Cyber Policy: A View from the White House
Alexei Bulazel, Stewart Baker
RSA Conference 2025 · Day 2 · YBCA Stage
Alexei Bulazel, the Trump administration's Senior Director for Cyber at the National Security Council and its highest-ranking cyber official at the time of the conference, delivered a candid account of the administration's cyber priorities: countering Chinese infrastructure intrusions with active deterrence rather than passive defense, refocusing CISA on its core technical mission, and rethinking the legal boundaries that prevent private-sector defenders from acting outside their own networks. In conversation with attorney and former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker, Bulazel offered one of the most direct public accounts yet of where the new administration's cyber posture is heading. ---
AI review
The highest-ranking cyber official in the current U.S. administration lays out actual policy positions on deterrence, CISA's mandate, Volt/Salt Typhoon, and active defense authority for private actors — with the technical credibility to back it up. Bulazel's C4-in-the-substation analogy is reductive but deliberately so: the administration wants the public to understand that pre-positioned cyber capabilities in critical infrastructure are acts of aggression, not espionage. Rare case of a government keynote with real content.