Bulletins

The State Department is creating a Bureau of Cyberspace

The new department is intended to help battle rising international threats on the internet

The Kremlin Clock Tower and onion domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral, Moscow, on a late-fall day.
A new Microsoft report finds more than half of cyberattacks from nation-states originate in Russia.
Photo by Michael Parulava on Unsplash

The State Department has decided to create a bureau of cyberspace and digital policy, as well as a new point person or group for issues of emerging or critical technologies, in order to address international concerns with hacking, ransomware and internet freedom, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The changes should be announced later this week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to the WSJ.

The Biden State Department has found itself battling with international powerhouses such as Russia and China over questions of state-sponsored hacking, persecution of activists online and internet surveillance. Just today, Microsoft said despite the Biden administration's sanctions and warnings, Russian-sponsored hackers have successfully breached more than 10 U.S. tech companies and tried attacking more than 100 more.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

state departmenthackingbiden
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