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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive operations against Russia, according to a current official and two former officials briefed on the secret instructions. The move is apparently part of a broader effort to draw President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into talks on Ukraine and a new relationship with the United States.
Mr. Hegseth’s instructions, part of a larger re-evaluation of all operations against Russia, have not been publicly explained. But they were issued before President Trump’s public blowup in the Oval Office with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday.
The precise scope and duration of the Defense Department order is not clear, as the line between offensive and defensive cyberoperations is often a blurry one. Still, retaining access to major Russian networks for espionage purposes is critical to understanding Mr. Putin’s intentions as he enters negotiations, and to tracking the arguments within Russia about what conditions to insist upon and what could be given up.
Former officials said it was common for civilian leaders to order pauses in military operations during sensitive diplomatic negotiations, to avoid derailing them. Still, for President Trump and Mr. Hegseth, the retreat from offensive cyberoperations against Russian targets represents a huge gamble.
U.S. officials have said Russia has continued to try to penetrate U.S. networks, including in the first weeks of the Trump administration. But that is only part of a broader Russian campaign. Over the past year, ransomware attacks on American hospitals, infrastructure, and cities have ramped up, many emanating from Russia in what intelligence officials have said are largely criminal acts that have been sanctioned, or ignored, by Russian intelligence agencies.
Sabotage efforts in Europe – including suspected Russian attempts to cut communications cables, mysterious explosions and Russian-directed assassination plots – have accelerated in the past year. The United States has, until now, been central in helping European nations fight back, often in covert cyberoperations, but that cooperation could now be in jeopardy.
Many of those operations are run out of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters – the storied intelligence agency that broke the Enigma codes in World War II – and to some extent by Canada. It is possible they will continue that work, while the United States focuses on China, its most sophisticated adversary in cyberspace.
Russia also ran an aggressive influence campaign during the last presidential campaign, according to reports by U.S. intelligence agencies during the Biden administration. In recent election cycles, U.S. Cyber Command has conducted secret operations to hamper or curtail those influence efforts.
But the Trump administration has already begun to dismantle efforts by the F.B.I. and other agencies to warn about Russian propaganda, and the order by the Pentagon would halt, at least for now, any further Cyber Command efforts to interrupt future Russian influence campaigns.
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