It seems unlikely that Trump will continue the Biden administration’s campaign limiting the spread of commercial spyware technologiesWhich Authoritarian governments have used harassing journalists, civil rights protesters, and opposition politicians. Trump and his allies maintain close political and financial ties He negotiated with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two most prolific users of commercial spyware tools, and showed little concern about human rights abuses by those governments during his first term.

“We are likely to see major reversals in spyware policy,” says Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow in the Program on Democracy, Conflict, and Governance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Trump officials will likely pay more attention to spyware makers’ counterterrorism arguments than digital rights advocates’ criticism of those tools.

Spyware companies “will undoubtedly have a more positive audience under the Trump administration,” says Feldstein; particularly market leader NSO Group, which is closely linked to the pro-Trump Israeli government.

Questionable Expectations

Biden’s other cyber ventures are also in danger, although their fates are less clear.

Biden’s National Cyber ​​Security Strategy He emphasized the need for greater corporate responsibility, arguing that well-resourced technology firms should do more to prevent hackers from misusing their products in devastating cyberattacks. Over the past few years, CISA has launched a messaging campaign to encourage companies to produce their products.secure by designMinistry of Justice created Civilian Cyber ​​Fraud Initiative He moved to prosecute contractors who misled the government about security practices, and White House officials began considering proposals to that effect. holding software vendors accountable to compromise vulnerabilities.

This corporate responsibility push is unlikely to receive strong support from the incoming Trump administration, which is almost certain to be full of former business leaders hostile to government pressure.

Henry Young, senior policy director at software trade group BSA, predicts that the secure-by-design campaign “will evolve to more realistically balance the responsibilities of governments, businesses, and customers and avoid finger-pointing in favor of collaborative efforts to continue improving security and resilience.”

A Democratic administration could use the security crackdown by design as a springboard for new institutional arrangements. Under the Trump administration, security by design will remain a rhetorical slogan at best. “It’s going to be hard to turn this into something more concrete,” the US cyber official says.

Crumbling from the Edges

A landmark cyber program cannot easily be shelved under a second Trump administration, but it could still be significantly transformed.

In 2022, Congress passed a law requiring CISA to establish cyber incident reporting regulations for critical infrastructure operators. CISA published the text The implementation of the proposed regulations in April sparked a backlash from industry groups who said it went too far. Corporate America warned that CISA was asking too much information about too many events from too many companies.