Srsly Risky Biz: How Trump will drive covert operations

Summary

Risky Business News - Episode Summary: “Srsly Risky Biz: How Trump will drive covert operations”

Release Date: November 14, 2024

In this episode of Risky Business News, hosts Patrick Gray and Tom Uren delve into the intricate implications of Donald Trump’s return to the political arena, particularly focusing on cybersecurity, intelligence operations, and international cyber policies. The discussion navigates through Trump's potential influence on covert operations, the future of cybersecurity policy, and recent international developments affecting the digital landscape.

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1. Trump's Election and Its Implications for Cybersecurity and Intelligence

a. Cybersecurity Policy Under Trump

Tom Uren begins by analyzing the anticipated impact of Trump’s election on cybersecurity. Reflecting on his newsletter, Tom suggests that while cyber policy may remain "boring" with sensible yet unambitious executive orders, the intelligence community (IC) is poised for significant upheaval.

Tom Uren [01:27]: “Trump is not really interested in cybersecurity policy, the security part, and that means there's space for good people to come up with sensible policy. It’s not audacious or ambitious because Trump doesn’t care, but it’s still good.”

b. Intelligence Operations and Covert Actions

The conversation shifts to the more volatile sphere of intelligence operations. Tom characterizes Trump as an “activist president” willing to exploit all available tools without the typical restraint concerning consequences.

Tom Uren [03:59]: “Trump is an activist president. He believes in doing stuff and he believes in taking advantage of all the tools that the US has.”

A notable example discussed is the administration’s contemplation of extreme measures against Julian Assange, highlighting a potential escalation in covert operations.

Patrick Gray [03:43]: “We should probably point out what you mean by strong action there, which is that they should either kidnap him or assassinate him.”

This exchange underscores the unpredictable and potentially aggressive maneuvers the intelligence community might undertake under Trump’s leadership.

c. Appointees: Loyalty vs. Expertise

Patrick Gray raises concerns about the quality of Trump's appointees, suggesting a shift from experienced professionals to loyalists who align ideologically rather than bringing requisite expertise.

Patrick Gray [06:08]: “I think you're more likely to wind up with appointees who match, you know, who check ideological boxes rather than experience boxes.”

Tom concurs, noting the early trend of Trump selecting loyalty over qualifications from the outset of his term.

Tom Uren [06:51]: “Trump has, from the get go, chosen people who are loyalists rather than people who had a background, necessarily.”

This dynamic raises questions about the long-term efficacy and stability of policies influenced by potentially less qualified appointees.

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2. UN Cybercrime Treaty: West's Changing Stance

The discussion transitions to the controversial UN Cybercrime Treaty, examining why Western nations like the US and UK, traditionally wary of the treaty, are now supporting it despite reservations about its misuse by authoritarian regimes.

Tom explains that Western support hinges on maintaining a presence within the treaty's framework to influence its development and mitigate extraterritorial repression.

Tom Uren [12:32]: “We think that we are better off being inside the tent and trying to influence how it develops.”

Patrick interprets this as a strategy to endorse the treaty nominally while selectively applying its provisions.

Patrick Gray [12:35]: “We'll vote for the treaty, but we're going to ignore it.”

The hosts acknowledge the skepticism around the treaty’s effectiveness in curbing cyber misuse by adversarial states like Russia and China, emphasizing the limited practical impact despite its formal adoption.

Tom Uren [13:54]: “If those countries want to be repressive, they will be repressive.”

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3. Canada’s Ban on TikTok’s Officers: National Security Implications

The episode further explores Canada's perplexing decision to deem TikTok a national security threat by expelling its officers and personnel from the country. Tom critiques the move as counterproductive, arguing it diminishes Canadian leverage over TikTok without addressing the underlying security concerns.

Tom Uren [14:52]: “It's just totally baffling the security risks from TikTok... it's a massive media business with a whole lot of influence over what people are looking at and it could potentially shape what people think.”

Patrick highlights the absurdity of the decision, noting the absence of a ban on the app's usage and questioning the rationale behind removing TikTok’s local presence.

Patrick Gray [15:42]: “There's no restriction there. It's just like, get your officers out of here. Which means there's no point of contact for the Canadian government anymore. It's bizarre.”

Tom dismisses the ban as mere “National Security Theater,” emphasizing that the action serves more as a symbolic gesture than a substantive solution.

Tom Uren [16:07]: “It's just like less leverage doesn't actually address the problem.”

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4. Additional Insights and Closing Thoughts

Towards the end of the episode, Patrick and Tom touch upon the broader unpredictability of a Trump-led administration, acknowledging both the opportunities and challenges it presents for cybersecurity and intelligence operations. They reiterate the importance of understanding the underlying drivers that shape policy directions, especially under a leadership style characterized by impulsivity and a willingness to employ state power without conventional restraints.

