PATRICK DUGAN: What The White House Cyber Strategy Misses

The White House strategy for national cyberdefense is like fighting a land war in Asia. The assumption that deterrence works against the real adversary we will fight is dead wrong — not because our diplomats aren’t clever enough, but because the real enemy can’t be reasoned with, can’t be bargained with, doesn’t feel pain or fear, and absolutely will not stop until it wins (Kyle Reese called it).

Ten days after the White House released its cybersecurity strategy, the State Department announced the Bureau of Emerging Threats, a correct directional move. But the underlying doctrine is still trapped in a 20th century frame. They’ve identified the arsonist but haven’t prepared for how the fire spreads.

The strategic logic that must reach every policymaker is this: a bad actor can be stopped, sanctioned, or killed. The replicating agents he unleashed keep going and going and going.

We saw the precursor in the 12 Day War of 2025. When the Iranian AI researcher was targeted it wasn’t for his limited expertise then — it was for the researcher he would have become in eight months. The urgency that drove that conflict had everything to do with an adversary getting smart on cyber, the “we had to go in” urgency is in part, nobody thought to download Chinese models and ask them to check if the cameras were hacked. But soon pre-emptive attacks on human nodes won’t solve the problem, it could even trigger a dead-man switch release. Software doesn’t stand down when its operator is killed.

Without sweeping physical regulation of our power grid and critical infrastructure — the nerves of our water, energy, and communications systems — we risk paralysis.