美国国家公共电台 NPR Cyber Aggression Takes A Back Seat To Other Presidential Campaign Issues（在线收听）

Cyber Aggression Takes A Back Seat To Other Presidential Campaign Issues

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Cybersecurity has plagued this presidential election like no other in U.S. history. Earlier this week, the Obama administration indicated its plans to retaliate against Russia in some way for cyberattacks. Hacking came up again in the final presidential debate, yet neither candidate is offering a roadmap for what to do on cyber aggression or how to handle foreign hackers. NPR's Aarti Shahani explains.

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: Let's revisit the last debate. Hillary Clinton brings up hacking. She says the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans, feeding WikiLeaks. And she puts forth a question.

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HILLARY CLINTON: Finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this?

SHAHANI: She wants Trump, who's been drumming up fears about rigged elections, to acknowledge that Vladimir Putin is trying to rig the election using cyberattacks. Trump deflects at first.

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DONALD TRUMP: She doesn't like Putin because...

CHRIS WALLACE: Mister...

TRUMP: ...Putin has outsmarted her at every step...

WALLACE: Mr. Trump, I...

TRUMP: ...Of the way.

SHAHANI: When pressed by moderator Chris Wallace, the Republican nominee says it's not OK to hack that way.

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TRUMP: Of course I condemn - of course I can - I don't know Putin.

TOM CROSS: It's easy for Trump to condemn these attacks.

SHAHANI: Cybersecurity expert Tom Cross, who is an independent, has advice for Trump.

CROSS: But it would have been more interesting, if Trump really wanted to go after Hillary Clinton, to ask her, you know, what are we going to do to stop these things? And what are you doing to stop these things, particularly given that a lot of organizations that she's associated with were the targets of these attacks.

SHAHANI: The intelligence community says Russia is hacking. So, Cross says, it looks silly for Trump to question that finding. Trump could instead turn the tables and ask Clinton not just - hey, where are those missing emails? - from her private server - but, hey, what did you do to protect your entire staff at the State Department from foreign hackers?

Both candidates have written positions on cybersecurity and, Cross says, both read like milquetoast - make points like, we must audit our systems to look for vulnerabilities.

CROSS: They're stating, in different words, essentially things that the United States government is already doing.

SHAHANI: Imagine an election in which the candidates took on the real issues. Stanford professor Herb Lin is a Republican who says he will not vote for Trump. And he says, in 2016, we need a leader who can think through cyber strategy with some basic literacy. With Russia, the U.S. could hack back, maybe try to take down Russia's electric grid, leak embarrassing secrets about Putin, impose economic sanctions. Lin says a good leader could think through each action and the reaction from adversaries.

HERB LIN: Are they going to just cry uncle when we respond and say - oh, no, no, we've seen the error of our ways - we're not going to do this anymore? That is unlikely. The question is, how can you persuade them to back off of what they're doing?

SHAHANI: Lin compares today's discussion of cybersecurity, on and off the campaign trail, to the nuclear debate back in the 1950s. Back then, the U.S. was well aware of its immense power with that cutting-edge technology. But policymakers weren't sure what to do with it. President Eisenhower said there is no reason nukes shouldn't be used just exactly as you'd use a rifle.

LIN: No serious commander in chief would say that today. Nuclear weapons are really special. They're a really different kind weapons.

SHAHANI: We've evolved in our strategic thinking with nukes. Lin says our leaders' thinking on cyberweapons is in its infancy. And so, on the campaign trail, candidates talk a fair amount about hacking but not about how to solve it as a policy problem.

Aarti Shahani, NPR News.

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