“I don’t want to overstate or understate what American capabilities are, but the United States basically built and runs the internet, so we have a deep understanding of where traffic is going. No one should doubt that the United States has extraordinary capabilities.”

Former lawyer Taddeo began working at the FBI’s New York office in 1995, after fighting Russian organised crime and, later, international crime. During his tenure at the FBI, the internet flourished from a niche research technology to a global platform that plays a large role in shaping the geopolitical landscape.

In 2016 Russia was widely blamed for manipulating the electorate by using social media and creating fake news as well as taking part in various illegal hacking operations to swing the election for underdog candidate Donald Trump.

“We saw there was always cyber espionage but it sort of came out of the shadows in 2010,” Taddeo said.

“Going forward it started to come more and more out of the shadows. We always knew that there was a blending between the criminal organisations and the intelligence agencies that were using cyber espionage as a tool.

“But it really came to the forefront in the last five years; it’s hard to put a date on it because it’s always been happening.”

Russia’s increased “aggression” in this area follows allegations that the Government is directly employing hacking groups such as APT28 to do its dirty work while using companies such as the Internet Research Agency to create fake news targeted at foreign citizens.

Taddeo believes that the West will only see “more of that” as it’s a “cheap, effective tactic” that benefits political and business interests in Russia.

While the never-ending stream of revelations from the Mueller investigation may lead one to question Trump’s legitimacy, Taddeo said that his administration is clamping down hard on attempts by foreign powers to influence the democratic process. But while curtailing fake news and limiting the influence of foreign entities is important, it must be carried out without “impacts on the free flow of communications” and “the free flow of ideas”.

The Trump administration is “using the levers that they have available” to create a deterrent for Russia and have done more than the previous administration under President Barack Obama, he said.

“Changing Russia’s behaviour in this area is not going to be a matter of a couple of administrative changes. This is a long-term issue. They have ramped up the US response to this but no one can say it’s enough because the Russians are still active.”

Indeed its activity has not slowed down thus far, with evidence that attempts were made to throw a spanner into the works of the US mid-term elections that took place in November.

There’s a wealth of evidence that Russia continues to conduct these operations, Taddeo added, but whether they’re fully sanctioned by the Russian government or partly sanctioned with some tacit approval from the Putin administration “is yet to be fully fleshed out”.

“I think whether or not it changed votes or changed the way people think is almost impossible to measure, but the activity is there.”

However, Russia isn’t the only foreign power that has been accused of using technology to conduct hostile activities.

Taddeo is particularly concerned about reports that the Chinese have been using “super micro” chips that effectively allow them to eavesdrop on data passing in and out of large server farms.

In October a Bloomberg report alleged that such chips had been discovered in servers used by Amazon, Apple and the US Government. Although the veracity of these reports was later questioned, Taddeo believes the technology is a very real threat.

China is the largest electronics manufacturer globally, with a strong grip on the supply chain. This makes it difficult for Western companies to produce competitive products in “aligned” countries where the threat of electronic espionage is minimal.

“Right now it’s possible to configure a network with equipment that’s made entirely in trustworthy, allied countries, but it’s just super expensive,” Taddeo said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to buy a hardened server and pay ten times more for it just because the chips were made in the United States or sourced in a way that can be verified.

“But more and more applications are becoming very sensitive and I think we’re going to see the market respond to that. The cost of supply chain security is going to come down because more and more enterprises are going to demand it.”

He said the West should be particularly wary of Huawei, the Chinese electronics and infrastructure vendor that has gone from strength to strength in recent years, seemingly from humble beginnings.

The company has been embroiled in numerous scandals over the years due to its lax attitude to the use of intellectual property rights and possible violations of economic sanctions imposed on countries such as Iran and North Korea.

But of particular concern is the links the firm has to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: founder Ren Zhengfei began his career serving as a military engineer in the early 1980s.

It’s absolutely “essential” that the West maintains a “healthy scepticism” of Huawei and other Chinese commercial enterprises, Taddeo said. “These are not commercial enterprises; these are state-owned enterprises.”

He recalled a congressional report into Huawei in 2012 that found that the Chinese could not explain how the company “went from being an individual human being with zero contracts to being a multibillion dollar enterprise without government assistance”.

“They simply could not explain how that happened,” Taddeo said.  “They refused to reveal how Huawei was run and how it was connected to the Chinese military conflicts. As a result of that lack of transparency, suspicion built.”

“There is evidence that Huawei has created switches and routers that do things that they shouldn’t do, including calling back to IP addresses in China.”

Taddeo also believes China is building its infrastructure so that it can ultimately be “siloed” from the rest of the world. This could lead to the creation of two separate internets that are for all intents and purposes cut off from one another.

“You’ll have a western aligned camp and you’ll have others. Those two systems aren’t really a homogenous global structure. One will favour one particular region and one particular geographical alignment and the other may be more towards China.

“There are physical components to the internet that operates in China that are fundamentally different than the components that US citizens interact with.”

Even in Europe the recently introduced GDPR is causing some level of division in the West, he said.

“The eurozone has created a separate system for protecting data for a major economic sector within the global economy.

“We have our own privacy and data protection rules so we’re already seeing it in the privacy and protection realm.”

All these issues paint a bleak picture of the internet’s future, with the West seeing increasingly “more sophisticated, more subtle, covert supply chain attacks” Taddeo said. “I don’t think anybody could argue that we’re not seeing more segmentation.”