Patrick Gray [10:21]: “Trump loves to keep everyone guessing. He loves foreign leaders or adversaries to feel uncertain about things.”

Tom Uren [10:21]: “It's entirely his instinct to do stuff like get things done, move forward, damn the consequences.”

The hosts conclude by recognizing the complexity and volatility of the current geopolitical climate, driven in part by Trump's strategies and decisions.

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For more in-depth analysis and additional news items covered in this episode, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the Risky Biz newsletter at News Risky Biz.

Transcript

[Tom Uren]

Foreign.

[Patrick Gray]

And welcome to another edition of Seriously Risky Business, the podcast we do here at Risky Business hq, which focuses on things like policy and intelligence. Joining me now is Tom Uren, who is our Intelligence Policy editor. Welcome, Tom.

[Tom Uren]

G'day, Patrick. How are you?

[Patrick Gray]

Good, good. And, yeah, this. This podcast is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett foundation and Lawfare Media. And we also have a corporate sponsor for this week's podcast, which is Kroll Cyber, who do managed security services like mdr. They also do a lot of incident response and whatnot, so they are easy to find. K R O L L Kroll Cyber. So, Tom, we've just been through the edit of your newsletter this week, which, for those who haven't subscribed, you could do so at News Risky Biz. And you've covered a few things, and the first thing you've done, pretty ambitious, which is to lay out some analysis of Trump's election and what that might mean for cyber security and also for the intelligence community. And your take is, and I agree with it, is that cyber policy will be quite boring, hopefully, like it was in his first term, where we saw some really sensible, albeit pedestrian, executive orders and whatnot. And the IC stuff might get a little bit crazy. It's basically the takeaway from what you've written here.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like a little bit of behind the scenes, like writing about Trump being elected is the obvious thing to write about, but it presents a real conundrum because who knows what the man is going to do? And so the approach I took was to look at what had happened in the previous term and try and sort of pull out what the underlying drivers were really, and then those underlying drivers probably won't change. So we'll probably get more of the same. What's the expression? More of the same, but more so in the next term. And so when it comes to cybersecurity, narrowly, just the security part, basically, in the last term, there was some good stuff, and the dynamic there is that Trump is not really interested in cybersecurity policy, the security part, and that means there's space for good people to come up with sensible policy. It's not audacious or ambitious because Trump doesn't care, but it's still good. It's fine. It's moving the ball forward. I sort of look back at the policy and the strategy that came out of that time, and it was very appropriate for the time. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it. Now, on the intelligence side, however, the real driver there is that Trump is An activist president. He believes in doing stuff and he believes in taking advantage of all the tools that the US Has. So military like tariffs, he's very keen to employ tariffs. And when it comes to intelligence operations, he's like, yep, let's go for it. And he doesn't, isn't restrained in the same way that some presidents have been about the fear of consequences, like, what else is going to happen. So the examples that have come out since he left the presidency were that there were all these ideas floating around about what to do with Julian Assange. And so that presented a real dilemma for the administration. And his CIA appointee, Mike Pompeo was actually one of the people who was advocating for very strong action. So I expect.

[Patrick Gray]

Well, we should probably point out what you mean by strong action there, which is that they should either kidnap him or assassinate him. That's right. Which is, you know, that strong action is one way to put that.

[Tom Uren]

That's right, yeah. Yeah. So I guess I buried the lead a bit there.

[Patrick Gray]

You did.

[Tom Uren]

You know, I described that as bonkers. Like, it just like to point out the obvious. He's at the time, this was when he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and he's an Australian. So it's, you know, potentially kidnapping an Australian in London out of an embassy. Like, you're just ticking off the red flags or raising the red flags.

[Patrick Gray]

So we'd probably charitably describe that as out of the box thinking.

[Tom Uren]

That's right.

[Patrick Gray]

Innovative, innovative approach.

[Tom Uren]

And I actually don't have a problem with the intelligence community coming up with those ideas. Like, you should brainstorm everything, like put all possibilities on the table. And what should happen is that as that rises up through the hierarchy, the crazy ones get crossed off. But in this case, it was kind of turned around. The senior leadership were advocating for the crazy ideas, and it was the rank.

