Science Friday - T. Rex Dispute, Texas Trans Healthcare, Russian Cyber Warfare, Bird Calls. March 4, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

The Tyrannosaurus Rex Is Having An Identity Crisis There are few creatures, present or extinct, that hold the iconic status of the Tyrannosaurus rex. In museums and dinosaur media, this powerful, lumbering reptile often plays a starring role. But new research argues that the T. rex should really be classified into three separate species: Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina. This paper has been met with a wide range of reactions: some paleontologists have said this discovery could shake our understanding of dinosaur classifications, and could cause a headache for museums. Other experts say the paper is a load of bologna. In other science news, a new strain of coronavirus was discovered in Canadian deer. This finding could shed more light on how the virus mutates and jumps between animals and people. Joining Ira to talk about these topics and other news of the week is Sabrina Imbler, science reporting fellow for The New York Times.   Once Again, Transgender And Nonbinary Kids Are Under Attack In Texas Pilar Hernandez was hoping the nightmare for her family was over. For months last year, transgender advocates in Texas fought a group of bills in the Legislature seeking to ban transition care by arresting parents and delicensing doctors who provide transition care to children. Several of those bills died, but the ordeal scared Hernandez, the mother of a 17-year-old transgender boy in Houston. Last week, those fears resurfaced: Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion that defined providing access to certain gender-affirming treatment as child abuse, leaving some parents worried about the safety of their families and some advocates concerned about the well-being of trans kids in Texas. “I had this fantasy that this year we’ll be able to at least rest a little,” Hernandez said while fighting back tears. “I think we all have post traumatic stress syndrome from last year, so this brings everything back.” The AG’s definition is opposed by major medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society and the American Medical Association, which say these treatments are within the standards of care and often lifesaving. Read more at sciencefriday.com.   What’s The Role Of Cyber Warfare In Russia’s War With Ukraine? When Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago, some experts predicted full-scale cyber warfare. It hasn’t happened—at least not yet. Russia did launch a few small cyber attacks against Ukraine, including malware which would have wiped Ukrainian government and bank data. It was thwarted. Banks in the United States are now beefing up their security in anticipation of potential Russian cyber attacks in retaliation to the recently imposed sanctions. But how worried should we be about a global cyber war? Jason Healey, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, based in New York City, joins Ira to discuss the intricacies of Russian cyber warfare.   The World According to Sound: Antiphonal Duets Some birds, especially those in the tropics, sing what are known as “antiphonal duets.” These are duets where there is a rapid alternation of notes sung by each bird. Sometimes there is just a gap of a few milliseconds between the part sung by each bird. The tight-knit duets help mating birds locate each other. The World of Sound team took the duets of several pairs of wrens recorded by Dr. Nigel Mann and separated the parts of the two birds. By separating the vocalizations of each bird, you can hear how perfectly the two parts fit together. At the end of the piece you hear a bird whose mating call never gets answered. It’s a Kaua‘i ‘ō ‘ō bird that was recorded in 1984 by James Jacobi. It was one of the last recordings made of an ō ‘ō bird. The species is now extinct.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll talk about child abuse charges for aiding transgender children in Texas, and how worried should we be about cyber warfare from Russia? But first, paleontologists are choosing sides around our much-loved Tyrannosaurus rex. Now, it all starts with a study published in the paper Evolutionary Biology, arguing that the creature we currently call T-Rex should actually be split into three distinct species. And as you might expect, this has led to controversy among those who study these extinct beasts. Joining me today to talk about this story and other critter-heavy science news of this week is my guest, Sabrina Imbler,

science reporting fellow for the New York Times based in New York. Welcome back, Sabrina. Thank you so much for having me, Ira. So tell us about this T-Emmler. Rex study. Yeah, it's been a splashy week for dinosaurs. So three researchers have a new paper, basically arguing that T-Rex should be split into three species, which they've named Tyrannosaurus rex, tyrannosaurus imperator, which means the emperor, and Tyrannosaurus Regina, which means the queen. And as Asher Albine reports for the New York Times, they say that the bulky Tyrannosaurus

imperator was the first to show up. And then the species split, you know, after one or two million years into Tyrannosaurus rex and the more slender Tyrannosaurus Regina. So they must be offering evidence, right, for these different species? I would say, you know, evidence is divisive, but their argument is basically that they gathered measurements from 38 T. rex fossils. And they basically compared the proportions of the anatomy of the femur and also looked to see if the fossils had two sets of front teeth in their lower jaws. and they say that they found that many of those fossils could be grouped into three types. You know, this early, robust form with two sets of these front teeth, and then two forms later on with only one set of these front teeth.

