At the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide threats hearing on March 25, 2025, Trump’s intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard officially testified that the country’s greatest cyber threat comes from non-state cyber criminals. According to her evidence, the nation’s economic interests are being targeted by a variety of non-state actors. They are going after vital infrastructures and developing commercial capacity for financial gain, extortion, and other forms of coercion. These actors utilize several approaches including phishing, ransomware and Denial of service assault to disrupt networks and steal sensitive and lucrative information utilizing available technologies and exploiting existing weaknesses. She also brought up the ransomware attack on US healthcare facilities last year. According to her testimony, several governments are using these non-state actors as proxies for imitating cyber crimes against the nation. In her remarks, she pointed to China’s sophisticated cyber capabilities that are aimed at US interests by collecting private sector and sensitive data and laying the groundwork for more unconventional attack choices that may be used in a fight. Numerous high-profile breaches, such as the significant infiltration of US telecom equipment last year—known as “salt”—have been connected to China’s cyber activity.
