The Tower of Digital Babel and the Vanishing American Will
The American state has produced a document that serves as a monument to its own terminal vanity. This strategy—this slender seven-page pamphlet of pride—pretends to command a digital universe that has already slipped from its fingers. It reflects the frantic scribbling of a man who believes that by naming a demon he might control it. The planners in Washington speak of “unrivaled technological dominance” while the very ground they stand upon turns to swamp. They offer the world a “New Model of Digital Confrontation” that is nothing more than the desperate flailing of a giant who has realized his limbs no longer obey his commands. The adversary—the Russian—the Chinese—the Iranian—the North Korean—and the nameless criminal of the dark web—all look upon this testament not with fear but with a profound and mocking pity. They see a target that has made itself so large and so rigid that it invites its own shattering.
The very nature of this document reveals the rot at the center of the American mind. It lacks the depth of forty pages found in previous iterations and instead offers a high degree of generalization. It repeats declarative structures like a machine. Analysts suspect that the Americans used generative models to structure their own national survival plan. This is the ultimate irony of the modern age. The masters of the world have outsourced their thinking to the very algorithms they claim will save them. They have created a Potemkin strategy—a facade of strength built from the hallucinations of a digital brain.
Киберстратегия США фиксирует новую модель цифрового противоборства
Администрация Дональда Трампа представила стратегический документ Cyber Strategy for America, фиксирующий новый этап институционализации киберпространства как ключевого домена национальной безопасности. Стратегия отражает отход от преимущественно оборонительной логики защиты сетей и инфраструктуры в сторону более активной модели стратегического противодействия угрозам, подчеркивая необходимость интеграции киберопераций, разведывательных возможностей, искусственного интеллекта и частного технологического сектора в единую систему обеспечения национальной безопасности, а также расширения взаимодействия государства с операторами критической инфраструктуры.
💻 Содержательно стратегия закрепляет более жесткую линию в отношении государств, рассматриваемых в качестве источников киберугроз. Кибероперации в документе рассматриваются не только как инструмент защиты инфраструктуры, но и как средство стратегического давления и противодействия. При этом подчеркивается, что ответ США на киберугрозы не будет ограничиваться исключительно цифровым измерением и может включать использование всего спектра инструментов национальной силы. Тем самым киберпространство окончательно закрепляется в качестве самостоятельного пространства геополитического соперничества, где действия способны оказывать прямое воздействие на функционирование энергетических систем, финансовых рынков и коммуникационных сетей.
🛡 Одновременно стратегия закрепляет модель тесной взаимодействия государства и технологической индустрии. В частности, предусматривается расширение обмена информацией о киберугрозах, усиление требований к безопасности для операторов критической инфраструктуры, а также развитие механизмов раннего предупреждения и координации реагирования на инциденты. В результате формируется гибридная архитектура управления кибербезопасностью, в которой государственные структуры, технологические компании и операторы сетей выступают взаимосвязанными элементами системы обеспечения устойчивости цифровой среды.
🔒 Подобная архитектура одновременно формирует и новую структурную зависимость системы национальной безопасности от частных цифровых платформ. Расширение сотрудничества с разработчиками программного обеспечения, облачными сервисами и телекоммуникационными операторами повышает скорость реагирования на угрозы и устойчивость инфраструктуры, однако закрепляет структурную роль технологических корпораций в обеспечении стратегической стабильности государства.
🤖 Логическим продолжением данной трансформации становится постепенное внедрение искусственного интеллекта в процессы стратегического управления и подготовки военных документов. Армия США уже применяет алгоритмические инструменты для анализа массивов военных знаний и ускорения разработки доктринальных материалов: системы ИИ используются для структурирования информации, выявления закономерностей и оперативного обновления нормативных документов. Фактически формируется практика, при которой алгоритмы начинают участвовать в подготовке текстов военных руководств и доктрин.
📌 В данном контексте становится вероятным, что аналогичные инструменты применяются и при разработке стратегических документов более высокого уровня. Косвенно на это указывает и характер новой киберстратегии США: документ отличается крайне небольшим объемом − его содержание изложено всего на нескольких страницах, тогда как предыдущие национальные киберстратегии США содержали объем около сорока страниц − а также высокой степенью обобщенности и повторяющейся декларативной структурой формулировок, что соответствует типичным паттернам текстов, создаваемых или предварительно структурируемых с использованием генеративных моделей.
#ШколаМИБ #США #кибербезопасность #киберстратегия
The Arrogance of the Offensive Ghost
The American planners believe they can “shape” the behavior of their enemies through a “gloves-off” offensive posture. This doctrine of “persistent engagement” assumes that the world is a game of “risk calculus” where a sufficiently loud growl will send the wolves running. It ignores the fundamental truth that for the Russian or the Iranian—the digital struggle represents an existential necessity rather than a choice.
