A recently proposed defense bill in the Senate could improve US cyber capabilities through additional funding and programs. This includes a provision to allow unilateral US responses to cyber interference without needing to ask allies beforehand.
“’The right to act in another country is a norm in counterterrorism operations,’ said Michael Schmitt, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. But ‘this is the first time we have seen this written out expressly in the cyber domain…it appears the bill has either expanded the notion of self-defense to include significant disruptions of democratic society, or is embracing the notion of due diligence – that in any country who fails to control their own cyber territory, we can exercise our own countermeasures.”
