PBS高端访谈:美国如何防御网络战（在线收听）

NICK SCHIFRIN: Last week, David Sanger of The New York Times reported that Russian intelligence hackers are now more focused on disrupting the U.S. electrical grid than on sowing chaos in the U.S. electoral system. Sanger has been reporting on the threats and realities of cyber-warfare, who wages it and how prepared the U.S. is to stop it in a new book. Judy Woodruff recently sat down with Sanger to discuss it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Sanger, welcome. The book is "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age." You know, I don't normally say this in an interview. Fear is in the title. But this is a frightening book. Did you mean for it to be?

DAVID SANGER, Author, "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age": I meant it more to be an explanatory book, but it's an explanatory book about a frightening time. And the frightening part of this is that cyber-weapons have moved, almost without us recognizing it, to be the primary way, Judy, that countries are beginning to undercut each other, do short-of-war operations against each other, operations that they don't think will start a military response. You know, we spent years worrying about the giant cyber-Pearl Harbor that was going to cut off all the lights from Boston to Washington or San Francisco to L.A. And, in fact, that kind of blinded us to the much more subtle uses of cyber, in which all of us are the collateral damage to this war among states that's going on far above our heads.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have some, just so many fascinating stories in here. You had, I think, incredible access to some of the, some of the key players. One of the points you make, David Sanger, or is that the U.S. has not only stressed secrecy above all, but it's been much more comfortable talking about what other countries are doing to the U.S. than it's ever been willing to talk about what the U.S. is doing to others.

DAVID SANGER: Yes, we have hit this moment, Judy, where I think, in the reporting, I became convinced that the secrecy surrounding cyber, which arises from the fact that it was one of the first weapons developed by the intelligence agencies and they're naturally secretive, is actually beginning to become a security problem for us, because it's getting in the way of us establishing rules and deterrents. So, let me give you an example. We have felt free to go attack nuclear facilities in Iran, or, as this book reveals, North Korea's missile program. And yet, because we won't talk about our own capabilities and operations, we can't get the government involved in a serious conversation about what's off-limits.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And why haven't U.S. officials been more willing to talk about that?

DAVID SANGER: They have confused keeping secrecy around how we build these weapons and what we do from secrecy about how we want to go use them. And, even in the nuclear age, we kept everything about how we built nuclear weapons, where we stored them secret, and we had a big public debate about how we wanted to go use them. And it ended up in a completely different place.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You write at one point that the U.S. is still ahead, but you said that China and Russia are very close to catching up, and maybe even North Korea and Iran. How well-equipped right now is the U.S. to fend off a major cyber-attack?

DAVID SANGER: We're much better at our offense than we are at our defense. And that's partly because most of the targets in the United States are in private hands, utilities, financial firms, but also because, even while our cyber-defenses have improved and they have improved dramatically in the past five years, the number of targets has expanded so dramatically, that we can't keep up. So you now have an Internet-connected refrigerator or the cameras outside your house, if you have got them, are Internet-connected, your autonomous car. There are so many new ways in that, no matter how much better we get a defense, it seems like there are more targets.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The of course, one of the things that arises out of this, and because the timing of the book, is what happened in 2016, the Russian, reported Russian attempt to interfere in the U.S. election. What did you find out about that? Did you come away convinced that that happened?

DAVID SANGER: I not only came away convinced that it happened, but I came away convinced that we missed huge numbers of signals running up to it.

There are four chapters in the book on Russia. But the first one starts in Ukraine. And it's called "Putin's Petri Dish," because, basically, every single thing the Russians did us, they tried out in Ukraine first. And we didn't have the imagination to think that they would take that and try it here. The second thing was, the FBI was way too slow on the investigation into what happened at the DNC. It took nine months before they really got everybody to wake up to it. And, even then, the British had to step in and warn us that Russian military intelligence was inside the DNC. And then the White House got involved in a lengthy internal debate about whether to call out President Putin. Once again, they made the decision that they had made when the Russians went into the White House, the State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not to publicly penalize the Russians, at least before the election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, of course, the whole argument about whether President Obama moved quickly enough or not.

DAVID SANGER: And aggressively enough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And aggressively enough. Last thing, David Sanger. You ask an important question at the end about how the U.S. is really almost seen as a hypocrite, because we argue against, we argue against other countries interfering in what we do, and yet it's something that the U.S. is guilty of doing. Has the, and then you go on to say, it's up to us, up to the United States, to come up with ways to control this monster that we have created, that the U.S. has created. Do you think that's going to happen?

DAVID SANGER: If so, it's going to happen very gradually, and it's going to require a change of view in the United States and a change of view among our adversaries. One of the ideas that's kicked around, you hear the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, talk about it, you hear executives at Siemens and other places talk about it, is having some kind of a digital Geneva Convention, some rules about what you wouldn't do to civilians. Now, would they get violated all the time? Sure. But, then again, the Syrians violate the Geneva Conventions every time they gas civilians. But at least we would begin to have some norms of behavior. And the few efforts so far to start that at the U.N. have really died off.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which is a bleak prospect for the future.

DAVID SANGER: It is. You don't want to wait until you have such a big, paralyzing set of events or a series of smaller, but incredibly damaging cyber-attacks, for us to think about those in retrospect.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Sanger, I started out saying the book is frightening. It is. But it's also fascinating and so important to read at this particular time. It's "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age." Thank you.

DAVID SANGER: Thank you, Judy.

