Lawfare Daily: The Offensive Cyber Industry and U.S.-China Relations with Winnona Bernsen

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Winnona Bernsen, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and founder of DistrictCon, joins Lawfare Contributing Editor Justin Sherman to discuss her recently released report "Crash (Exploit) and Burn: Securing the Offensive Cyber Supply Chain to Counter China in Cyberspace." They discuss the offensive cyber industry, the private sector and individual players, and the government procurement pipelines in the United States and China. They also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each country’s offensive cyber procurement ecosystem, what it takes to sell an exploit, Winnona’s findings on the markups that middlemen add to exploit sales, and what it all means for the future of competition and cybersecurity.

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