Author Archive

James Sweetland

James Sweetland is a Research Trainee at Demos and holds an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Oxford University, where his research examined encryption and lawful hacking. You can follow him on Twitter @jl_sweetland. He writes here in a personal capacity.

"Cyber Security at MoD" by Defence Images

Since January 20th, the Biden administration has been focused above all else on tackling Covid-19 and passing a landmark economic relief bill. This is unsurprising. In the context of a global pandemic, with an urgent vaccine rollout taking place, the US government must prioritise tackling Covid-19 and its economic consequences. However, President Biden has a raft of additional problems waiting at his doorstep. In particular, the US faces a two-pronged cybersecurity crisis: the impact of a vast cybersecurity breach known as the SolarWinds attack that was likely perpetrated by Russian intelligence, coupled with the fallout from Trump’s ‘legacy of cyber confusion’.   This leaves Biden with three tasks. First, he must deal with the immediate consequences of SolarWinds: identifying what data has been compromised and doing everything possible to patch exploited systems. Next, he must hold Russia accountable …