And they argue that this reveals wider variation between T-Rex fossils than variation among fossils of other dinosaurs believed to be a single species, such as allosaurus. So what's the pushback? There's got to be opposition to this, right? Definitely. There is a lot of opposition. I think one, paleontas. Scientologist called the evidence vanishingly weak, which is a bit of a dig. Yeah. But they say, you know, a major problem with the new study is that it doesn't show three clearly distinct and separated types of femurs, but rather sort of a blurry overlapping spectrum of variation.

And they also say that these three proposed species don't match all existing anatomical data on T-Rex. And, I mean, I think their main concern is just that the evidence needs to be much stronger to change the way that we think about this incredible. iconic dinosaur. I think one researcher said, if you shoot for the king, don't miss. And this must be driving museums, right, with exhibits crazy. I mean, if it held up, they would have a lot of relabeling to do. And, you know, the public would also be confused of something as iconic and well-researched as T-Rex is actually three species.

You know, what else could be questioned? Like, what else could be overturned? Sabrina, how likely is it that these three different species will actually, catch on? So with just this paper, it seems pretty unlikely. Other paleontologists say that, you know, three species could be plausible, but they're going to need much more robust analysis and an examination of even more specimens. So, you know, Tyrannis, Regina and Tyrannosaurus and Peritur are still very much a thing of the future. Okay, let's move on to a little bit of COVID news about human to animal transmissions. And it looks like a new venison version of COVID is here. What is that? all about? So Emily Anthis has a story for the New York Times about how COVID appears to be mutating

in white-tailed deer. And last fall, scientists learned that the coronavirus was spreading wildly through white-tailed deer, which are free-ranging throughout most of North America. And they feared the deer could be a reservoir for the virus, meaning the virus would be able to sustain itself in the population without more reintroductions by people. You know, the more hosts, the more opportunities the virus has to evolve into a new version and potentially spill back. to us. And now, that seems to have happened with scientists in southwestern Ontario describing a highly mutated version of the coronavirus that seems to have originated in these deer and even infected a human. So I've got these deer in my backyard. How worried should I be? Luckily,

not that worried. But I would say don't, you know, don't feed the deer, don't lick the deer. Scientists say there's no evidence that this deer version of the coronavirus is spreading through people or poses an elevated risk to us. And early data suggests that, you know, our existing vaccines will also protect us against this venison version of the virus. Your next story is a combination of words I don't think I've ever said before. Aboloni gonads. What's the story here? So Wu Dan Yan has this story for the New York Times about white abalone, which are endangered. So scientists want to help them bounce back, which, you know, often involves helping them reproduce in a lab. But unlike animals, you know, like a cat that give clear cues about when they're ready to reproduce, abalone don't send

those cues. You know, the best way to look scientists think is to examine the size of their gonad or reproductive organ. Aboloni can have flaccid or swollen gonads, and scientists suspect that the bigger the bulge, the more likely the abalone might be to spawn. But, you know, it's tricky just by looking at an abalone that's, you know, you can't always tell the difference between an abalone that's in the mood and an abalone that just had a really big meal. But if you give an abalone an ultrasound, you can take a really good look at the bulge. Huh. And just to remind us, an abalone is like a fancy snail, right? Exactly. It's a fancy snail that lives in the sea. And, you know, on the outside, their shells look like brownish ovals, but on the inside, they're very

iridescent and beautiful. And so why is it so important to restore their populations? So on parts of the West Coast, abalone are crucial members of the ecosystem. You know, they're an important food source for carnivores like sea otters, and sea otters eat, you know, the urchins that are destroying kelp forests. And abalone are also a traditional food of coastal tribes. But, you know, white abalone, the ones that are being ultrasounded, have never fully recovered after their population was depleted in the 1970s. So that's what they do. They ultrasound the abalone to see what their state is? Yeah, they just pass the probe along the soft body of the snail, and then they can sort of see how the gonad looks. And they're ranking it

