When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history. His dismissal came after weeks in which the Trump administration swept away nearly all of the government’s election-related cyberdefenses beyond the secure N.S.A. command centers at Fort Meade, Md. At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks. The innovative Cyber Safety Review Board — based on the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates transportation accidents — was created by the Biden administration to extract critical lessons from major breaches. It was dismantled soon after Mr. Trump took office, even as it was in the midst of examining Salt Typhoon and trying to figure out how China’s intelligence agencies pierced deep into the American telecommunications system. Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of state in Pennsylvania, sent a letter last month to Kristi Noem, who as the homeland security secretary oversees CISA, listing four instances last year when federal cybersecurity programs currently being targeted helped his state hold fair elections.
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