How a quiet partnership between US tech companies, US and NATO intel agencies, and Ukrainian hackers helped blunt Russia's offensive cyber capabilities
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 // (IG): BB //Weekly Sponsor: UNDERWORLD BJJ Mark Halperin / Wide World of News : In the Clearing Stands a Boxer Tweets: @hkanji : “The Ukrainians have gotten really good at repairing networks. When a network gets wiped, they rebuild it in several hours.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @z_tarot : Excellent read appears rift betw public-private re tech given snowden is over hacking majorly backfiring against RU & may continue for yrs bc they depend on western tech! https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @thegrugq : Curious why the Russian cybers have been so weak? Wonder no more! - public private partnerships - information sharing - the power of friendship Read all about it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... John Sipher / @john_sipher : Snowden's actions damaged critical public-private partnerships that help defend against cyber criminality. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Fabio Chiusi / @fabiochiusi : “The longer the conflict lasts, the less effective Russia's vaunted cyber capability will likely become” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Calder Walton / @calder_walton : The “rift in the tech world that followed Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 appears largely to be over — because of the backlash against Russia's attacks on the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections and, now, its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @thegrugq : Ukrainian carders, Microsoft, Google and NATO all standing in a line shouting “care bear stare!” https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
When Russia invaded, the expectation set by earlier coverage was grim: analysts assessing Russia's offensive cyber arsenal and its limitations warned of crippling attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, a fear rooted in campaigns like the hackings tied to Russia's operations against Polish and German targets. What actually happened was different, because the defense had been pre-positioned — the US had spent years embedding soldiers and cybersecurity experts with Ukraine before the war began, per the reported US-Ukraine cyber defense cooperation.
The Washington Post's reporting adds the missing layer: the Snowden-era rift between Silicon Valley and the intelligence community, which followed episodes like the NSA losing control of its own cyberweapons via the Shadow Brokers leaks, has effectively closed in wartime. Tech companies, US and NATO agencies, and Ukrainian hackers now operate as an informal joint defense network — and the payoff is visible in how fast wiped Ukrainian networks come back.
First-order effects
- Russian offensive cyber units are being denied strategic effect in real time: attacks that land get repaired within hours by Ukrainian network teams working alongside Western partners.
- US tech companies have become active combat-adjacent participants, sharing telemetry and patching vulnerabilities on behalf of a nation under attack rather than staying neutral infrastructure providers.
Second-order effects
- The coalition's attribution machine keeps running after each operation — the later unmasking of Cadet Blizzard as GRU Unit 29155 shows the partnership converting battlefield defense into lasting intelligence exposure of Russia's cyber apparatus.
- Russia's retaliation options are constrained by its own dependence on Western technology, while its isolation leaves it exposed to third parties — Chinese-linked groups have since been repeatedly hacking Russian companies and agencies hunting military secrets.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, national cyber defense stops being a state monopoly: platform-level visibility plus partner-nation hacker corps becomes the standing model, formalizing what began as ad hoc wartime cooperation.
- The Snowden-era public-private split looks structurally resolved in favor of alignment against shared adversaries, setting a precedent other alliances will copy — and raising the bar for any aggressor whose economy runs on rival technology stacks.
The trend: Cyber defense is consolidating into coalitions of tech platforms, intelligence agencies, and partner-nation operators, replacing purely national cyber commands as the effective unit of deterrence.