That said, the official noted, the big worry in Washington right now isn’t simply what Iran might do, but what other countries, specifically Russia or North Korea or even China, could do and then blame Iran. “There are other actors that could take advantage of this for their own personal gain. Anything that happens right now, the first [thing] people will do is point the finger at Iran, even if it wasn’t Iran that was responsible,” the former official said. Russia has sabotaged power grids in Ukraine; who’s to say Vladimir Putin, who loves to throw chaos into the abyss and watch from the sidelines, wouldn’t have his cybersecurity teams hack the United States and leave clues pointing to an Iranian perpetrator, leading to further escalation? And that’s where things really get scary.
To understand just how catastrophic a successful cyberattack could be, you first need to travel back to the Cold War between Russia and America. Back then one of the more terrifying threats was an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse bomb, which could hypothetically knock out the power grids and destroy anything with a computer chip inside. While EMPs are still a major threat (in 2017, Congress held hearings on the potential for North Korea to use an EMP to destroy our power grids after Trump escalated tensions with Kim Jong Un), the research the U.S. government has conducted to explore the outcome of such an attack is now being applied to cyber-warfare.
While the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS, are all working toward fortifying America’s infrastructure and their own offensive capabilities when it comes to cyber-war, so are Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Israel, and even India. A tiny example of what Iran alone can do was illustrated back in February of 2014, a few months after the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson said publicly that Iran should be on the receiving end of a American warhead due to its nuclear ambitions (Adelson is a huge proponent of Israel) and that it should be “wiped out” if it continued to develop its nuclear programs. Iran was so infuriated by Adelson’s remarks that a few months later, Iranian hackers slipped malware into the computer networks of Adelson’s casino company, shutting most of the corporate system down and costing Adelson more than $40 million.
The former State Department official explained that when it comes to superpowers like China and Russia, the theory is that anything they can do to us, we can do to them, which creates a sort of Cold War-like standoff. If Russia knocked out America’s power grids, America would do the same in return. If China came after the American economy, then the Americans would go after the Chinese economy. With rogue-type countries like Iran or North Korea, the attacks could be less drastic, and yet offer the illusion that something much worse is possible.
This past weekend the website for the Federal Depository Library Program was hacked and switched out with an unflattering image of Trump being punched in the face, with a message that said, “Hacked by Iran Cyber Security Group Hackers.” That was child’s play, likely from a single low-level Iranian engineer who wanted to spray a little anti-Trump digital graffiti. The real threats, according to tweets by a cybersecurity director from the Department of Homeland Security, are likely still to come. Though Trump appeared to have taken Iran’s missile retaliation as a victory during a press conference Wednesday morning, Iran doesn’t seem prepared to let things go. “Military operations do not suffice,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, ominously. As my colleague Abigail Tracy reported, many in Washington believe the killing of Qasem Soleimani has made the world a much more dangerous place and that “a real retaliation is going to come months from now.”
More Great Stories from Vanity Fair
— On the eve of impeachment vote, Giuliani called up New York Times to incriminate Trump
— Melania Trump believes Greta Thunberg had POTUS attack coming
— Inside Roger Ailes’s twisted game of mind control
— Why the White House belongs to Jared Kushner now
— Kamala Harris’ next act is destroying Stephen Miller
— From the Archive: Inside Jeffrey Wigand’s epic multibillion-dollar struggle
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.