Hegseth’s move raised eyebrows in Europe, where Russia is seen as a main threat in cyberspace together with China.
Both French diplomatic officials and President Emmanuel Macron have repeatedly accused Russia of engaging in hybrid warfare against France through cyberattacks. “Russia is attacking us on information, cyber,” Macron said last month, claiming that Moscow was seeking to “destabilize our democracies.”
A report published on Feb. 24 by Viginum, the French digital interference service, said France was “the subject of a particularly aggressive and persistent targeting by Russian information threat actors.”