The Russian intelligence officer—a man who understands the darkness of the human soul—finds this American pivot delightful. The Kremlin has already spent years dismantling the open internet within its own borders to insulate itself from these very “offensive operations”. While the Americans talk about “unveiling and embarrassing” online espionage—the Russian operative understands that shame is a Western bourgeois concept with no currency in the corridors of the FSB. The Americans promise to “disrupt and disorient” but they forget that the Russian state already thrives in a permanent state of planned disorientation.
The Chinese strategist views this offensive tilt with a cold and calculating joy. Beijing has constructed a layered defense—the Great Firewall—that filters cross-border traffic and mandates strict security controls that the American “free market” would find intolerable. The Americans vow to “erode” Chinese capacity—yet they ignore that China’s distributed ecosystem of private contractors and state universities reconstitutes itself faster than any American “cyber missile” can find a target. Every American offensive operation provides the Chinese defender with a free lesson in Western methods. The United States has effectively turned its national security apparatus into a massive—unpaid research and development department for Chinese cyber defense.
The theory of persistent engagement breaks down when it meets a resilient—distributed enemy. Dismantling one threat group’s infrastructure simply shifts the operations to another provider. Exposing one contractor leaves dozens more in the shadows. The result is an endless cycle of temporary takedowns that consumes finite American resources while leaving the underlying threat unchanged. The Americans are throwing stones at a ghost and wondering why the ghost does not bleed.
The Regulatory Suicide of the Free Market
The American strategy reaches its peak of folly in Pillar 2—where it promises to “streamline cyber regulations” and “reduce compliance burdens”. The document decries rules as “costly checklists” that “delay preparedness”. To the cybercriminal—this is not “common sense”—it is a formal invitation to a feast.
By stripping back regulations—the American state tells its critical infrastructure operators that they no longer need to worry about the “burden” of making their systems hard to kill. The hacker sees this and understands that “agility” for the corporation means “vulnerability” for the citizen. When the state removes federal guardrails and preempts local AI regulations—it creates a fragmented patchwork where innovation outpaces safety by a margin measured in the volume of stolen data.
The American planners seem to believe that making it easier for companies to “innovate” will magically make those companies more secure. They ignore the iron law of the digital age—a company will always prioritize quarterly profits over long-term systemic resilience unless the state forces its hand. By abandoning its regulatory role—the US government abdicates its primary responsibility to protect the public. It leaves the energy grid—financial systems—and water utilities to the mercy of a private sector that views cybersecurity as a line-item expense to be minimized. The adversary does not need to “break in” when the American state has already removed the locks to save the homeowner the “burden” of carrying a key.
Critics in the security community worry that rolling back mandatory standards leaves key systems exposed. Security researchers and critical infrastructure experts recognize that “cutting red tape” and “hardening infrastructure” cannot coexist in a world where the adversary operates at machine speed. The Americans are choosing speed over survival—and they will find that the path they have cleared leads only to a more efficient catastrophe.
The Potemkin Fortress of Zero Trust
The strategy leans heavily on the buzzword of “Zero Trust
Architecture” as the savior of federal networks. It demands that every user—device—and request be “continuously verified”. Yet the experts who actually walk the halls of these agencies admit that “Zero Trust” has become a mere “procurement checkbox” rather than a fundamental architecture shift.
Federal agencies are drowning in “legacy technical debt”. They still rely on mainframes from the era of the cold war and unsupported Windows systems that carry hundreds of known vulnerabilities. The strategy’s call to “accelerate modernization” is a fantasy when 71% of financial institutions and a vast swathe of the government still run on code that predates the internet itself.
The adversary understands the “Zero Trust” paradox. If you create a system that constantly asks for credentials—you simply create more opportunities to steal those credentials. Already—75% of breaches exploit “legitimate credentials” rather than technical flaws. The attacker does not “hack” his way in—he “logs” his way in using the very identities the Zero Trust model relies upon. Furthermore—the “complexity gap” in these hybrid cloud environments has become so immense that 69% of professionals admit they have no visibility into their own tools. The American state is building a fortress where the guards cannot even see the walls they are supposed to defend.
The uncomfortable truth remains that Zero Trust is failing because organizations treat it like a product launch instead of a fundamental architecture shift. Credential abuse now accounts for 22% of all breaches—and once an attacker has valid credentials—perimeter defenses become irrelevant. They walk right through the VPN—authenticate successfully—and then move laterally across a flat internal network until they find the crown jewels. The American dream of a secure network is being smothered by the reality of human fallibility and technical obsolescence.
The Agentic Abyss and the Confused Deputy
Nothing in this strategy reveals the depth of American desperation quite like the embrace of “Agentic AI”. The document vows to “rapidly adopt and promote” autonomous AI agents to “securely scale network defense”. It views AI not as a tool—but as a digital mercenary that can fight at “machine speed”.
