.
A number of lawmakers and policymakers believe counterattacks to disable or limit the networks of the culprits would be the best way to stop the escalating threat, but White House officials have expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of an "offensive" approach.
President Barack Obama is expected to meet with business executives in California on Friday to encourage them to work more closely with the government to boost their defenses against cyber risks.
The administration also believes there needs to be more information sharing between companies and the government.
Ashton Carter, the White House's nominee for secretary of Defense, has indicated that while greater coordination is needed, the U.S. should also consider a strategy that includes counterattacks.
"We … need to improve our abilities to respond," he said, according to the Journal. "And those responses can be in cyberspace or in other ways, but certainly they should include the option to respond in cyberspace."
Maine independent Sen. Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has set out the case that there should be a government-led counterattack strategy in place.
"I'm wondering if we shouldn't be thinking of strategy that, if a nation-state is behind a cyberattack … they will lose their network," he told the Journal. "Otherwise we are entirely in a defensive posture."
But others have been outspoken in their opposition to retaliation.
"Once the planners and everyone looks [into retaliation], it puts it on an escalation ladder we don't want to be on," Bob Gourley, a former top technology official at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Journal.
"The first thing we need to do is protect our systems. Until we do that, we're almost inviting them to attack, saying 'Come on, take our stuff.'"
A series of cyberattacks recently has brought the issue to the forefront of the political agenda. Late last year, North Korea was blamed for stealing large amounts of
data from Sony, while health insurer
Anthem suffered a theft of tens of millions of consumer records traced to China.
And hackers last month briefly
took control of military Twitter and YouTube accounts run by U.S. Central Command.
The head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's software innovation division said that cyberattacks against the U.S. military have been on the rise, too, according to
The Hill.
"The sophistication of the attacks is increasing," Dan Kaufman, head of DARPA's Information Innovation Office told 60 Minutes, according to The Hill.
"My job is not to wait for something catastrophic to happen and then say, 'Oh, goodness, we should do something.' My job is to say, 'Hmm. I see this trend line going. I want to be way ahead of this line.'"
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