American wouldn’t stand “a fighting chance” against the combined cyberwarfare capabilities of Russia and China, the former chief software officer of the United States Air Force told Fox News last week.
“Not many nations would be able to push back,” Nicolas Chaillan said. “I don’t even think the United States would be able to push back if tomorrow Russia and China decide to come together against us.”
“I think it would be very difficult for us to be able to even have a fighting chance, let alone a nation like Ukraine,” he added.
Chaillan also said the invasion in Ukraine is “not the full force of the Russian capabilities,” which he said is “tremendous.”
“They have not used the most innovative capabilities yet. They’re focusing on the more traditional warfighting capabilities,” he told the outlet. “We have to be cautious. I always remind people that [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin is not stupid. We may not yet understand what his plan was all along.”
In 2021, Chaillan had resigned his position in protest of the U.S. military’s IT strategy, which he said entailed “kindergarten level” systems and couldn’t stand a chance against China.
Chaillan said last week that he’s “way more scared about China,” adding that China and Russia sharing their advanced technology would be “game changing.”
“You also have some AI and machine learning capabilities that could be used to look at satellite imagery and find where troops are located, be able to do better real-time analysis of what’s going on on the ground,” Chaillan said.
Chaillan said he suspects China is already sharing data with Russia, and warned of serious consequences if Western nations provided Ukraine with the same kind of information.
“We have to be very careful,” Chaillan said. “If we start providing cyber offensive capabilities, nothing stops Russia from fighting back and going after our critical infrastructure.”
“It would be very impactful to U.S. citizens if something were to happen,” he continued. “They could potentially take down the grid for weeks, if not months.”
Last month, the head of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, warned in a post on Telegram that multiple government websites were hit in the “massive” cyberattack.
“At about 4 pm, another mass DDoS attack on our state began. We have relevant data from a number of banks, and there are also problems with access to the websites of the Verkhovna Rada (already in operation), the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is due to switching traffic to another provider to minimize the damage from the attack,” Fedorov wrote, according to a translation of the post.
“Portal and mobile application Action successfully overcome the current attack and continue to work stably,” he added.
