Even cyberattacks below the threshold of starting an armed conflict are having “strategically consequential effects on the power of the United States, its allies, and partners,” a senior strategist at U.S. Cyber Command warned on Friday.
While NATO members agreed in 2014 that a significant cyberattack could be grounds to invoke Article 5 of the alliance’s founding treaty — treating an attack against one ally as an attack against all — the alliance’s adversaries are continuing to conduct offensive cyber operations below this threshold.
Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon) in Estonia, Cyber Command’s Emily Goldman stressed that while this position might deter the kinds of catastrophic cyberattacks that could merit a kinetic response, it is “not dealing with the majority of this malicious activity below armed conflict, which is becoming routine.”
