The U.S. says it can answer cyberattacks with nuclear weapons. That’s lunacy.

Allen S. Weiner
Senior Lecturer in Law Allen Weiner

(This opinion essay was first published in the The Washington Post on July 10, 2021.)

Over the July 4 weekend, the Russian-based cybercriminal organization REvil claimed credit for hacking into as many as 1,500 companies in what has been called the largest ransomware attack to date. In May, another cybercriminal group, DarkSide, also apparently located mainly in Russia, shut down most of the operations of Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the diesel, gasoline and other fuels used on the East Coast — setting off a round of panic buying that ended only when the company handed over a ransom. These incidents were bad enough.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on The Washington Post’s page here.)