US needs to do more make cyber attackers pay, Trump adviser says

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will examine ways to impose higher costs on private actors and U.S. adversaries who wage cyber attacks on America, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz, said on Sunday.

The comments come after U.S. allegations of a sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that targeted and recorded telephone calls of senior American political figures.

The White House has said at least eight telecommunications and infrastructure firms in the United States had been affected and a large number of Americans’ metadata was stolen in the sweeping cyber espionage campaign.

Waltz did not say what the Trump administration would do in response to Salt Typhoon but spoke more generally about the incoming administration’s approach. He said Washington for too long had focused mostly on bolstering its cyber defenses.

“We need to start going on the offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us,” Waltz told CBS News’ Face the Nation.

He also said the private U.S. technology industry could also be helpful in making adversaries vulnerable as well as aiding in U.S. defense.

Chinese officials previously have described the allegations as disinformation and said that Beijing “firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms.”

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, editing by Ross Colvin and Deepa Babington)