How Far Would Biden Go in a Cyber War Against Putin?

Ever since Russian forces invaded Ukraine late last month, President Biden has been toeing a fine line between providing support to the Ukrainians and averting kinetic, nuclear and cyber conflict between superpowers. In this conversation, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, unpacks how this conflict is evolving in the cyber realm.

Kara Swisher asks Neuberger how, in the face of attacks on Ukrainian banks and the Defense Ministry, the U.S. government “is working directly with Ukraine on cybersecurity” and why the Russians didn’t strike early on with the large-scale cyberattacks many experts had expected to see — similar to the 2015 attack that took out Ukraine’s electrical grid. They discuss how cyber tensions between Russia and the U.S. may escalate, with Neuberger clarifying that when the secretary of state reaffirmed this week that the U.S. and NATO “will defend every, every inch of NATO territory should it come under attack,” he was speaking not only of ground attacks, but also cyberattacks. And Kara presses Neuberger on whether the administration should have responded to the SolarWinds hack that infiltrated the Pentagon and the State Department with more than economic sanctions — and whether U.S. cyber policy has enough teeth to really deter Putin.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.

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