Trump 2.0: Cyberwarfare To Reach New Heights

Uploaded on 2024-12-18 in INTELLIGENCE--USA, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW

Trump 2.0: Cyberwarfare To Reach New Heights

President-elect Donald Trump will enter the White House on January 20th, 2025, with the Republican Party now holding a majority in the upper and lower chambers of the United States Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives).

However, the position of the Republican Party regarding ongoing interstate conflicts will almost certainly pose serious challenges for global cybersecurity throughout 2025 with regional instability resulting in the realignment of diplomatic relations and shifts in world power dynamics.

This will likely involve nation-states leveraging their cyber programmes to attack critical sectors in the US to gain international advantage. As a result, the impact will also likely be felt across global cyber space, meaning that both public and private sector organisations must prepare to prioritise risk management strategies.

Today, cyber risk should be taken as seriously as economic risk.

Iran Faces A New Financial Crisis

Iran will harness its cyber capabilities to retaliate against expected economic sanctions to be enforced under the new Republican Party government. Tehran will be forced to manage escalation risks in the Middle East whilst conducting aggressive network operations against critical sectors in the US as the regime’s reputation and regional stability are at stake.

Espionage sponsored by the regime will likely seek to collect intelligence on US foreign policy regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran’s nuclear deal) as well as to gauge the position of the US government’s support of Israel against Iran’s Axis of Resistance proxies throughout the Middle East.

The Western financial sector will likely be at a heightened risk from this cyber targeting, with Iranian threat actors pivoting to financially motivated cyber-attacks.

This is partly because President-elect Trump is likely to enforce further sanctions against Iran, mirroring the ‘maximum pressure’ policy’ that was applied during the previous Republican Party administration.

Trump Rallies A Cabinet Of China Hawks To Combat Beijing

President-elect Trump has established a cabinet consisting of China hawks that will likely result in increased tensions between Beijing and Washington for years to come. In 2025, this will likely transition into cyber space by Chinese espionage actors seeking to collect intelligence on the diplomatic relations between the US and Taiwan as well as to gauge the position of the Republican Party’s intentions of pushing back against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Further, with the imminent deadline of the ‘Made in China 2025’ programme on the horizon, Chinese nation-state-sponsored espionage and intellectual property (IP) theft pursuits will likely ramp up against the technology and manufacturing sectors, with the Chinese government seeking to bring innovative technology to global markets.

These campaigns will likely be intensified following the re-election of US President Donald Trump, with the administration intending to implement tariffs targeting imported Chinese technology products.

With US-China tensions likely to rise, Beijing’s state actors such as Volt Typhoon, will likely pivot to a more disruptive posture by attempting to sabotage US critical sectors. These attacks will likely carry the objective of pre-positioning cyber exploitation and attack capabilities within Western networks to prepare for future hostilities with the US and to disrupt communication infrastructure between Washington and East Asia during any future crisis.

Chinese cyber activity will likely be aggravated following the strengthened trilateral relations between the US, Japan, and the Philippines, with these states discussing key topics including the Taiwan Relations Act obligating Washington to provide weapons to defend Taipei as well as the Philippines and Japan being US defence treaty allies.

End Of Russia’s War In Ukraine?

Based on statements leading up to the 2024 US presidential election, the Republican Party presidency raises concerns about the future of US support for NATO and Ukraine. While it is unlikely that the US will abandon NATO under the administration, there is a realistic possibility that Europe could see the US shift focus domestically, leaving the continent to face off against Russia in a weakened condition both militarily and in cyberspace.

As a result, the Russian Federation will almost certainly leverage its cyber program to conduct espionage against US government networks at the start of 2025, with Moscow’s threat actors collecting intelligence on the Trump administration’s intentions of ending the war in Ukraine.

Cyber Activists To Protest Republican Party Foreign Policy

Throughout the Republican Party campaign, Trump reiterated his desire to end the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. If successful, there is a realistic possibility that hacktivist activity will decrease in correspondence with conflict activity. However, should the current conflicts remain active, it is highly likely that there will be a continuation of historical targeting mirroring the attack behaviour in 2023 and 2024.

Both pro-Palestinian and pro-Russian Hacktivist efforts, consisting of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, will likely peak against US government assets on January 20th, 2025, during the presidential inauguration in protest against Republican Party foreign policy.

Craig Watt is a Threat Intelligence Consultant at Quorum Cyber specializing in strategic and geopolitical intelligence.

Image: BirgitKorber

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