NSC official: Trump administration will ‘change the script’ on offensive side

SAN FRANCISCO — A top White House official on Thursday said the Trump administration will work at “destigmatizing and normalizing” the use of offensive cyber as a tool of national power.

“It's not offense for offense’s sake, but being able to respond in kind, if we're the victim of foreign aggression, being able to have our own offensive response or to use offense in support” of traditional military activities, Alexei Bulazel, the senior director for cyber on the National Security Council, said during a keynote discussion at the RSA Conference.

“I’d also add that not responding is escalatory in its own right,” he said, adding that allowing adversaries to “walk all over you” encourages malicious behavior.

“You need to find some way to communicate this is not acceptable.”

Bulazel’s remarks offer some of the most extensive insights into how the White House will handle a major aspect of U.S. digital policy since President Donald Trump took office.

In the weeks after the presidential election, incoming administration officials argued the U.S. needed to go on offense and start imposing higher costs and consequences — especially following Chinese hacking campaigns that breached a number of U.S. telecommunications firms and let them preposition themselves to attack the country’s critical infrastructure.

But details have been in short supply, with most of the focus instead on the administration’s efforts to shrink the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the firing of U.S. Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Timothy Haugh and one of his top deputies.

Bulazel, who served as the NSC director for cyber policy during Trump’s first term and has been vocal about the use of offensive digital tools, said “there's a lot we could do to impose costs” on adversaries, including responding “in kind” in the digital domain.

“I think the previous administration, administrations before it, have been hesitant to do that,” he said, describing the topic as the “kind of thing where we can go change the script. We can change the playbook on offensive cyber.”

“We have amazing talent and muscle. You have people who have been so handcuffed or put in a straight jacket, and you can undo that, unleash that talent,” according to Bulazel.

As for defense, he told the audience, there's “not as much that the White House, with a couple of documents, a couple of executive orders” can do to change the federal government’s approach. 

That said, Bulazel said the administration would seek to update “how we think about defense in the modern threat environment” with the advent of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies 

“Updating offense, updating defense. Those are the two big boulders.”