Russia and the United States are a pair of “cowboys [who] are aiming ‘cyber’ pistols at each other,” a Kremlin adviser warned Monday.
“We are ready to put down our ‘six-shooters’ if they are as well,” Andrei Krutskikh, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian media. “However so far, tensions are only rising, whereas it is necessary to reach agreements and share this experience to others.”
Russia is apparently concerned that the recent installment of John Bolton as White House national security adviser could presage a new wave of cyberattacks from the United States. Bolton called for a “retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia” just weeks before taking his post in the Trump administration.
“Putin’s global aspirations are not friendly to America, and the sooner he knows we know it, the better,” Bolton wrote in the Hill. “One way to do that is to engage in a retaliatory cyber campaign against Russia. This effort should not be proportional to what we have just experienced. It should be decidedly disproportionate.”
Putin’s team maintains that the United States and Russia should develop international parameters for cyberwarfare and espionage.
“Such an accord on cyberspace would increase transparency and predictability,” Krutskikh said Monday. “We could not only notify each other about any suspicious things, but also undertake joint efforts to solve arising problems.”
U.S. officials have derided the idea of cybersecurity cooperation with Russia, which has been accused of conducting cyberattacks against several western countries, in addition to one against Ukraine’s electric grid that caused a power outage lasting several hours.
“It’s not the dumbest idea I have ever heard but it’s pretty close,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said last year after Putin proposed establishing a joint “cyber security unit” in a meeting with Trump.
Bolton favors aggressive cyberattacks that “create structures of deterrence” that preempt future conflict.
“The lesson we want Russia (or anyone else) to learn is that the costs to them from future cyberattacks against the United States will be so high that they will simply consign all their cyberwarfare plans to their computer memories to gather electronic dust,” he wrote.