[Patrick Gray]

And file saying, what are you doing? It's interesting here. So I'm going to push back on you a little, which is okay. In Trump's first term, there was a whole bunch of reasonable cyber stuff happening. A lot of that I think we can attribute to Rob Joyce, who was the White House cybersecurity policy coordinator, who is a friend of the show. He used to run Tao at nsa, really knows what he's doing, a tremendous job. I don't know that they will be able to get another Rob Joyce to serve in the Trump White House, because I think, you know, he's alienated a lot of the intelligence community, which is where you're going to draw a lot of talent for those sort of roles from. So I think you're more likely to wind up with appointees who match, you know, who check ideological boxes rather than experience boxes. So I'm just. I just don't know how that's going to play out. We've also seen, too, that there's been a lot of criticism of cisa, mostly over its involvement in counter disinformation efforts. But we've seen calls from some pretty influential MAGA Republicans to, like, disband cisa, like to just get rid of the whole thing, which I don't think will happen. But this is the whole point of a Trump presidency. You never know what he's going to do.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, exactly. So I totally agree. Like, anything is possible. And that's why I was reluctant to write this piece in the first place. But I think what I've done is pull out what were the drivers. I think there is a tendency in this upcoming term where Trump has, from the get go, chosen people who are loyalists rather than people who had a background, necessarily. So some of the appointees so far, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Peter Hegseth, who is an army veteran, but he's been a Fox News host for quite a long time.

[Patrick Gray]

He's like a National Guard captain or something. And he's weird. Right. Like, we might get some MAGA people who are upset by saying that, but if you go look at clips of this guy, like, this is not a pick that you would expect to find at all for something like Secretary of Defense. That one's truly wild.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, yeah. So it feels like in the first term, Trump started out with respectable people, and then very quickly, within a couple of years, he'd fired most of them. And it sort of evolved towards more.

[Patrick Gray]

Loyalists, whereas this time he's starting more with the loyalists out of the gate.

[Tom Uren]

From the gate.

[Patrick Gray]

I did see, though, that there's Waltz, who's been picked as the National Security Advisor, and also Marco Rubio as Sex Date. And there's a lot of sort of neocon types and even some, you know, think tank liberal types who are saying, oh, look, you know, these are pretty sensible picks. They're quite hawkish, not what we expected. But they seem to forget that Trump has a habit of burning through appointees pretty rapidly. Right. So I just feel like perhaps people have forgotten what it's really like once the, Once the Trump White House gets going.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think it's right at the beginning. I say it'll Be like the first Trump presidency, except more so. And so I also caveat it by saying that trying to predict what's going to happen is a mugs game. So this is my kind of analysis whether that holds true for an entire term. Probably not, but, yeah, I mean, look.

[Patrick Gray]

There were, you know, I've met a bunch of senior public servants in the United States who, you know, were in their positions during the Trump admin, and there were some real advantages from their perspective, which is if you are responsible for a policy area that Trump is not interested in, you basically get to do what you want. From a media perspective, it was very, it was much easier to talk to people under the Trump admin because again, like, unless you were, you know, getting in front of a camera and a microphone and saying something that really displeased him or criticizing him, he didn't care. So there was, there was almost a, you know, a bit of transparency, government transparency, as a byproduct of him, of him being in the, in the Oval Office. So, you know, but it's, look, it's going to be a wild time. I think you and I can both agree on that. But, yeah, I think one thing that you've spelled out here, which is bang on and it will continue because you are looking at those drivers, is that Trump is not scared to use state power. Everything from the drone strike against Soleimani. I mean, he ramped up drone strikes in the Middle east as well. He tried to overthrow Nicola Maduro with a, with a, you know, coup attempt in Venezuela, A, according to reporting from. Excellent reporting from Zach Dorfman. Just all sorts of stuff. He just does not mind giving it a crack. And it keeps everyone on edge. And, you know, there are benefits to that. Like, I saw Malcolm Turnbull, who's a former Australian Prime Minister, and he's been on the, on the show, in fact, but he was on American TV and he said, look, Trump loves to keep everyone guessing. He loves foreign leaders of adversaries to be, to feel uncertain about things. And this is a feature, not a bug. So I think we have to realize that, too, is that, you know, a lot of this uncertainty around Trump and what he's going to do. He cultivates that. You know, we used to think. Well, I used to think that it was just that it was not cultivated, but now I'm not so sure. You know what I mean?

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, it's entirely his instinct to do stuff like get things done, move forward, damn the consequences. What is, what's, you know, batting the hatches Full speed ahead. And I think that will be more evident immediately in this term. So some of the stories I talked about, the. There was this restraining force within or pushback from people within the intelligence community. There'll be more driving and less pushback. And so I think we'll see more, you know, actual evidence of these operations sooner and earlier.