on a scale of one to five based on the bigness of the bulge. Okay. From avaloney to insects, I've noticed that there is a new name in town for an old menace now being called the spongy moth. Tell us about this name change. So the moth, formerly, known as the gypsy moth was finally given a new common name, as its former name is a slur against the Romani people. And it's now called the spongy moth. And it's the first species to be renamed by the Better Common Names Project, which is basically planning on surveying insects with names that are harmful or offensive and rename them. The old name was actually first removed in July, but a group of entomologists, researchers, and people who identify as Roma have been

meeting for months to deliberate possible new names before settling on the spongy moth. I can remember once there were huge attacks of spongy moths and trees. We used to see them in trees hanging down. They were really a big menace. An enormous menace. Did you grow up in like I guess the northeastern United States? Yes. Yes. And we would see them on. It was just amazing. And there would be lookouts for them and people being warned about them back when they used to have giant infestations of them. Yeah, I mean, as a caterpillar, the spongy moth can strip a tree or shrub of almost all of its leaves. And the animal actually spends most of its life in the egg stage, which is how it gets the name spongy moth, because their egg masses look like sponges.

Did you ever see those growing up? Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, I never thought of them as, yeah, not that I think about it, sure. But I'm glad that they're not as bad, a menace. I don't see them around as much, but they're still there. They're definitely still a menace. But yeah, more controlled. And there must be other bugs on the list to have their names change too, right?

Yeah, so there are no species that are currently selected to be next. But potential candidates could be species named after geographical places. And that might sound mundane, but, you know, if you associate an invasive species with a particular region, that can be really harmful. For example, if you think about the Japanese beetle, which is an invasive species and often talked about with the language of removal or eradication, you know, that can feel really. xenophobic and offensive. Yeah, the same thing would happen, would be happening with the spongy moth. Absolutely. We've seen a lot of these beetles around eating rose bushes, too. That's another story. Let's end with one more buggy story that you wrote about in the New York Times about how insect waste could be a sustainable companion to farming. Tell us about that. So insects produce a lot of waste just by

living, you know, just like us, they poop. But unlike us, they also molt and share. a series of exoskeletons over the course of their lives. And a group of scientists is basically arguing that all this insect waste can really enrich crop soil and promote plant growth and health. And they say that all this waste should be incorporated into a sustainable food system where we collect the insect poop and old exoskeletons from farmed insects, mix that into crop soil, and then feed those insects organic waste from the crops. What specific insects are we talking about here? We're talking about mealworms, black soldier fly larvae and crickets. They're all very tiny, and so, you know, they're poop. They're really tiny pellets. But if you're farming insects on an industrial scale, all that poop really adds up to a lot of pounds and a really significant resource. Can we expect this to catch on here?

The scientists hope. I guess I also, I'll all hitch my wagon to farming insects. It's a growing industry in the U.S. and Europe, you know, because insects are much cheap. and more sustainable to farm than livestock such as cows or pigs. They need less land and water for production, and they produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions. And they also offer a lot of protein if you don't mind the crunch. You know what? We already farm for fertilizer are worms, worm castings. And then they're considered to be one of the richest source of fertilizers. They call black gold. Oh, wow. Do you use that in your plants? Yes. Yes. You can actually buy them online or in a store in a nursery, a big bag of worm castings, and they say just mix it in with your own soil,

and you're good to go, or make your soil a good home for the worms to live in. That's why these worms are so, you know, earthworms, and other worms that you see are so important to have in your soil. That's incredible. My little lesson for today. Thank you very much, Sabrina, for taking time to be with us today. Thank you for having me, Ira.

Sabrina Imbler, Science Reporting Fellow for the New York Times based in New York City. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll talk about how gender affirming care for trans and non-binary kids can be lifesaving and how recent actions by Texas politicians go against the science. We know that mental illness has a major impact in the lifespan and in people's productivity, in their happiness, in their adjustment, in their ability to participate fully in society. So why would we do anything to endanger that future for these children?

Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERN. For W.WIS Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance.

Transgender and non-binary kids and teens across the country face difficult challenges. Many face stigma and discrimination for their gender identities made worse when their families or communities are not supportive. Last week in Texas, things got even harder for these kids and their families. Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton said that gender affirming medical care for trans and non-binary kids should be considered child abuse under Texas law. Governor Abbott called on citizens to report parents of trans kids to the State's Department of Family and Protective Services. The pushback against this order from families and those who work with trans and non-binary kids has been swift.

To help us understand what's going on is a reporter who's been covering this issue, Sarah Willa Ernst Health Reporter for a Houston Public Media based, of course, in Houston, Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Okay, let's go right into this. What exactly does this order mean? So I think it's important to note that it's not an executive order. It's a directive from Governor Abbott to the Child Protective Services,

essentially saying that the agency should begin investigating families of trans children, who might have access to transgender health care. So that can mean going on puberty blockers or hormone therapy like testosterone or estrogen or undergoing gender-affirming surgery like a breast reduction. The governor is not referencing a specific law in this letter. Rather, he's pointing to a non-binding opinion that Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote, and this is based off of Paxton's legal interpretation of existing child abuse laws. And according to that interpretation,

includes gender affirming care. So a lot of people, you know, they're looking to the commissioner of the Department of Family Protective Services to see what she would do. And it looks like some investigations are already underway. It's interesting because just to clarify, as you say, it's not a law. It's odd legal territory. Yeah, it's not a law. And that's really not without trying. During last year's legislative session, there were several bills that tried to codify into law this interpretation of child abuse. Those bills, they made it pretty far out of the Senate and House committees, but they ultimately did fail. So right now, the AG and the governor are trying to take a different legal tactic to essentially accomplish the same thing without passing an official law. Does this mandatory reporting mean teachers are in a tough position now?

So in the letter that Governor Abbott wrote to Child Protective Services, it calls on licensed professionals. So specifically doctors, mental health specialists, and teachers. teachers to report transgender students to the state. That's because these professions that work with kids, they're traditionally mandatory reporters of abuse. If they witness a child being abused, they have to report it or they face losing their license or even criminal penalties. So this has put a lot of teachers in a tough spot, kind of halfway between their duty as a teacher to take care of their students, but also their livelihood and their profession. And what's the pushback in Texas looking like now?

a lot of district attorneys and local county attorneys have come out to oppose the opinion and this directive. Some of them have said, hey, if there are cases that come across our table, we are not going to prosecute them. There also has been a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal and the ACLU against Governor Abbott and the Commissioner of Child Protective Services. And actually on Wednesday, a state judge temporarily blocked one ongoing investigation into a family with a trans child. But, you know, that's just one case. Whether that is going to apply to all cases in the state,

that's something that a judge will consider next Friday on March 11th. Interesting. And what have the families of trans kids been saying? There has definitely been a lot of fear in the trans community right now. From the family of trans children that I've talked to, people are really trying to figure out what this directive means and whether they're going to be targets of that directive. I was talking to one 17-year-old transgender boy named Alexander that lives in Houston,

and he's afraid that a lot of people are going to kind of hide further into the shadows because of this public controversy. To be threatened with legal action and allegations of child abuse is very, very frightening. I'm also very worried for all of my trans friends. A lot of us deal with really bad depression and anxiety, and it gets significantly worsened with news like this. I also had the chance to talk to his mom, Pilar Hernandez, and they have been considering their options over the last year,

whether they should move out of state or not. It is our home. We shouldn't be able to, you know, escape. We live in a democracy. We live in a place where civil rights are supposed to mean something. Very, very intense statements from both of them. And what comes next? What do you expect to happen?