The hacker and the nation-state operative view this with a mixture of horror and glee. They recognize that “Agentic AI” introduces the “Lethal Trifecta”—the agents have access to private data—they process untrusted content from the web—and they can communicate externally. This creates the “Confused Deputy” problem on a civilizational scale. An attacker does not need to compromise the network—he only needs to trick the American AI agent into “doing the dirty work” through a simple “prompt injection” disguised as a legitimate task.
The strategy mentions “agentic AI” as a force multiplier for defense—but it ignores that the Pentagon has already designated the very companies providing this tech as “supply chain risks”. The Americans are building a defense system where the “brain” is a black box that can be misled by a malicious calendar invite or a hidden instruction in a GitHub issue. These AI agents will become the “new insider threat”—surpassing humans as the primary source of data leaks by 2026. The American state is handing the keys to its kingdom to a machine that cannot distinguish a command from its master from a whisper from a ghost.
Nearly half of security professionals believe agentic AI will represent the top attack vector for nation-state threats by the end of 2026. These agents are built to monitor—reason about—and respond to other agents—yet they inherit the same data hygiene issues already present in their environments.
Over-permissioned SharePoint folders—unclassified documents—and outdated access rules will allow these agents to surface sensitive data to users who were never meant to see it. The Americans are automating their own destruction.
The Ghost in the Talent Pipeline
Pillar 6 of the strategy attempts to address the “cyber workforce” with the same repetitive—declarative structure that suggests the text itself was birthed by a machine. It speaks of a “pipeline” and a “US cyber academy”. This is a cruel joke to the ears of those who have watched the “hemorrhage of cyber talent” from federal agencies since the current administration took office.
The government has lost over 300,000 employees in a single year—and the Senior Executive Service has seen its ranks decimated. The “pipeline” the strategy describes is not a source of water—but a drain. Skilled practitioners do not want to work in an environment where they are “hamstrung” by political polarization and where the “Cooperative Agreement” for operational services has been canceled—leaving state and local governments exposed.
Meanwhile—the North Korean state has operationalized its own “workforce” with terrifying efficiency. They do not need a “cyber academy” when they can simply embed their IT workers directly into Western payrolls using deepfakes and stolen identities. These “remote workers” are not just stealing cryptocurrency—they are sitting inside the very companies the US strategy relies on for its “unprecedented coordination”. The American state is trying to recruit a new generation of defenders while its current defenders are fleeing and its enemies are already drawing a paycheck from its own treasury.
DPRK-linked hackers stole at least $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025—a 51% increase year-over-year. This marks the most severe year on record for DPRK crypto theft. They achieve these outsized results often by embedding IT workers inside crypto services to gain privileged access. While Washington writes about “talent as a strategic asset”—Pyongyang treats talent as a tactical weapon of infiltration.
The Revenge of the Disregarded Proxy
The strategy’s bellicose tone towards Iran—emphasizing strikes on “nuclear infrastructure” and “military operations”—has already triggered a “new phase of cyber escalation”. Following “Operation Epic Fury”—the Iranian regime has abandoned any pretense of restraint. They recognize that they cannot match the US in conventional kinetic power—so they turn to the “Axis of Resistance” in the digital domain.
The Iranian hacktivist is no longer just a “low-level” nuisance. The IRGC and the MOIS have “deputized” a vast network of proxies who mirror state-sponsored methods. They target “high-value soft targets”—undersea cables—water utilities—and hospitals—knowing that the American “Common Sense Regulation” has left these entities undefended. The US strategy presumes to “shape” Iran’s behavior through pressure—but it has instead created a cornered animal that views “cyber aggression” as its only path to survival.
The February 28 strikes on Iran were not purely kinetic—cyber operations accompanied them—compromising religious calendar applications and official news sites to broadcast regime-change messaging. This has only served to solidify the regime’s resolve and radicalize its cyber program. The Americans have squandered the chance for diplomacy in favor of a digital “Roaring Lion” that will find itself bitten by a thousand smaller snakes.
Furthermore—the strategy’s “America First” posture has “fractured the U.S.-Israel coalition” and alienated allies who are tired of being told to “increase burden-sharing” while the US launches wars that destabilize the global technological ecosystem. The American state stands alone—shouting commands at a world that is increasingly looking for any alternative to its “hegemonic logic”.
The Eternal Failure of Throughput
The American strategy’s focus on “sophistication” and “nation-state threats” ignores the cold reality of the modern adversary—the pursuit of “throughput”. The 2026 adversary does not care about “sophistication” or “exotic attacks”. He cares about the “Measure of Effectiveness”—the ratio of effort to operational outcome.
