They did an episode recently on the Russian hack: "Hacked, Again." The episode dives into the most recent and extensive cyberattack on our nation. The podcast description includes this: "The sophistication and scope of the attack has stunned experts. About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update — a Trojan horse of sorts — that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised."
What I appreciated was the discussion near the end of the podcast on the idea of mutually assured destruction (MAD), a concept that came out of the Cold War. It is the idea that one nation would not launch a nuclear missile attack on the other because they in turn would also be retaliated against and suffer the consequences.
Now we have a bit of a mutually assured disruption scenario going on where the espionage is extensive and pervasive, but nations are not attacking the electrical grid or other infrastructure systems and causing them to fail. When does espionage go over the line and become an "attack" that is considered "war like" that must be publicly and forcefully retaliated against?
All of this is beyond my pay grade, but this should become an international debate and lead to a treaty before we stumble into a shooting war over a cyberattack that escalates into terrain that is totally new to nations.