I think we're really going to look at what happens in this lawsuit and whether or not the judge is going to rule that all investigations should halt right now in the state. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for having me. Sarah Willa Ernst, health reporter for a Houston public media based in Houston, Texas. While politicians in Texas are painting gender-affirming therapy for kids as abusive, the science behind this health care says the very opposite. A recent study in Seattle found that puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone therapy

significantly decreased mental health issues in the youth who received this care. Folks on the ground in Texas who worked directly with trans and non-binary youth, say that's exactly what they have seen. Joining me now are my guests. Diana Tordoff, PhD candidate and researcher at the University of Washington based in Seattle. She's the lead author of that study. And Brenda Risch, licensed clinical social worker and executive director of the Borderland Rainbow Center based in El Paso, Texas. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having us. You're welcome. Diana, can you walk me through what you found,

in this study about trans and non-binary kids and teens? Absolutely. Thank you for having us here today. Our study was conducted at Seattle Children's Hospital's Gender Clinic. And our goal was to prospectively follow youth during their first year of receiving care to better understand their experiences, their well-being, as well as barriers they faced in accessing care. So we enrolled 104 trans youth who are aged 13 to 20, and we found that youth who received puberty blockers or gender reforming hormones were 60% less likely to be depressed and 73 less likely to have suicidal thoughts compared to youth who did not receive these medications.

That's a huge difference. It's huge. 60 to 73%. Diana, we have talked about gender affirming health care on this show before, but can you give our listeners a little refresher about what that actually means? That's another great question. So gender affirming care is a broad term that describes. care provided by health care professionals who are affirming of trans people's gender and are trained

to provide competent and inclusive health care services. So that means gender affirming care includes primary care, preventative care, mental health care that's delivered by affirming providers. Gender affirming care can also include a wide range of medical interventions such as hormones and puberty blockers, menstrual suppression, and surgeries. And major medical associations support gender-affirming care, right? Absolutely. These medications are both safe and their use in adolescents is supported by a large number of medical and professional societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association. Brenda, this study was based in Seattle, but does what Diana found make sense to you based on your experience with young Texans?

Yes, it does, totally. You know, we've worked with transgender youth between ages five and, and 18 and then transgender adults of all ages for over five years. And these findings are not a surprise to us at all, that what we see clinically echoes exactly what Diana found in her research. And I also wanted to say that all the major psychological associations and mental health providers associations also endorse gender affirming care for transgender youth. So not just the medical providers, but our mental health providers as well. And you with Borderline, Land Rainbow Center, you help provide the non-medical care also. That's correct. We provide mental health counseling therapy, peer support, and then also

casework and referral to medical providers. So we work closely with a pediatric endocrinologist here and several other medical providers to make sure that children have access to the medical side as well as the behavioral health side. I want to play a clip. for you. We talked to Thomas Owlesley, a staff therapist and coordinator at the Montrose Center in Houston. He works directly with trans and non-binary kids and teens. And this is what he said about this order, how it's affecting things. We've already seen some kids that are coming in asking questions and fearful about, like, does this mean that if I seek out gender affirming medical care, that my parents are going to get labeled as a child abuser.

Am I going to get in trouble? Like, am I going to get taken away from my parents because of this? Brenda, is this similar to what you've been hearing from the youths you work with? Absolutely. We've heard this not only from the kiddos that we're working with, but also from panicked parents and also very concerned providers and teachers. So we've had many calls from the public as well as our clients, you know, asking, does this mean that we have to report people to see people?

P.S. So there's been a lot of concern and anger and fear and confusion about this. We've had families make emergency plans to move to other states when possible. We've had people talking to medical providers about how to continue care if the governor tries to attack the provision of these medical interventions because as many may note, these are sometimes not interventions that can just be halted, right? Like, sometimes they need a supervision for entering or exiting these processes. So there's been a lot of concern, a lot of fear, and a lot of hopelessness, overwhelming children. Is there enough fear in the providers who might be tempted to stop giving this kind of care? I feel that there are some providers who are now potentially afraid. We are not at the Borderland Rainbow Center.

been one of the leaders in helping to create a public response to this situation because, unfortunately, although the governor may think he does have the power to change the law, he doesn't unilaterally have that power. And so the definition of child abuse is the same in Texas as it's always been. And so, you know, people should not be reporting children. And therefore, we've been telling everyone and we've been working with our county attorney and other legal counsel to spread the word to major agencies and to school districts. You all may be aware that school districts are the number one source of child protective service reports.