尼克·施菲林：上周，《纽约时报》的大卫·桑格报道说，俄罗斯情报黑客现在更关注的是对美国电网施加破坏，而不是针对美国选举制度，制造混乱局面。桑格在一本新书中讲述了网络战的威胁与战况，交战各方，以及事先准备好的美国如何对其应对阻止。朱迪·伍德拉夫最近邀请桑格对此进行了讨论。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：大卫·桑格，欢迎。这本书名为《完美的武器：网络时代的战争，破坏与恐惧》。你知道，我通常不会在接受采访时这样说。恐惧就在标题中。但这是一本令人恐惧的书。这是你的本意吗？

大卫·桑格，《完美的武器：网络时代的战争，破坏与恐惧》的作者：我的意思更多的是将它作为一本解释性的书加以呈现，但它关于令人恐惧的时代。而令人恐惧的部分是网络武器已经启动，然而我们几乎对它一无所知，它主要的方式，朱迪，各国开始相互削弱，相互之间进行短战，他们认为这些短战不会引发军事反应。你知道，数年里，我们一直在担心大规模的网络珍珠港事件，它会让从波士顿到华盛顿或从旧金山到洛杉矶陷入黑暗。事实上，这种情况阻挡了我们去认清网络更微妙的用途，在这其中，我们所有人都是这场国家之间战争的连带损失，这远远超出了我们头脑。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：你书中有一些，有很多引人入胜的故事。我认为，你能接触到一些关键的参与者，这种接触令人难以置信。你提出了一个观点，大卫·桑格，或者说美国不仅仅强调保密高于一切，而且谈论其他国家对美国所采取的行动比谈论美国在对其他国家所做的事情要舒服得多。

大卫·桑格：是的，我们已经触及了这一刻，朱蒂，我认为，在报道中，我确信围绕网络的秘密实际上开始成为关乎我们安全的问题，因为它阻碍了我们建立规则和威慑的道路。这些围绕网络的秘密是情报机构研发的首要武器，而且他们自然就有秘密。那么，让我来给你举个例子。我们可以随意攻击伊朗的核设施，或者正如本书所揭示的那样，朝鲜的导弹计划。然而，因为我们不会谈论我们自己的能力和运作，所以我们无法让政府参与关于禁区范围的严肃对话。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：为什么美国官员不大愿意谈论这个问题呢？

大卫·桑格：我们如何制造这些武器，我们从中做了哪些保密工作，我们想如何使用它们，他们对于要对以上这些内容进行保密感到迷惑不解。而且，即使在核时代，我们仍然保留了关于我们如何制造核武器的一切，我们对此进行了保密，我们就如何使用它们进行了大规模的公开辩论。最终，结论落在了一个完全不同的地方。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：你曾经写过，美国仍然领先，但你说中国与俄罗斯濒临赶超，甚至朝鲜和伊朗也可能做到。现在装备精良的美国能够抵御重大的网络攻击吗？

大卫·桑格：我们在进攻方面比在防守方面要好得多。这部分是因为美国的大部分目标都掌握在私人、公用事业公司以及金融公司手中，但同时也因为，即使我们的网络防御有所改善，而且它们在过去五年中已经有了显着改善，目标数量也已经大大扩充，我们无法跟上。那么你现在拥有一个能连接互联网的冰箱，或者你家外面有一个能连接互联网的摄像头，如果你有这些，能连接互联网，你的自动驾驶汽车。有很多新的方法，无论我们的防守提升多少，似乎总有更多的目标。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：当然，由此产生的一件事，以及因为本书的时间布局是2016年，就是报道俄罗斯试图干涉美国大选的那年。你发现了什么？你是否相信此事的发生？

大卫·桑格：我不仅相信它确实发生了，而且我相信我们已经错过了大量指向它的信号。关于俄罗斯的内容在书中有四章。但故事首先从乌克兰展开。它被称为“普京培养皿”，因为基本上，俄罗斯人对我们所做的每一件事，都是他们首先在乌克兰尝试过的。我们想象不到，他们会采取这种做法，并在这里尝试。第二件事是，联邦调查局对调查DNC发生的事情速度太慢了。他们花了九个月才让每个人都醒悟过来。而且，即使在那时，英国还不得不介入并警告我们，俄罗斯的军事情报人员已经渗入DNC内部。

然后白宫进行了一场关于是否要照会普京总统的冗长内部辩论。他们再一次做出了决定，在俄罗斯人渗入白宫时，他们让国务院和参谋长联席会议至少在大选前不要公开惩罚俄罗斯人。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：当然，整个辩论都关于奥巴马总统是否足够迅速做出了反应。

大卫·桑格：足够积极。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：足够积极。最后一件事，大卫·桑格。你最后问了一个重要的问题，关于美国如何真正被视为伪君子，因为我们反对，我们反对其他国家干涉我们的行为，但这是美国犯下的罪行。然后你继续说，这由我们决定，由美国决定，直到美国想出办法来控制我们创造的这个怪物，这是美国创造的。你认为这会发生吗？

大卫·桑格：如果是这样，它会慢慢发生，而且需要改变美国的观点，改变对手的观点。其中一个想法，你听到微软总裁，布拉德·史密斯谈论它，你听到西门子和其他地方的高管谈论它，正在制定某种数字日内瓦公约，制定一些不针对平民的规则。现在，他们始终会受到侵犯吗？当然。但是，再次，叙利亚人每次放气毒死平民时都违反了日内瓦公约。但至少我们会开始有一些行为规范。到目前为止，在联合国开始这项工作的一些努力确实已经停下。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：未来前景黯淡。

大卫·桑格：是的。你总不想等着遇到如此大规模瘫痪的事件或一系列较小但令人难以置信的破坏性网络攻击，才忆起那些往事吧。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：大卫·桑格，我开始时就说这本书很吓人。的确。但在这个特定的时间阅读它也很有趣，也很重要。这就是《完美的武器：网络时代的战争，破坏与恐惧》。谢谢你。

大卫·桑格：谢谢你，朱蒂。