Trump’s cyber purge a "priceless gift” to US enemies
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Hey everyone, this is Cory and Carly, the hosts of the Surviving Sister Wives podcast. Sister Wives returns at last, and while the Browns have gone their own separate ways, that doesn't mean they're done with each other. Mary and Janelle form an unlikely alliance, Christine is off living in newly married bliss, and Cody and Robin are left wondering, can they be happy in a monogamous relationship?

And after all the joy and drama, they hit the hot seat and answer the questions we've been begging to know. Sister Wives returns Sunday, April 20th at 10 on TLC.

Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Tom Noonan and Alex Dibble. While the world watches Donald Trump's dramatic tariff policies and their twists and turns, something that's gone relatively under the radar is his shake-up of the National Security Council and especially US cyber security.

Last week, he fired General Timothy Hock as head of the National Security Agency and head of US Cyber Command, along with his deputy. The president was reportedly pushed to fire them by Laura Loomer, who seemed by many to be a far-right conspiracy theorist who's claimed 9-11 was an inside job. It's thought that she argued they weren't sufficiently loyal to him.

So, has the move exposed the US, and therefore the West, to fresh dangers? Our guest today is Dr Tim Stephens, who's from the War Studies Department at King's College London and is head of the university's Cyber Security Research Group. Tim, the Democratic Senator Jack Reid says getting rid of Timothy Hock is a priceless gift to the US's enemies. Do you think they'll be laughing in the Kremlin or in Beijing at this?

I'm not sure they'll be laughing as a result of this precise incident in which General Tim Hoch was fired as head of, as you say, NSA and US Cyber Command.

I think what they may be looking at is a slight disarray in the U.S. cybersecurity posture, both in the defensive side. We've seen a lot of to-ing and fro-ing from the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency CISA, but also on the more offensive side, which is where the U.S. Cyber Command bit comes in.

And as is always the way with military commands like U.S. cybercom, you want continuity of expertise, of leadership, and you also want consistent policy. And at the moment, it's unsure whether any of those applies to the U.S. situation. So in that respect, some of the U.S.'s strategic adversaries may be gaining some sucker from that relative state of disarray.

And you talk about offensive and defensive capabilities that Cyber Command offers. Just talk us through what you mean by that and some of the risks now as you see it. There is a risk in the way that US cybersecurity is being retooled and reorganised in the sense that it's going to lose not only a lot of experience and expertise in the personnel that have been jettisoned for very ideological reasons, small government, etc., etc.,

But it's also going to lose a lot of its coverage in terms of what it can defend against. Now, U.S. Cyber Command, its principal job is not necessarily defending municipalities and so on from ransomware attacks. That's not its job. But it's about having an integrated, coherent national capability that is protecting the United States.

But we know very, very little about the offensive side. But, you know, where special forces are operating or where troops are deployed in forward positions, Cyber Command will have a role in supporting them, sometimes in very mundane ways, but also in support, actual operational support and sometimes for the use of their capabilities for generating effects.

in those battle spaces in which troops are deployed. And we've seen people being lost from the civilian side and now from the military side. Whether that portends a greater fragmentation of US federal national cybersecurity or not, I don't know. But I think it is deeply concerning because when you stop defending

across the peace, there are always seams and veins in your defensive posture that can be exploited by adversaries. And unquestionably, if you reduce your defensive capacity, you increase your vulnerability. And so, Tim, what sort of attacks would that open the US up to? Is it the sort of hybrid warfare that we've seen? Not the level of all-out conflict with enemies, but the sort of disruption to networks?

Yes, that's part of it. There's two main adversaries, if you like, in this environment. One is criminal, and most of the ransomware attacks, for example, that we've seen have been criminal in nature, not all by any stretch. But there's the other side, when we're talking about operations conducted by adversaries, and conventionally it's Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and they're very keen to exploit critical infrastructures and

and so on. Those, sometimes it's difficult to tell whether they're intelligence gathering or whether they're beachheads for something more sinister in the future. But unquestionably, those are the types of things that the US will continue to be concerned about and its allies. And reducing your defensive capacity or even your capacity to respond is never necessarily a net positive for national security.