“I don’t want to overstate or understate what American capabilities are, but the United States basically built and runs the internet, so we have a deep understanding of where traffic is going. No one should doubt that the United States has extraordinary capabilities.”

Former lawyer Taddeo began working at the FBI’s New York office in 1995, after fighting Russian organised crime and, later, international crime. During his tenure at the FBI, the internet flourished from a niche research technology to a global platform that plays a large role in shaping the geopolitical landscape.

In 2016 Russia was widely blamed for manipulating the electorate by using social media and creating fake news as well as taking part in various illegal hacking operations to swing the election for underdog candidate Donald Trump.

“We saw there was always cyber espionage but it sort of came out of the shadows in 2010,” Taddeo said.

“Going forward it started to come more and more out of the shadows. We always knew that there was a blending between the criminal organisations and the intelligence agencies that were using cyber espionage as a tool.

“But it really came to the forefront in the last five years; it’s hard to put a date on it because it’s always been happening.”

Russia’s increased “aggression” in this area follows allegations that the Government is directly employing hacking groups such as APT28 to do its dirty work while using companies such as the Internet Research Agency to create fake news targeted at foreign citizens.

Taddeo believes that the West will only see “more of that” as it’s a “cheap, effective tactic” that benefits political and business interests in Russia.

While the never-ending stream of revelations from the Mueller investigation may lead one to question Trump’s legitimacy, Taddeo said that his administration is clamping down hard on attempts by foreign powers to influence the democratic process. But while curtailing fake news and limiting the influence of foreign entities is important, it must be carried out without “impacts on the free flow of communications” and “the free flow of ideas”.

The Trump administration is “using the levers that they have available” to create a deterrent for Russia and have done more than the previous administration under President Barack Obama, he said.

“Changing Russia’s behaviour in this area is not going to be a matter of a couple of administrative changes. This is a long-term issue. They have ramped up the US response to this but no one can say it’s enough because the Russians are still active.”

Indeed its activity has not slowed down thus far, with evidence that attempts were made to throw a spanner into the works of the US mid-term elections that took place in November.

There’s a wealth of evidence that Russia continues to conduct these operations, Taddeo added, but whether they’re fully sanctioned by the Russian government or partly sanctioned with some tacit approval from the Putin administration “is yet to be fully fleshed out”.

“I think whether or not it changed votes or changed the way people think is almost impossible to measure, but the activity is there.”

However, Russia isn’t the only foreign power that has been accused of using technology to conduct hostile activities.

Taddeo is particularly concerned about reports that the Chinese have been using “super micro” chips that effectively allow them to eavesdrop on data passing in and out of large server farms.

In October a Bloomberg report alleged that such chips had been discovered in servers used by Amazon, Apple and the US Government. Although the veracity of these reports was later questioned, Taddeo believes the technology is a very real threat.

China is the largest electronics manufacturer globally, with a strong grip on the supply chain. This makes it difficult for Western companies to produce competitive products in “aligned” countries where the threat of electronic espionage is minimal.

“Right now it’s possible to configure a network with equipment that’s made entirely in trustworthy, allied countries, but it’s just super expensive,” Taddeo said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to buy a hardened server and pay ten times more for it just because the chips were made in the United States or sourced in a way that can be verified.

“But more and more applications are becoming very sensitive and I think we’re going to see the market respond to that. The cost of supply chain security is going to come down because more and more enterprises are going to demand it.”

He said the West should be particularly wary of Huawei, the Chinese electronics and infrastructure vendor that has gone from strength to strength in recent years, seemingly from humble beginnings.

The company has been embroiled in numerous scandals over the years due to its lax attitude to the use of intellectual property rights and possible violations of economic sanctions imposed on countries such as Iran and North Korea.

But of particular concern is the links the firm has to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: founder Ren Zhengfei began his career serving as a military engineer in the early 1980s.

It’s absolutely “essential” that the West maintains a “healthy scepticism” of Huawei and other Chinese commercial enterprises, Taddeo said. “These are not commercial enterprises; these are state-owned enterprises.”

He recalled a congressional report into Huawei in 2012 that found that the Chinese could not explain how the company “went from being an individual human being with zero contracts to being a multibillion dollar enterprise without government assistance”.

“They simply could not explain how that happened,” Taddeo said.  “They refused to reveal how Huawei was run and how it was connected to the Chinese military conflicts. As a result of that lack of transparency, suspicion built.”

“There is evidence that Huawei has created switches and routers that do things that they shouldn’t do, including calling back to IP addresses in China.”

Taddeo also believes China is building its infrastructure so that it can ultimately be “siloed” from the rest of the world. This could lead to the creation of two separate internets that are for all intents and purposes cut off from one another.

“You’ll have a western aligned camp and you’ll have others. Those two systems aren’t really a homogenous global structure. One will favour one particular region and one particular geographical alignment and the other may be more towards China.

“There are physical components to the internet that operates in China that are fundamentally different than the components that US citizens interact with.”

Even in Europe the recently introduced GDPR is causing some level of division in the West, he said.

“The eurozone has created a separate system for protecting data for a major economic sector within the global economy.

“We have our own privacy and data protection rules so we’re already seeing it in the privacy and protection realm.”

All these issues paint a bleak picture of the internet’s future, with the West seeing increasingly “more sophisticated, more subtle, covert supply chain attacks” Taddeo said. “I don’t think anybody could argue that we’re not seeing more segmentation.”