Multiple federal agencies were struck with a massive Russian cyberattack, among them the Department of Energy, which manages U.S. nuclear infrastructure and sets America’s nuclear policy. The new attack has been devastating as millions of Americans and countless businesses, organizations, schools and universities had their data compromised with a destructive ransomware bug. But what’s even more terrifying is its intent. Russian President Putin is almost certainly messaging to Team Biden that Moscow has the wherewithal to unleash a much more crippling attack on the U.S. homeland, resulting in a Cyber Armageddon.
As a former senior intelligence analyst specializing in Putin’s mindset and Russian doctrine and strategy, it is my assessment that Russia possesses the capability and the will to launch a catastrophic cyberattack, under certain circumstances. The threshold for such a decision is extremely high. But given that Moscow and Washington are in an ever escalating proxy war over Ukraine, Putin may very well be contemplating it.
Although the top U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA attributed the attack to a Russian ransomware group Cl0P, rather than the Russian state, it is a false distinction whether a Russian government employee or a hired gun that does the actual hacking. Russian intelligence routinely hires cyber-criminals to execute high-profile cyber operations, especially those targeting U.S. high-value targets, to ensure plausible deniability. According to the Russian cyberwarfare doctrine, the Russian president is the one who authorizes the attack, no matter who pulls the cyber trigger.
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It is not a coincidence Cl0P targeted the DOE contractor Oak Ridge Associated Universities and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the New Mexico-based facility for disposal of defense-related radioactive nuclear waste. Nuclear arms and cyber weapons are linked in Russian military science, as both are capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on the target country.
Russian strategists believe that cyber weapons even have advantage over nuclear arms. Major General Igor Dylevsky, the leading expert on cyber warfare in Russia’s General Staff, speaking at the Sixth Moscow Conference on International Security, pointed to the unique nature of cyber weapons. He said they are “bloodless” and “don’t destroy the environment,” capable of delivering a “blow to the adversary” through such peaceful channels as the internet, telecommunications networks, and mass media.” The Russians call cyber a strategic non-nuclear weapon as it can do the same job but without creating the nuclear mushroom.
Speaking at the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum last week, Putin hinted again at using nuclear weapons, “if there is a threat to the existence of the Russian state.” He brazenly told the West to “go to hell” on nuclear arms reduction, having moved some of Russia atomic arsenal to Belarus, which borders NATO countries – Poland, Lithuania and Estonia. On Monday, President Biden acknowledged that the threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real.”
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Putin almost certainly is reacting to reports of NATO having transitioned to a wartime footing, in preparation for a direct conflict with Russia, as revealed in May by a senior NATO official Admiral Rob Bauer. In March, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the deployment of four new battle groups, 1,500 men strong, across Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, in addition to the battle groups that are already present in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Stoltenberg acknowledged that NATO was augmenting its posture “in all domains with major increases of forces in the eastern part of the alliance, on land, in the air, and at sea.”
The rhetoric coming out of Washington and Brussels, portraying Russian forces as incompetent and Putin losing control over his military leaders while Ukrainian forces and President Zelenskyy having the leadership and morale to defeat Russia, runs counter to NATO’s force posture increases. If the Russian military is so inept and Putin could be overthrown in a military coup, as some Washington “experts” claim, then how could Moscow possibly go after a NATO nation such as Lithuania?
NATO switching to a war posture with Russia is must more consistent with the statements made by some U.S. and European leaders who called for Putin’s demise and strategic defeat of Russia, whether they are intended as such or not.
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The Kremlin certainly interprets U.S./NATO’s actions as preparations for the deployment of forces into the battlefield in Ukraine, potentially aimed at regime change in Russia. In this scenario, given NATO’s conventional superiority over Russia, the existence of the Russian state would indeed be under threat, providing justification for Putin to authorize catastrophic cyber strikes the U.S. homeland. Counter-intuitively for Washington leaders, Putin’s rationale for such a strike is to de-escalate war that is about to destroy Russia, rather than escalate. He believes he would be saving his Russia and himself.
Putin likely thinks this is his “last and decisive battle,” and he will have to “fight to the finish,” as he is quoted in one of his biographies, “Vladimir Putin. Life History.” He fears the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. Hussein was put to death by hanging, having being captured by U.S. soldiers in 2003 and convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Qaddafi was shot in the head by his own people in 2011.
Both of these deaths, which followed U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Libya, left a profound psychological imprint on Putin. The Russian strongman would likely do what he thinks he must, to avoid Hillary Clinton making a joke about his death, as she did about Qaddafi’s, boasting about U.S. intervention.
To operationalize its Cyber Armageddon doctrine, Russia has studied our vulnerabilities, mapped out access to our critical infrastructure, and practiced conducting cyber intrusions into our networks and computer systems for two decades. The Russians have compromised the networks of many sectors of the economy and countless government agencies, including the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.
Putin’s cyber strategist Dylevsky once stated that by launching “computer attacks on the critical infrastructure targets that are vital for the functioning of a society, it is possible to ‘heat up’ the situation in any country, all the way up to the point of social unrest.”
Russia has the most sophisticated and destructive arsenal of cyber weapons of any foreign nation. As someone who participated and led Red Teams in war games conducted by U.S. intelligence to simulate a U.S.-Russia conflict, including in the cyber domain, I can attest that Putin presides over a formidable and flexible cyber arsenal capable of producing carefully tailored effects.
Moscow views cyber as a potent non-kinetic tool capable of disrupting an opponent’s society, by targeting his military, economy, and vital support structures such as hospitals, or even plunging an entire country into darkness, when war is unavoidable.
Unleashing Cyber Armageddon on America would be Putin’s last ditch effort, if he thought that U.S. troops were about to flood into Ukraine to bloody his nose. “God save the queen, man!” said President Biden during a speech on gun control last week, punctuating his remarks with yet another outburst of utter confusion. Our confused Commander in Chief’s policy in Ukraine has baffled even Putin, provoking the Russian spy master to target the U.S. homeland with assorted Armageddons. And that is a terrifying reality America faces.
