John Bolton, cyber warrior

John Bolton has spent years imploring the US to go on the attack in cyberspace — a stance that some digital warfare experts caution could set the nation up for a conflict it would be better off avoiding. President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser has made this point in a series of op-eds, speeches and appearances on panels and television, arguing that America should deploy its “muscular cyber capabilities” to strike back against digital adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The point, he said, would be to impose costs “so high that they will simply consign all their cyber warfare plans to their computer memories to gather electronic dust.” While officials and cyber specialists agree with Bolton’s push for a clearly articulated digital strike policy, the government has hesitated to dive headlong into what Bolton calls “a retaliatory cyber campaign,” wary of blowback on American businesses and infrastructure, the lack of global rules for online warfare and the debatable effectiveness of digital strikes in the first place.