The White House is reportedly dropping Russia from its list of threats to cybersecurity and is instead honing in on China, part of the Trump administration’s apparent broader effort to curry favor with the Kremlin and push for a peace deal that would end the country’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
According to The Guardian, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has received a new list of directives that largely omit Russia as a threat to monitor. Part of the Department of Homeland Security, CISA monitors cyber threats made to the United States.
These directives were listed out in a memo, which singled out China and the protection of local systems as priorities, according to the newspaper. The document, however, failed to mention Russia—despite the country previously being a seminal focus at the agency.
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A source familiar with the matter who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity said agency analysts were verbally told to not follow or report on Russian threats, adding that a “Russian-related” project was consequently “nixed.”
“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries. With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this,” the source told The Guardian.
“People are saying Russia is winning. Putin is on the inside now,” they continued.
Another source who had worked on highly classified US joint task forces to monitor and combat Russian cyber threats additionally told The Guardian that the recent developments were “truly shocking.”
“There are thousands of US government employees and military working daily on the massive threat Russia poses as possibly the most significant nation state threat actor. Not to diminish the significance of China, Iran or North Korea, but Russia is at least on par with China as the most significant cyber threat,” the source told the outlet.
“There are dozens of discrete Russia state-sponsored hacker teams dedicated to either producing damage to US government, infrastructure and commercial interests or conducting information theft with a key goal of maintaining persistent access to computer systems,” they added.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said: “The memo referenced in the Guardian’s ‘reporting’ is not from the Trump Administration, which is quite inconvenient to the Guardian’s preferred narrative.
“CISA remains committed to addressing all cyber threats to U.S. critical infrastructure, including from Russia. There has been no change in our posture or priority on this front.”
The New York Times additionally reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to stop “offensive operations” against Russia.
Citing a current and two former officials familiar with the discussions, the outlet reports Hegseth’s instructions were issued before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous visit to the White House on Friday and seem to be part of a larger effort to invite Russia into peace talks.
A senior defense official told the Daily Beast: “Due to operational security concerns, we do not comment nor discuss cyber intelligence, plans, or operations. There is no greater priority to Secretary Hegseth than the safety of the Warfighter in all operations, to include the cyber domain.”
