As US cities struggle to protect themselves from hackers, the Army National Guard is launching a new effort in five cities to strengthen local defenses against digital attacks.
“We depend on everything outside of our wires — power, water. And we know that if that’s affected while we’re going to the fight, our families are going to be at risk,” Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, deputy chief of staff G-6, told reporters during a media roundtable at the annual Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.
The pilot program is limited to just a handful of locations, with the goal of replicating it elsewhere later. Rey did not specify what locations in the US are hosting the program.
Over the past decade, US cities and public utilities have found themselves crippled by cyberattacks. Municipal courts, water treatment facilities, electrical grids, police systems, and telephone systems have all proved vulnerable to attacks. Just this summer, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated his state’s National Guard after a cyberattack forced the city of St. Paul to shut down its computer systems.
The Defense Department has seen a strong push to beef up cyber capabilities recently, with new emphasis on things like cyber weapons and electronic warfare. The Army even has a special commissioning program into its ranks for those who are already cyber pros.
Cyberattacks are often executed by criminal groups aiming to squeeze a cryptocurrency-based ransom from victims in return for getting access to their servers back. Nation-state campaigns could pose an even greater threat by seeking classified information or private information that could be exploited by spies.
A major yearslong Chinese cyberattack known as “Salt Typhoon” compromised millions of Americans’ data last year, US officials said at the time. During the attack, hackers managed to access information from leading American telecommunications companies, the US Treasury, and even sought to infiltrate presidential candidates’ communications.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post last November that the hack was the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history by far.”
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“This is an ongoing effort by China to infiltrate telecom systems around the world, to exfiltrate huge amounts of data,” Warner said at the time.
Retired four-star general Tim Haugh, who led the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, echoed those warnings this week, telling CBS “60 Minutes” that China has hacked into nearly every part of American infrastructure — including small towns — and calling US defenses against such attacks a “daily contest.”
The former NSA director was fired abruptly in April by the Trump administration after his loyalty was questioned by Trump confidant and activist Laura Loomer.
Threats abroad can’t be ignored, but domestic threats have become increasingly urgent, said Brandon Pugh, the Army’s principal cyber advisor.
“I think a huge vulnerability we unfortunately have seen is adversaries are not showing restraint when it comes to going after our critical infrastructure,” Pugh told reporters during the roundtable. “Whether they’re nation states or just criminal groups — nothing is off the table.”
The concern is not limited to civilian disruption. Officials worry that cyberattacks on utilities, ports, or transportation systems could paralyze the military’s ability to move troops and equipment at home or abroad.
“We can’t go outside our wire oftentimes, but we can work with our Guard and critical infrastructure in critical infrastructure operators,” Pugh said.
