Dismantling Defenses: Trump 2.0 Cyber Year in Review

The Trump administration has pursued a staggering range of policy pivots this past year that threaten to weaken the nation’s ability and willingness to address a broad spectrum of technology challenges, from cybersecurity and privacy to countering disinformation, fraud and corruption. These shifts, along with the president’s efforts to restrict free speech and freedom of the press, have come at such a rapid clip that many readers probably aren’t even aware of them all. FREE SPEECH President Trump has repeatedly claimed that a primary reason he lost the 2020 election was that social media and Big Tech companies had conspired to silence conservative voices and stifle free speech.

Naturally, the president’s impulse in his second term has been to use the levers of the federal government in an