And so we really need for teachers and administrators to be clear about how to respond to this, that they should not make reports. Diana, while the governor and the AG in Texas are saying, giving kids gender affirming care is child abuse, your research has shown just the opposite, correct? In fact, it seems like depriving the kids of this care could be considered abuse. Yeah, that's true. In our same study, we saw that depression and suicidality significantly increased among youth who didn't start these medications within the first three to six months of starting care. So our study also suggests that delays in prescribing

these puberty blockers and hormones may in fact worsen mental health symptoms for trans youth. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Brenda, I know that Al Paso has resources for these kids, but I would imagine that's not the case for elsewhere in Texas. I mean, are rural Texas kids more vulnerable to this order and the repercussions? Yeah, I would say that they probably are, and partly because their providers may not be as educated, and they may not have the resources to get referrals and consultation about this. And in addition, rural youth are at higher risk because they don't have access to providers. So, you know, what my colleague's research is showing is that this kind of access can be such a crucial

support to a mentally healthy child, right? Like, we need family acceptance, we need access to medical care, we need access to therapy and peer support services. And that should be available for everyone. So, you know, when a family has financial barriers, when they have transportation barriers, when they have access barriers due to location, those are all problems that I think my colleagues research shows, you know, the risks go up. And now we know that this is a political year in Texas. The governor is running free election.

The primaries were this week. Do you feel there is a bunch of politics possibly going on here, Brenda? I do feel that there's politics going on. You know, I think that if it weren't politically motivated, then why now? You know, it's not the first time that Texas has looked at transgender children as somehow problematic, even though I think that that's a very misguided and unfortunate way of perceiving this population. I also wonder, you know, I know that the GOP has traditionally been a party that urges fiscal responsibility and conservation and efficiency. So I'm not sure why they would want people to make false reports to child protective services, because that seems like it would generate extra work and clog the system and, you know, kind of prevent children who really are

in danger from getting the help they need. So it doesn't make a lot of logical sense to me. And so it makes me wonder that there must be a political agenda behind this that isn't about the actual, like, fiscal policies that the party that the governor represents is known for. Dana, I know you worked on this study before this order came down in Texas, but it's clearly very relevant. Give me the big takeaway you want to leave our listeners with. Yeah, if I leave our listeners with one thing today, it's that our study just adds to an existing robust evidence-based that gender affirming care is critical for the well-being of trans people, including trans youth. And our body of research also runs parallel to another important body of research that Brenda talked about,

which is that social support, especially from the families, is so critically important for these young people. And the efforts that Texas is pursuing right now is actually criminalizing these two things that we know are super important for trans youth and their well-being. And Brenda, your takeaway. You know, transgender children are wonderful people and they do not deserve to be targeted in this way. I believe that free and equal access to medical care, psychological care, and peer support, and supports for families in these processes of dealing with transgender identities is crucial. It's, in fact, I think, a human right, and it should not be interfered with by the government. I believe that the government should be encouraging people to pursue health care that will improve

their mental health. We know that mental illness has a major impact in the lifespan and in people's productivity and their happiness and their adjustment and their ability to participate fully in society. So why would we do anything to endanger that future for these children? Why not support them? I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today and talking about this very important issue. Dan Tordoff, Ph.D. Candidateate and researcher at the University of Washington based in Seattle. She's the lead author on the study we talked about. Brenda Risch, licensed clinical Social Worker, Executive Director of the Borderland Rainbow Center based in El Paso, Texas.

Once again, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the seeming lack of cyber warfare in the Russia-Ukraine war. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

When Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago, some experts predicted full-scale cyber warfare. Well, it hasn't happened at least. Not yet. Russia did launch a few small cyber attacks against Ukraine, including malware, which would have wiped Ukrainian government and bank data, but it was thwarted. And now U.S. banks are beefing up their security in anticipation of potential Russian cyber attacks and retaliation to their recently imposed sanctions. So how worried should we be about a global cyber war? Is there more to come? Joining me now to help us better understand. understand the intricacies of Russian cyber warfare is Jason Healy, senior research scholar at Columbia

University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York City. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Nice to have you. Okay. Were you surprised that predictions of a full-scale cyber war have not yet materialized? I certainly was from the history of what Russia has done in the past and for as much time as they had to prepare, I think many, many of us were expecting a well-orchestrated onslaught, something that was just a ballet of online violence that was at least predominantly against Ukraine,

but also against the West to keep us off balance. And what we ended up was not really an orchestration of violence, but almost like a brawl and not even a very effective brawl at that. You had this mix of attacks that didn't seem to be particularly synchronized with anything. And frankly, not nearly as bad as we might have feared. If you would have had other of my colleagues on this show, they probably wouldn't have been surprised at all because they don't think cyber is really all that useful, and especially during wartime.

