U.S. cyber posture: responses conditioned on rival behavior, tied into AI and infrastructure work

At a Washington forum, Alexandra Seymour — the principal deputy assistant national cyber director for policy — outlined how a forthcoming national cyber strategy will make Washington's cyber reactions contingent on hostile acts by foreign actors and will more explicitly fold in industry and state and local authorities. Officials described the approach as designed to make consequences for attackers clearer while providing operational context for coordinated defensive and, in some cases, offensive measures.

The administration intends to formalize the approach in a short, public strategy that has been under development for months but delayed beyond earlier expectations. That delay has left interlocking efforts — including a separate ONCD-led push to embed security-by-design across AI technology stacks — awaiting an overarching policy vehicle that can link technical standards, procurement levers and enforcement pathways.

Operationally, the guidance signals a tilt toward more assertive measures paired with explicit coordination. U.S. intelligence and military cyber units already conduct offensive operations; the new framework would set clearer thresholds for when and how responses escalate based on measured adversary behavior. Speakers flagged that formalizing private-sector participation in such activity raises legal, oversight and escalation questions that remain unresolved.

Officials said related ONCD work aimed at treating security as foundational for AI systems will be closely coordinated with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). That effort responds, in part, to observed shifts in attacker tradecraft — including reports of highly automated campaigns that compress large volumes of activity against multiple targets — and seeks interoperable controls across models, data pipelines, integration layers and telemetry to improve detection and provenance.

The strategy is organized around a six-pillar framework designed to change both posture and practice. Key aims include measures to reduce adversaries’ hacking capacity, modernize government networks, ease compliance burdens through regulatory and procurement reforms, harden critical services and encourage private investment in edge technologies and talent.

Speakers noted that bringing companies into coordinated defenses — and potentially into government-directed active measures — creates thorny practical issues. Industry often controls the infrastructure targeted in intrusions, making firms central to incident response and resilience; aligning commercial tooling and telemetry sharing with government needs will require interoperable standards, certification pathways and clear liability rules.

Policymakers discussing AI infrastructure urged complementary investments in shared compute and certification programs to lower barriers for smaller providers and embed verification into procurement. Conversely, market concentration among dominant platforms could complicate standard-setting and increase political friction around enforcement.

Short bullets summarize the central elements:

• A policy tying government responses to the measured behavior of foreign actors, clarifying escalation ladders.
• Explicit coordination with state and local authorities and commercial operators, with unresolved questions about legal authorities and liability protections.
• A six-part plan to deter, modernize, regulate, protect, innovate and staff the cyber ecosystem, now being linked to ONCD efforts to secure AI stacks and infrastructure.

Officials have not published a firm release date; the paper is expected soon and will shape how federal, local and private actors interact in both protection and retaliation. The move represents a calculated attempt to blend deterrence and clearer consequences with technical and market-oriented steps — from security-by-design in AI to procurement and certification — while keeping escalation risks under consideration.