And turning to who's going to replace Tim Hock, who's supposedly been fired for disloyalty, we've seen in other positions in Trump's administration, Pete Hegseth at Defence or Kash Patel at the FBI, for example, they are, well, some would say unconventional appointments where Trump has picked people who are seen as staunch supporters, but critics would say they lack the qualifications which nominees for those posts usually have.

What happens if Trump does the same with his pick to replace Hock at Cyber Command? That would be a far greater discontinuity and issue of concern. And we have, as you say, we've seen that elsewhere in US federal government where people have been put in positions where they are basically put there because they're loyalists, not because they have any particular expertise in that field.

If that were to happen, I think not only elements of federal government and the military and intelligence communities, but also their allies would be somewhat concerned that you're giving what is an enormously important brief for the US government, but also for its security and intelligence partners, of which the UK is very clearly one. You have to have someone in those very, very senior... There's a four-star general role, US Cybercom and NSA. You have to have someone who understands the field and is making decisions...

based not just in operations, but strategic decisions that affect US and allied national security. So having someone in that position who is not qualified, it's obviously going to be of concern to the US and its allies. And I suppose if it implicates US allies, then they'll be pretty worried about that, presumably.

Yes, I think they will be, because I think what's happening is the replacements potentially of senior officials like this, not because of their faith in the Constitution, but because of their perceived loyalty to the commander-in-chief. And those are two very, very different things. And when you're thinking about the types of alliances and partnerships that

that someone like the NSA or US Cyber Command needs in places like the UK from GCHQ and Ministry of Defense and so on. You want someone who understands the culture of those organizations and is making decisions based on the right reasons, whether they're operational or strategic, not because of their political loyalties to the US president.

Tim, this has sort of bubbled away in the background of the news agenda, partly, as we said, because of tariffs, but partly also, I wonder if people, some people at least, look at this and think, why do I care? Do you think the public are worried enough about cyber security and the part that agencies like Cyber Command play in that? Probably not. But then again, I wouldn't, it's not a council of despair here.

But I think clearly one of the main communicative obstacles in this space is actually explaining to people why cybersecurity is important at all. In academic literature, we talk about infrastructures as being invisible until they fail. And I think that's something that really applies in this space is that we use our devices on these networks and systems every single day to conduct business,

leisure and entertainment and all the rest of it. But if the Wi-Fi goes down, then your kids are screaming. But if you're running a business and your internet goes down because there's been a breach of your networks or that your internet service provider has gone down, we've all experienced this. Then you begin to get a hint of what happens, for example, if there was a much larger scale deliberate attack on information networks and systems.

And the job of, you know, our own sovereign capabilities in the UK

like GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Center, is to try and raise the level of security, of cybersecurity. In the US, you have CISA as the civilian agency that's tasked with doing something very, very similar. And if you reduce their capacity to advise and guide and support and react and respond to incidents and so on, you're getting into a space where we're almost deliberately

laying ourselves open to the types of operations that adversaries may wish to conduct. Tim, thank you very much for joining us. That is Dr Tim Stephens, head of King's College London's Cyber Security Research Group. Today we've taken a step back from the focus on Donald Trump's trade war with China.

that is only escalating. Yesterday, we looked at who is going to blink first out of Trump or Xi Jinping in that standoff and whether there is any scope for a deal to get rid of tariffs between the US and China. Definitely go back to yesterday and have a listen to that. That's it from us today, though. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

Hey everyone, this is Cory and Carly, the hosts of the Surviving Sister Wives podcast. Sister Wives returns at last, and while the Browns have gone their own separate ways, that doesn't mean they're done with each other. Mary and Janelle form an unlikely alliance, Christine is off living in newly married bliss, and Cody and Robin are left wondering, can they be happy in a monogamous relationship?

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