Predicting the Impact of Trump’s Election on Cyber

Below are seven predictions from our team at TAG for how the recent Trump election of 2024 will impact U.S. business practitioners, government agencies, citizens, and commercial vendors in cybersecurity over the next few years.

Prediction 1: CISO targeting by the SEC will end.

I predict that Gary Gensler will be fired, and that this will close out one of the darkest stains on the Biden Administration – namely, the targeting of CISOs by the SEC. Ending this practice will be a massive victory for public CISOs, who will soon be able to refocus their attention on actual threats. Perhaps the only losers here are the lawyers. This is a positive outcome from the election for sure.

Prediction 2: AI security focus will shift from caution to investment.

The Biden team’s work on AI was admirable but perhaps overly focused on sidestepping disruption. With Elon Musk and Peter Thiel soon dictating the script here (and yes, they will), our nation’s AI emphasis will shift toward accelerated investment. As for security, expect it also to shift from things like the avoidance of LLM bias toward the development of guard rails that allow us to go faster with AI. I like this outcome.

Prediction 3: CISA can focus on issues other than election security.

We all know that Trump would have cried foul if he had lost. But his victory creates the absurd condition where he no longer has incentive to drag us through his planned election hacking purgatory. And while we are still dealing with a bully offering us a reprieve from his bullying, the situation does free up CISA to focus on things other than election security. I guess, weirdly, this is good news.

Prediction 4: We will see lots of unusual messaging in cyber.

Trump doesn’t use email. And he doesn’t text. Add to that, his age as an octogenarian. In short, we have a leader with zero instincts regarding cyber. This might be no different from Biden, who is hardly writing Python scripts. But it sure was cool when Obama flashed that old Blackberry. Expect a lot of weird cyber messaging – and my advice (in advance of it appearing) is to just ignore it.

Prediction 5: The administration will glance away from Russian hacking.

Mitt Romney was correct to cite Russia as our biggest foe, and this extends to cyber, where the Kremlin has been pulling our chains for years. The problem is that the new Administration will probably give the Kremlin a pass on cyber. As a result, the next four years will allow Russia to syphon our data and embed control hooks into our systems. This is a bad outcome of the election.

Prediction 6: Platforms and tools that fight misinformation will be at risk.?

The various platforms designed to call out the use of misinformation might be at odds with the new Administration. For example, if Trump drives up inflation with tariffs, he might demand cooked numbers to hide this fact. We do have tools that can call out this challenge to the truth, but it seems likely that the new Administration will not like such action. This will lead to confrontation. I hope the technologists hold their ground.

Prediction 7: Many will lose their crypto fortunes to hackers.

With our new administration embracing crypto, we can expect large increases in the number of citizens screaming that some socially engineered SIM swap caused them to lose their life savings stored in Bitcoin. While AI help desks will eventually eradicate SIM swapping threats, there will be a period in the next few years where many crypto fortunes will be lost. I hope this does not involve you.

I hope my predictions are useful.

Let me know what you think.

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