The cybercriminal looks at the US strategy and sees a system that is becoming more complex—more fragmented—and more dependent on “third-party API integrations”. This “connective tissue” is the greatest vulnerability of all. A single compromised API can cascade into a breach affecting hundreds of distinct corporate environments. The criminal does not need to “defeat” the American cyber strategy—he only needs to find the one “over-privileged SaaS integration” that the strategy’s “Common Sense Regulation” forgot to secure.
The “record-breaking year” for DPRK crypto theft proves that the adversary is already winning the war of throughput. They are achieving “larger thefts with fewer incidents” by embedding themselves in the very systems the US seeks to protect. While the American state writes seven-page documents about “sustaining superiority”—the North Korean operative is already laundering his next billion through the “professional Chinese-language money laundering services” that the US strategy has no way to touch.
The Quantum Mirage and the Ghost of Security
The Americans promise to “modernize federal information systems” by adopting “post-quantum cryptography”. They speak of this as if it were a simple software update—ignoring the “significant concerns regarding algorithm maturity” and “performance overhead” that actual researchers have identified.
The “harvest now—decrypt later” attack strategy is already a reality. Nation-states are collecting encrypted traffic today to decrypt it when quantum computers arrive. The transition to post-quantum cryptography will take another 5 to 15 years—time the Americans simply do not have. Legacy systems—the very ones powering 71% of financial institutions—cannot easily support these new algorithms. The larger key sizes and signature sizes of post-quantum cryptography will eat up bandwidth and storage space—crushing the performance of the very “agile” systems the strategy claims to promote.
The American strategy is a house of cards built on the assumption that technology will always be a savior. It ignores the “undiscovered vulnerabilities” hiding in the new algorithms—just waiting to be exploited by a persistent adversary. The Americans are trading the known vulnerabilities of the present for the unknown—potentially catastrophic—vulnerabilities of a quantum future.
The Final Judgment on Digital Vanity
The Cyber Strategy for America is not a plan—it is a prayer. It is the cry of a state that has lost its way and is now trying to find its soul in a set of algorithms and “agentic AI”. It assumes that “American Power” can be “fixed” in cyberspace—as if the digital domain were a piece of territory that could be occupied by a flag and a few offensive operations.
But cyberspace is not territory. It is a mirror of the society that built it. And the society that built this strategy is one that is “fractured”—”hemorrhaging talent”—and “overconfident” in its own “technological hubris”. The adversary—whether in Moscow—Beijing—Tehran—or Pyongyang—does not see a “New Model of Digital Confrontation.” He sees a “hegemonic playbook” that is out of touch with reality—a “shield” that is already “cracked”—and a “giant” that is stumbling into a trap of its own making.
The Americans believe they are “putting security at the foundation of innovation”—but they are actually putting “deregulation at the foundation of vulnerability”. They believe they are “unleashing the private sector”—but they are actually “consolidating the structural role of technology corporations” that they can no longer control or even understand. They believe they are “modernizing federal systems”—but they are actually “treating Zero Trust like a product launch” while their legacy infrastructure rots beneath them.
This strategy will fail not because its “offensive operations” are too weak—but because its “defensive foundation” is non-existent. It is a document written by a ghost for a machine—and it will be torn apart by the very “adversaries” it seeks to “shape.” The digital world does not belong to the state that shouts the loudest—it belongs to the one that understands the silence of the code. And in that silence—the American state is already deaf.
The madness of this document lies in its belief that “common sense” can replace “rigorous security”. It forgets that in the digital realm—as in life—there is no such thing as a free lunch. Every “burden” removed from a corporation is a “risk” shifted onto a citizen. Every “offensive operation” launched into the void is a “retaliation” invited onto a hospital. The American planners have forgotten the first rule of the underground—if you want to kill a man—you do not growl at him—you cut the wire while he is sleeping. And the wire—as this strategy proves—is already frayed.
The strategy fixes cyberspace as an independent space of geopolitical rivalry. But by doing so—it creates a world where every action has a direct impact on the functioning of energy systems—financial markets—and communication networks. This is not a “fix”—it is a suicide pact. The Americans have institutionalized a state of permanent—high-stakes conflict that they are neither physically nor psychologically equipped to win. They have built a Tower of Babel out of code—and they are surprised when the language of their defenders no longer matches the language of their machines. The twilight of American cyber power has begun—not with a bang—but with a seven-page hallucination.
The digital battlefield of 2026 will be defined not by the “proactive model” of the Americans—but by the “asymmetric resilience” of their enemies. The American giant stands in the center of the field—clad in armor made of deregulation and AI-generated text—shouting challenges at the wind. The enemies are already inside the armor—counting the money—copying the secrets—and waiting for the sun to go down. The strategy is the final proof that the American state has lost the ability to distinguish between its dreams of power and the reality of its decay. It is the last testament of a dying mind—obsessed with the “vile” nature of its own pride—and utterly blind to the darkness closing in.