The USG needs to improve public comms about cyber espionage - and refrain from conflating it with offensive cyber operations. Further, it should think through how OCOs might impact crisis stability with China - particularly as China might seek to reveal such capabilities as tensions mount. /FIN

One complicating factor in all this is that these hacks are playing out in public, which raises the bar for US government responses. It's difficult to clearly tell the public what the difference between "Salt" and "Volt" are.

As @mikepoznanski.bsky.social and Erica Lonergan argued in War on the Rocks - cyber espionage and attacks on critical infrastructure are fundamentally different and require different responses. warontherocks.com/2025/02/a-ta...

But the United States has (allegedly) conducted similar compromises of telecoms for intelligence purposes. See for instance: www.reuters.com/article/tech...

Like many US policymakers, Neuberger conflates China's Salt Typhoon (telecom espionage) with Volt Typhoon (pre-positioning in critical infrastructure). She suggests that compromises of telecoms could have been used to disrupt civilian and mil comms during a conflict.

It’s night in Iran now - once the sun rises and if weather is clear, satellite imagery may give clues about the impact but info will be limited. Follow-on strikes could be based on subsequent intel. Likely next desired target would be fissile material through Iran but that is a difficult quarry.

Check out the post to see more and consider subscribing if you're interested in the topic: strategicdefense.substack.com

For instance, fielding interceptors in space raises new escalation risks - and means that the US would still need to rely on deterrence to protect its missile defenses!

In my view, the EO adopts a strategy of "throw everything at the missile and hope something sticks" without considering some of the strategic trade-offs in these forms of missile defense.