<
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/05/cybersecurity-ransomware-united-states-cyberattack-china-hacking/>
"In October 2025, representatives from dozens of countries gathered in
Singapore for the annual meeting of the International Counter Ransomware
Initiative (CRI). Founded by the United States in 2021, the global collective
is aimed at combating ransomware, an increasingly prevalent type of cyberattack
in which hackers lock victims out of their computer systems unless they agree
to pay a hefty sum. It has since grown to include 74 member states and
organizations.
For the first time in five years, the initiative’s annual gathering was not
held in Washington, and U.S. representation was noticeably lacking.
“Traditionally, we have a huge contingent from the U.S.,” David Koh, the head
of Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency, told an audience at a cybersecurity
conference in Washington a few weeks later, sitting onstage with his
counterparts from Australia and Japan. “This year was different because almost
no one from the U.S. administration came.”
The Biden administration made multilateral cyber-engagement one of its key
policy priorities, appointing the United States’ first-ever ambassador-at-large
for cyberspace and digital policy to head a new State Department bureau focused
on international cyber- and technology cooperation. It supplemented its
leadership of the CRI with a multilateral pledge to curb the misuse of
commercial spyware, put forward an international cyberspace and digital
strategy, and oversaw a significant expansion of the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), tasked with defending the United States
from cyberthreats. But widespread cuts to the U.S. government workforce under
President Donald Trump over the past year have impacted nearly all of those
efforts.
In explaining why that matters, Koh did not mince words. “You can’t look people
in the eye if you’re not showing up,” he said. “My concern is that if we don’t
do enough of it, then someone else will take the narrative.”
That someone else, he made clear during his remarks, is China. The world’s
second-largest economy has positioned itself as a formidable technological
rival to the United States, establishing a near-equal footing (and in some
cases, leading) in critical technologies such as semiconductors, artificial
intelligence, batteries, biotechnology, and quantum computing. On many of those
fronts, Beijing is now providing countries in the middle with viable
alternatives. And at the same time, China has emerged as the prime
cyber-adversary to the United States and its traditional allies.
“The U.S. plays a unique role because of the global space we operate on across
law enforcement, diplomatic, cyberdefense, and intelligence,” said Anne
Neuberger, who served as the deputy national security advisor for cyber and
emerging technology in the Biden administration—a role in which she created and
spearheaded the CRI. “So, when we step back, it clearly has an impact.”
In assessing the nature of this impact, I spoke to more than a dozen current
and former diplomats and government officials from the United States and a
half-dozen other countries. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to speak on the record. Just about all of them share a
nascent but nagging concern: that amid mounting cyberthreats around the world,
Washington is pulling back from leadership at the worst possible time."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Cybersecurity: January 6, 2026
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-6-147538800
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
