Trump’s Plan to Make Cyberwar Great Again

In a meandering, 100-minute-long telephone interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump elaborated on some of the bold and belligerent foreign-policy prescriptions he’s hinted at in the past. He touched on nuclear weapons, spying, and the fight against ISIS, bringing his tried-and-true “we’re losing” doom and gloom to each topic. His proclamations of decline seem to be designed to support what he said outright on Twitter recently, after a bombing in Pakistan killed dozens and injured hundreds: “I alone can solve.” When confronted with a question about cyberwarfare, Trump leaned on the same tactics, while displaying a profound unfamiliarity with the issue.

David Sanger, one of the two Times journalists interviewing Trump, asked the candidate if the US should use cyberweapons as an alternative to conventional weapons or nukes, and if so, how often. Trump said he didn’t think cyberweapons are an alternative to nuclear weapons “in terms of ultimate power.” He tacked back to discussing nukes—“I will tell you, I would very much not want to be the first one to use them, that I can say”—until Sanger asked him again how he would use the US cyber-arsenal as president. Trump appears to be making three points here: first, that the US is “obsolete in cyber”; second, that the US can’t even tell where attacks are coming from; and third, that “the power of cyber” is “inconceivable” and should figure “very strongly in our thought process.”