[Patrick Gray]

Yeah, yeah. He does not like wars, but he doesn't mind a bit of bombing here and there. So let's see how that all shakes out in a world that is a little bit unpredictable itself at the moment. Now we're going to move on to the next thing that you covered, which is this UN Cybercrime treaty, which has been very controversial over a number of years. I've actually actively avoided covering it because it's just been such a kind of boring argument. But basically, you know, Russia and China are looking at this treaty as, oh, look, it'll let us do all these horrible things to our political opposition in the name of cybersecurity. And thus, you know, Western nations haven't really been keen to support it. It's gradually been sort of amended and it's now at the point where the UN General assembly is going to vote on it and the US and UK are supporting it. Why has the Western stance on this treaty changed?

[Tom Uren]

Basically what they say is, we recognise that this treaty is problematic for exactly the reasons you specify it. Authoritarian countries will try and take advantage of it and use it as extraterritorial, a means of extraterritorial repression. And they're basically both saying, well, there are human rights provisions in these treaties. If they're not upheld, you don't have to or you should not entertain requests from those countries. So that's basically the line they're trying to draw in the sand. The US has said, we think that we are better off being inside the tent and trying to influence how it develops.

[Patrick Gray]

So we'll vote for the treaty, but we're going to ignore it.

[Tom Uren]

Is the vibe selectively ignore it?

[Patrick Gray]

Yes, yes.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah. And so I think that ultimately there's, you know, if those countries. If countries want to be repressive, they will be repressive.

[Patrick Gray]

Yeah.

[Tom Uren]

And so the idea of the treaty is to help fight cybercrime. So there is both a plus and a minus. And what they're trying to do is remove the minus, the extraterritorial part, by trying to set standards. So I think it's, you know, it's a difficult. It's a difficult choice. What do you do?

[Patrick Gray]

Yeah, I mean, I've, you Know, it's funny what you said there, which is that, I mean, one of the reasons I haven't covered it is that it's not like Russia or China need this treaty in order to do bad things to people. Right. Like, it might give an sheen of legitimacy to some of the stuff they want to do or give them a talking point for some of the stuff they're going to do, but I don't think it's going to materially change all that much. And it's not like the Cloud act in the United States, which really would allow, say, Australian law enforcement to request evidence or data directly from US cloud providers. You know, the bar for getting access to, like, Cloud act stuff is pretty high when it comes to human rights and whatnot. And I'd expect it to remain the same here. I think it's more just one of those things about the look of it rather than the reality of it.

[Tom Uren]

I think there's an argument that this kind of treaty provides top cover for countries that haven't yet implemented repressive laws. You know, here's an opportunity to say, well, it's the UN treaty, we've signed up to it and we've got to do it. But, you know, it's.6 of China and.

[Patrick Gray]

Russia don't need top cover.

[Tom Uren]

No, that's right, they don't.

[Patrick Gray]

I just. I just. I've never. I've never found that argument that compelling. It is a case of authoritarian states playing funny buggers with UN treaties. But, you know, whatever, at least we've got some resolution here. And I never have to look at. Well, I hopefully won't have to look at headlines about it again, that much. Now, the final thing we're going to talk about today is Canada's bemusing decision, Tom, which is they've said TikTok is a national security threat, so they're kicking its officers and personnel out of Canada, which, as you quite rightly point out in this week's newsletter, gives them less leverage over TikTok. So good job, Canada.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah, it's just totally baffling the security risks from TikTok, and I think they're real. One, it collects a whole lot of data about people and what they're interested in and who they are in contact with. That's potentially bad. And two, it's just a massive media business with a whole lot of influence over what people are looking at and it could potentially shape what people think. And both of those risks, they come because people use the app. They're not coming because people are visiting TikTok's offices in Toronto or Ottawa or wherever.

[Patrick Gray]

Yeah, we should be clear here. There's no ban on the use of the app.

[Tom Uren]

Exactly.

[Patrick Gray]

There's no restriction there. It's just like, get your officers out of here. Which means there's no point of contact for the Canadian government anymore. It's bizarre.

[Tom Uren]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Maybe. Maybe the MSS was running agents out of TikTok's offices. That doesn't make any sense to me at all either. In that case, you just kick out those particular people. So it's. It's just like less leverage doesn't actually address the problem. I guess it gives the appearance of doing something.

[Patrick Gray]

We need to do something. This is something. Therefore we're going to do it.

[Tom Uren]

National Security Theater.

[Patrick Gray]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, terrific. Well, you've also covered a bunch of other stuff in the shorts section and there's some. Some other news items in the newsletter this week. Again, people could go to News Risky Biz to subscribe to that, but tomorrow, going to wrap it up there. Thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed this week's newsletter. I think it was terrific. And brave, by the way. Try to try to run at least a little bit of prediction into what's going to Happen under Trump 2.0. Great to chat to you as always, my friend, and we'll do it again next week.

[Tom Uren]

Thanks, Patrick.