The US Asks Private Companies to Hack Back - DTNS 5331

**Tom Merritt** (0:09)
This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, August 13th, Thursday the 13th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and help each other understand.

**Huyen Tue Dao** (0:20)
Today, the US changes policies to let private companies help fight transnational crime syndicates. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Huyen Tue Dow.

**Tom Merritt** (0:27)
Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.
Yeah, so the President of the United States signed a memo Wednesday ordering the Department of Homeland Security's new National Coordination Center, in coordination with the Department of Justice, to create a program that would use private companies in operations against transnational criminal organizations. So this is, at least in the memo, very narrow. At the direction of this NCC, private companies would be allowed to help fight criminal organizations that cross international boundaries. Specifically, the program is trying to go after ransomware attacks, fishing campaigns, financial fraud, sextortion schemes, impersonation scams, all the stuff that you hear about in the technology security news. The program would enable the government to use the talent and resources of private organizations to conduct such operations previously that has exclusively been operated by government or military personnel. Companies would be encouraged to gather threat information and share it. Also propose operations against the threats, although they're not supposed to do them themselves, just propose them. That would include, though, the ability to, at the direction of this coordination center, plant spyware as well as disrupt criminal data and systems. It is illegal to conduct these kinds of operations as a private company independently without a court order. The law says you can only defend yourself. You can't hack back. This would not allow private companies to hack back on their own, but it would allow the government to bring private companies in and use their talent. Some people were comparing it to a 19th century letter of marque, which was given to private ships to allow them to attack pirates, which makes it very romantic, I suppose.
A fact sheet issued about the program said the program will include, and I'll quote, rigorous procedures for the review and conduct of these limited cyber operations at the direction of the US government, ensuring strict compliance with the US. Constitution and laws, as well as applicable international agreements. It also requires companies to immediately stop any operations if they find their activity exceeding limits or unintended targeting of US citizens or U.S.-based systems. This is a big concern of opponents of this, is when you start hacking the bad guys, sometimes you accidentally hack the good guys. And this says, well, if that happens to US people, you got to stop immediately. Participating companies must maintain a bond of escrow worth at least $1 million.
And if they are found to violate any of these contractual agreements, any of these guidelines that say, you can't do this and you can't do that, then they'd forfeit the million dollars.
This is the kind of thing that is fraught with people picking a side based on who they like. And a lot of it will depend on, okay, it says this, do we hue to that? But what do you think about the words? What do you think about the way it was actually set up?

**Huyen Tue Dao** (3:42)
I think I felt, yeah, this is, I think this is especially as someone who works in technology, I'm trying very hard to kind of narrow and be as objective as humanly possible as a human being with thoughts and feelings and opinions about this, just because this is a lot. I do like that, you know, you emphasize of course it is very narrow. It's transnational criminal organizations. So I suppose that yes, the scope being narrow is a good thing. All the things that you mentioned, the specific crimes and criminal activities are all, like I think we can unabashedly say, very, very bad things that do target, you know, regular, ordinary people. This is not, it doesn't feel like, you know, a kind of government V government espionage thing. It feels like these are things that very, very deeply harm like real people. So that's a good thing.
The rest of it, it's really difficult. It feels like there is, this feels like one of the things where we have an idea. Let's say off the top that nominally it's a good idea, like a fine idea to use private resources, especially with these kind of more transnational nature of this, that it's a good idea. We're just going to call it a good idea. I think it is, as you said, it is just, I feel like, again, it's a memo, so there's not like egregious detail about this. So we can only speculate so far. I think that is the thing though, is that what are the specifics of this?