Trump administration wants to go on cyber offensive against China

President-elect Donald Trump's team wants to go on the offensive against America's cyber adversaries, though it isn't clear how the incoming administration plans to achieve this. 

Speaking to CBS News' Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday, Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), Trump's pick for national security advisor, said that years of the US prioritizing cyber defense isn't working. 

"We have been, over the years, trying to play better and better defense when it comes to cyber," Waltz said. "We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation state actors."

Despite being specifically asked about China-linked Salt Typhoon's compromise of multiple US telecom networks and snooping on US officials, Waltz called attention to Volt Typhoon, another Chinese threat actor that's been operating a botnet of compromised Cisco routers used to attack critical infrastructure. Volt Typhoon's botnet resurged in late 2024 despite being wiped by the FBI earlier this year, which Waltz said is "wholly unacceptable." 

"We need to start changing behaviors on the other side, rather than just constantly having this kind of escalation of their offense and our defense," Waltz added, while suggesting the Trump administration may call on the private sector for support to that end. 

"We've got a tremendous private sector with a lot of capability," Waltz told Brennan. "That relationship between public and private, with our tech industry, they could be doing a lot of good and helping us defend, but also making our adversaries vulnerable." 

When asked what form such a response could take, like sanctions, Waltz declined to get into specifics. 

"I'm not going to get ahead of everything that we're doing day one, but taking a different approach to cyber, looking at our doctrine, and starting to impose costs on the other side to get them to knock this off, is something we'll be taking a look at, I think," the Congressman said on Sunday.

A tit-for-tat between US and Chinese cyber agencies could spell chaos, though it's possible that recent escalations in China's activity on US networks could already be reactive.

• China's Volt Typhoon spies broke into emergency network of 'large' US city
• China again claims Volt Typhoon cyber-attack crew was invented by the US to discredit it
• Congress told how Chinese goons plan to incite 'societal chaos' in the US
• Salt Typhoon's surge extends far beyond US telcos

China accused the US Central Intelligence Agency last year of conducting years of intrusions into Chinese networks and devices, dubbing the US an "Empire of Hacking" for the continued intrusions and the US tech industry's support for revolutionary movements in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. The report largely relied on older information exposed by WikiLeaks in 2017.

The US and China signed a pact in 2015 pledging not to attack each other, but neither side has upheld its commitments, assuming US and Chinese allegations are accurate.

Critics might suggest US tech companies would not want to face consequences from China and other US adversaries as "payback" for playing along with the incoming government's offensive cybersecurity strategy, and The Register was unable to reach anyone for comment on the matter before publication.

What the incoming US government might do to quash cyber attacks is not known. Sanctions are likely to be met with retaliation, and the Justice Department can issue all the arrest warrants it wants for China's state-sponsored online attackers – it's not like Beijing is going to extradite them to appease the President-elect.

"I think we need to take a much stronger stance," Waltz said. "President Trump has indicated that as well." There remains a possibility that stance will set off a cyber arms race more serious than the one we're already engaged in. ®