According to CNBC, the Trump administration’s cybersecurity budget cuts and agency restructuring have created significant vulnerabilities for Americans and the U.S. economy. Former National Security Council advisor Carole House warns the government is “handing off coordination to industry while kicking away the ladder” as federal grant funding for state and local cybersecurity has been slashed. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act protection expired in October, and enforcement mechanisms for requiring big tech companies to develop safer software have been stripped. Meanwhile, leadership positions at Cyber Command and the NSA have remained vacant for eight months, and CISA’s budget and personnel have been significantly cut despite growing threats from sophisticated attackers like China’s Volt Typhoon, which infiltrated critical infrastructure in telecoms, water, transportation and energy sectors.
Death by a thousand cuts
Here’s the thing – we’re not talking about one big catastrophic failure here. It’s what experts are calling “death by a thousand papercuts.” The administration disbanded CIPAC, which was crucial for sharing information between the government and critical infrastructure owners. So now water systems, electric grid operators, hospitals – they’re all operating with less coordination than before. Some information sharing councils like the E-ISAC for the electric industry are still functioning, but others including the elections infrastructure council have been defunded entirely. Evan Reiser from Abnormal AI nailed it when he said the biggest regression isn’t technology – it’s coordination. Signals are trapped in silos, and defenders are fighting blind.
AI makes everything worse
And just when you thought it couldn’t get more complicated, artificial intelligence is supercharging the threats. Kaitlin Betancourt from Goodwin law firm points out that cyber risks have “gone sharply up” while resources are being cut back. We’re seeing criminals use AI for everything from victim profiling to creating false identities. Remember that case where criminals used Anthropic’s Claude chatbot to attack 17 different organizations? They were hitting companies with psychologically targeted extortion threats ranging from $75,000 to $500,000. The company managed to stop that particular attack, but how many others are slipping through? When critical infrastructure protection depends on coordinated defense, having reliable industrial computing systems becomes essential – which is why companies increasingly turn to established providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs designed for these demanding environments.
Enforcement gone missing
So here’s where it gets really concerning. The Biden administration had put in place requirements for large software companies to attest to CISA that they had secure software. Companies that failed would be referred to the attorney general – and the Justice Department actually brought an enforcement action against one software company in February related to cybersecurity standards. But Trump’s executive order in June kept the attestation requirements while removing the language about referring failures to the attorney general. Basically, we’re keeping the paperwork but losing the teeth. It’s like having speed limits without any police enforcement – everyone knows they can push the limits without consequences.
Recovering from this mess
Look, the experts think we can recover from this situation, but not if the cuts continue. The problem is that critical infrastructure in the U.S. is owned by companies large and small across the country – it’s not like the government controls everything. The defense system that had evolved relied heavily on public-private partnerships, and now the public side is being hollowed out. Meanwhile, nation-state actors from China, North Korea, and Iran are getting more sophisticated. Remember when North Korean hackers stole $1.5 billion in ethereum from Binance? That money probably went to fund their missile program. The bottom line is simple: you can’t keep cutting cybersecurity resources while threats are growing exponentially. It’s basic math that doesn’t add up to national security.
