269 Inside Ukraine/Russia War: What Are Real Cyber Threats? How Will It End? with Dmitri Alperovitch, US Homeland Security Advisory, Co-Founder of CrowdStrike, Chairman Silverado Policy Accelerator

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep into topics that traditional television could and would not go. Specifically, we talk about the war in Ukraine, and where all of this might end with our guest, Dmitri Alperovitch. We also talk about cyber threats, and how capable the US is against it.

Dmitri Alperovitch is one of America's top cybersecurity experts. He is on the US homeland security advisory council, and the co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of the $50 billion market cap CrowdStrike. Right now, he is also the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator.

So when he talks about cyber threats and security, you’d best listen in.
Achieving Escalation Dominance
The conversation starts off with Dmitri explaining that the United States has the capability to take Russia off the internet. They could it temporarily, or even permanently – though it could prove complicated to do so. Both of which can be escalatory and provocative.

Dmitri’s point on this is that rather than slowly matching Russia’s actions with certain sanctions or retaliating in a similar manner, the US can use this to send a message and stop those attacks from further escalating in the first place.

“If they do launch those attacks, in my opinion, we need to be very thoughtful about our response. We need to make sure that we achieve escalation dominance, in that we stop those attacks that in their tracks that we send a very strong message to Moscow: that this is not going to be tolerated, this is not going to be acceptable.” – Dmitri Alperovitch

Life Without Internet
As to why this would serve as a great deterrent, Dmitri explains that while they could still send people to do cyberattacks on the US from other places, this would send a strong signal to make them think twice about it.

Because like the rest of the world, they are also dependent on this digital resource to run their country. Nowadays, energy sectors, healthcare, and logistics see the highest usage rate for it. So in effect, shutting down their internet capabilities could have a strong effect on their economy as well.

“The goal of the internet shutdown is not to stop cyber attacks; that is an impossibility because they can launch them from any place. And we're not going to go around the world shutting down countries from the internet. That's not an interest in the United States. The goal is to demonstrate the type of effect we can have on their economy, if they continue to judge those attacks from wherever they may launch them, from Russia or elsewhere.” – Dmitri Alperovitch

Though Dmitri warns that this should only be done as a retaliatory action or response to an attack, rather than a pre-emptive strike. Because if they decide to do the latter, it might suddenly invite attacks, so the US should consider things carefully first.
The Effectivity of Cyber Attacks
Dmitri describes cyber attacks as a perfect tool for inflicting damage but having the option of anonymity or deniability. One can execute it remotely, and still have impact on a far-away area or country. Though for something as overt as what Russia was doing, defaulting to kinetic weapons and outright war could achieve their objectives.

Though it is not to say that cyber attacks is ineffective in this case, as Dmitri shares what happened in the first few hours or the Russian attacks on Ukraine.

“One of the attacks that has not gotten a lot of attention was the hack of a US-based satellite provider called ViaSat that has a subsidiary that provides satellite communication services to Eastern Europe, particularly the Ukraine military. The Russians had actually hacked that satellite provider, or actors are believed to be Russian. They were able to essentially cripple satellite modems, thousands of them that the Ukrainians were using in the first hours of the war. My understanding is that that actually did have a significant impact on their ability to communicate in those initial hours and potent...