On Friday, Wikileaks released 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee. Regardless of politics, the scale of this cyber theft is remarkable:
It may take months, or years, to figure out the motives of those who stole the emails, and more important, whether they were being commanded by Russian authorities, and specifically by Mr. Putin. But the theft from the national committee would be among the most important state-sponsored hacks yet of an American organization, rivaled only by the attacks on the Office of Personnel Management by state-sponsored Chinese hackers, and the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which Mr. Obama blamed on North Korea. There, too, embarrassing emails were released, but they had no political significance. The WikiLeaks release, however, has more of a tinge of Russian-style information war, in which the intent of the revelations is to alter political events. Exactly how, though, is a bit of a mystery, apart from embarrassing Democrats and further alienating Mr. Sanders’s supporters from Mrs. Clinton.
THRIVEX is working on a large effort to grow the cyber-defense startup ecosystem in New York City and beyond. This latest episode highlights the urgency of our work.
The risk is clear: global cybersecurity is expanding from defense-to-defense to defense-versus-all.
It is widely known that the United States hacks foreign defense organizations, but China and Russia (and others) hack both defense and commercial interests in the United States. The non-defense distinction is important.
Industrial espionage is a big deal. The FBI has reported a 53% increase in industrial espionage cases — costing hundreds of billions of dollars — over the past year. China is the biggest player, followed by Russia.
As more entrepreneurs enter the innovation economy, we hope that many will work on the cybersecurity spectrum — the need is massive and growing quickly.
Originally published at on July 25, 2016.
