Trump Eroding Cyberdefenses As Peril Grows

Threats to Elections

Author

Matt Davis
April 07, 2025

Morning, folks. If you’re lucky enough to read the print version of today’s paper you’ll see that the front page lead story, top right, is not about the stock market. I’ll spare you the front page of the New York Times website, if that’s alright, because the bloodletting continues after Mr. Trump played golf this weekend and promised to stick to his disastrous tariff policies. Let’s just peruse a couple of quick graphs from the Wall Street Journal to get us warmed up, eh? Here’s the fear gage on Wall Street:

We’re not quite as scared as we were during Covid or the global financial crisis, but still, we’re pretty scared!

And here’s the stock futures for this morning. At one point in the middle of the night, investors were expecting a further 6 percent drop today in stocks, on top of last week’s 15%. Now the Wall Street Journal has colored its graph a nice green color because we’re only expecting a further 2 percent drop today, on top of the other massive drops we’ve already seen. I’d say green is an optimistic color for what this graph actually shows (but it’s their prerogative what color it is).

Even pro-Trump billionaire Bill Ackman has called for a 90-day pause on the tariffs.

“Those that did not vote for @realDonaldTrump  want to see him fail and are rooting for a market crash, recession or worse so they can feel righteous in how they cast their vote. I have a lot of respect for our president and what he has accomplished so far, but I don’t think he is infallible, which is why I am stating loud and clear that I strongly believe launching tariffs on April 9th against the entire world — massively in excess of what we are being charged — is a mistake.

The right answer in my view is a 90-day pause to give the president time to carefully and strategically resolve our historically unfair global trading position.”

Ackman’s Twitter account is starting to feel unhinged enough that he might be considering a run for office, in fact. And here’s Barron’s, which my father-in-law reads for stock picks (so, you know, it’s a leftist rag):

“The problem with Trump’s medicine analogy is the U.S. economy and stock markets weren’t sick in the first place, far from it. They’re both headed to the emergency room now.”

Still, Donald Trump can do something right. Right?

When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history.

The commander, General Timothy D. Haugh, had sat atop the enormous infrastructure of American cyberdefenses until his removal, apparently under pressure from the far-right Trump loyalist Laura Loomer. He had been among the American officials most deeply involved in pushing back on Russia, dating to his work countering Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election.

Oh, God. Guys. Please. Just maybe don’t do anything for a few days. Like, your impulse to do stuff is almost always horrific. Just play golf!

The dismissal of General Haugh came after weeks in which the Trump administration gutted America’s cyber defenses. We’ve also fired some of our most experienced people and talent. Recently there was a cyberattack from China that gave the “Salt Typhoon” hackers access to the Justice Department’s system for lawful interception of calls or text messages, meaning they could listen in on some conversations, including Mr. Trump’s during last year’s campaign.

Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, is described as “embattled” in the article. Translation: Trump decided against firing him last week for leaking war plans to a journalist in a Signal chat, but only, probably, because Mr. Trump’s own efforts to tank the country’s stock markets took over the front pages just in time.

Mr. Waltz has said America needs to go on the “offense” more with cyberattacks, rather than “play defense”, but the trouble is, cybersecurity is not a basketball game. When you dunk on your enemy without your defense in place, you can be sure they’ll respond in kind. And we currently lack…rim protection.

In his first term, Trump created the “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” (CISA) but resented the fact that in 2020, it said the election was “one of the best run in history, undercutting his false claims that he had been cheated of victory.” And so when he took office this year, he began taking it apart. To repeat that: Trump dismantled an agency he founded because it told the truth that he lost an election.

Indeed, we’re gutting the security of our country’s local election system under a president who has mused repeatedly about an unconstitutional third term:

Federal programs that monitored foreign influence and disinformation have been eliminated. Key elements of the warning systems intended to flag possible intrusions into voting software have also been degraded; the effects may not be known until the next major election. And contractors who worked with local election officials to perform cybersecurity testing, usually with federal funding, have found the deals canceled.

The Democratic secretary of state in Arizona has described the change as “incredibly bad.” CISA’s election security program identified cyberattacks and risks to key infrastructure like voting databases. It shared information between election officials and agencies to prevent attacks. Similar cuts have hit the country’s broader cybersecurity defenses, the article reports. The article also quotes Republican officials who are concerned.

In Weber County, Utah, a heavily conservative area, Ricky Hatch, the county clerk, said that, while he was a Republican himself, he worried about the end of federal help.

“I understand and applaud the efforts of the current administration, however clumsy they might be, to take a hard look at places where they can save money,” said Mr. Hatch, who helped start CISA’s election-security program. But the funding for election security, he added, “is crucial money that is well spent to help secure the infrastructure of our nation’s election systems.”

“I’m pretty concerned that that money is going to move away from that sphere,” he said.

Me too, Ricky Hatch.

I suppose one consolation in all this is that voters at the next election are likely to vote in such huge numbers against Mr. Trump and his allies that all the corruption in the world still wouldn’t mask the scale of the shellacking they’re bound to get in the ‘26 midterms.

Again: Mr. Trump is acting like a dictator who can avoid the consequences of his actions but the truth is, Americans like elections and facts. They also like their 401(k)s to avoid dropping 20 percent (no matter what color the graphs are) because somebody had a bad idea and stuck to it, even when it became evident that it was a bad idea. In a democracy, we like to show people how we feel about that kind of behavior. We like to dunk on those motherf______s, in fact.

As I was walking around Costco in Virginia yesterday, I mused with my father-in-law on the imminent price hikes to the majority of the imported products inside. I had a very strong realization that no, Americans will not tolerate price hikes at Costco. It simply won’t do. It’s the last line of defense in this country. As I looked around at the shoppers loading their carts high with toilet paper and guacamole, I also had a realization; Mr. Trump takes the support of many of these people for granted, which is a serious miscalculation. They voted for him because they thought he’d lower the prices at Costco. Not hugely increase them. No amount of misinformation or double-talk is going to turn that around.

It gave me some confidence and optimism.

Sorry. Back to our cyber defenses.

Administration officials argue that the nation’s cyberdefenses remain robust, and they have defended the cuts as eliminating duplicative work. “CISA has taken action to terminate contracts where the agency has been able to find efficiencies and eliminate duplication of effort,” the agency said in a statement this month. It added, “CISA’s Red Teams continue their work without interruption.”

I’ve got to say I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in that statement. Perhaps if they had sent it out in green ink, or something?

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to. If you’ve been trying to burgle our apartment over the weekend please get the job finished by mid-afternoon when I expect we’ll be rolling back into NYC. I shot 103 on the golf course yesterday which is so terrible I may give up the game forever. Then again, I hit a drive on the 15th hole that will doubtless keep me coming back for more.

It’s the game of champions!

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and child.