VP Harris calls for “cyber doctrine” to address mounting attacks

WASHINGTON—Vice President Kamala Harris has cited the need for a “cyber doctrine” and greater international efforts to address the rash of cybersecurity attacks that have occurred over the past year on a global scale.

In a recent interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the vice president was asked if cyberattacks should be considered acts of terror, and she responded, “I do believe that it is important for us to have a cyber doctrine.”

Harris also expressed the need for international coordination to address the wave of cyberattacks in the U.S. and around the world over the past year, including those at SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, JBS USA, Microsoft and Kaseya, citing the importance of the “role and the responsibility that we have to work with our partners and allies around international norms and rules.”

“On the issue of cyber, it is important that we work with our allies on these issues,” the vice president said in the interview.

In November, Harris announced that the U.S. would support the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace initiative to help bring together governments and the private sector on cybersecurity topics. 

“When I was in France meeting with [French President Emmanuel] Macron, this is one of the issues that we discussed, which is the importance of all of us as allies and partners and even those who are adversaries, making sure that we are all on the same page about what will be interpreted as a threat or not, and with some level of consensus about what the norms and the rules are and what they should be,” she told Face the Nation. “I think that’s critically important as we look at emerging threats.”

In order to address the mounting number of cyberattacks that have crippled U.S. critical infrastructure, President Biden signed an Executive Order in May 2021 to improve the nation’s cybersecurity and protect Federal Government networks.

A White House statement at the time noted that the Executive Order “makes a significant contribution toward modernizing cybersecurity defenses by protecting federal networks, improving information-sharing between the U.S. government and the private sector on cyber issues, and strengthening the United States’ ability to respond to incidents when they occur.”