Controversy surrounding TikTok, the popular Chinese company-owned social media platform, has continued to give rise to impasse in recent weeks. Just days after the Biden administration issued a divestiture-or-ban ultimatum to the company and Beijing firmly opposed a forced sale, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified in Congress to try to save the app’s U.S. operations.

A review of Arun Vishwanath, “The Weakest Link: How to Diagnose, Detect, and Defend Users From Phishing Attacks” (MIT Press, 2022)

Many elements of the cyber threat landscape have changed significantly over the past two decades. For one, the number of attackers has grown dramatically, aided by the increasing availability of hacking tools and services as commodities for purchase in online marketplaces. The value of the losses cyber criminals have been able to inflict on their victims has also grown, though the dollar estimates vary widely in absolute terms. In recent years, the popularity of ransomware has increased substantially, prompting the Biden administration to initiate an ongoing diplomatic effort to foster cross-border efforts to curb this dangerous form of cyber-enabled extortion.

Activity in the digital domain may affect the war in Eastern Europe at the margins, but it will not decide it. That should tell us something about the West’s cyber posture.