Jason Healey
Sometime soon, President Trump might order military forces to conduct offensive cyber operations on U.S. domestic networks against those he has declared enemies. If this were to happen, he would face few legal or procedural roadblocks.
The legal analysis is neither straightforward nor simple, but the ultimate consequence will be one of the following: Either the currently understood limits on deploying troops within the United States constrain domestic military activity or they don’t.
If it is legal to deploy the 10th Mountain Division to the border to deal with an “invasion” or “insurrection”—or the 82nd Airborne to the streets of Washington, D.C., as nearly happened in 2020—there are few barriers to ordering U.S. Cyber Command to spy on or disrupt domestic networks against whatever domestic enemies a president might declare.
The Pentagon has already confirmed it is using offensive cyber operations against drug traffickers and human smugglers at the southern U.S. border. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief cyber adviser, the Pentagon is “actively working to disrupt these networks, intercept their communications and dismantle their digital infrastructure.” To help stop this presidentially declared “invasion,” it would not be a major legal or operational step to order further military Title 10 cyber operations to disrupt the communications of those criminal organizations operating on the U.S. side of the border, or nongovernmental organizations or individuals harboring immigrants within the United States. Such digital effects are less publicly visible and thus less likely to generate protest than paratroopers marching through the streets in riot gear.
Pundits and legal experts will rightly detail all sorts of legal complexities. Little of that may matter. The administration has repeatedly shown it does not care about legal quibbles, and commanders who decide to not follow orders and wait for legal clarity would do so with the clear expectation of being fired for second-guessing the commander in chief.
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