And so there is this large debate. Maybe they didn't use cyber because it's just not really that useful. Could it also be that they may not be as good at it as we give them credit for it? Absolutely. We had seen so much, Russia doing so much against Ukraine and others, even during peacetime, taking the electrical grid down in parts of Ukraine, twice during winter, disrupting the Seoul Olympic Games, going after a French TV station, taking it offline, and blaming that on, and trying to put the blame on Islamic State,

that it seemed a very straight line to imagine that they would be doing these things and find them to be militarily useful when they actually invade, right? Not just in relative peace time. Well, is it possible that Russia is deploying cyber attacks that we're just not aware of yet? I've been trying to go through and I've talked this over with my students and others yesterday, and we came up with perhaps 10 different reasons why we're not seeing this. And that's definitely one, that the attacks are happening and we're either not seeing them, we're successfully defending against them, or that they're happening and they're having impact, but they're not

getting as much reporting or as much notice because they're relatively small, given the scale of the invasion and the horror that we're seeing. And so I, I think there's definitely part of it there. So what types of cyber attacks have we seen Russia deploy since they invaded Ukraine? Anything? There's been a little bit that happened beforehand, such as denial of service attacks on Ukrainian government and other websites. As you had mentioned, there was this wiper worm that had come in or the wiper militia software, malware, that the Russians deployed to try and affect Ukraine.

It didn't seem like that did too much. And there's been a few others. There's been, for example, disruptions a couple of days ago to one of the border posts that was processing refugees out, a particularly mean-spirit attack. There's also been some disinformation that's been happening, but maybe not quite as much as we had, again, not quite as much as we'd been expecting. Yeah, let's talk about this WIPER malware that

you just mentioned. Now, it was actually Microsoft security team that detected it and then blunted the attack, correct? Correct, yes. And why are private companies on the front lines of monitoring and intervening those that attack us? When we use words like cyber war, right? Your listeners will be thinking, well, if it's war, then surely it's the governments that have to protect us because that's what governments do. But conflict in cyberspace has tended to be different because the governments don't really have the capabilities of the infrastructure to keep us safe in the same way they can from naval attack or from aerial bombardment or for invasion over the ground because they're not the ones that have built cyberspace that have put the infrastructure together. So I did this history book a couple of years

back. And in almost none of the major cyber conflicts had any government anywhere had a decisive role. It's the private sector that had the subject matter expertise, the agility, the ability to bend the internet, to bend cyberspace, right, to actually change the geography of it to stop attacks and to minimize conflict, as Microsoft did here. Cyber Command in the United States, which is the part of the Department of Defense that's most relevant here, is good at spying. They're good at shooting back. They're good at seeing what's happening and telling others. But they're not good at actually suppressing the attack in the way that Microsoft did. Do the Ukrainians have capabilities to mount their own cyber counteroffensive against Russia?

Cyber can sometimes seem easy, right? We see ransomware attacks and it turns out as just a bunch of teenagers that are doing these things. things. But if you want to try and have a sophisticated ability to stop attackers, to have a militarily relevant disruption at a certain place, a certain time for a certain duration, that kind of stuff takes a lot more intelligence, a lot more capabilities to not just pull that trick once, but to pull off that trick consistently. And so I suspect the Ukrainian defenders can do some of that. So I wouldn't want to sell the Ukrainian capability short, but they're going to have their hands full with so much in the way that I think the American teams, the British teams, would not. Interesting. I know that the Global Hacking Group Anonymous announced that they've gone to war against Russia. They've claimed responsibility for hacking into Russia State TV and the Ministry of Defense databases.

What do you make of that move? Could that help bolster Ukraine's cyber war? capabilities or degrade rushes? It is unlikely that such attacks are going to have any interesting national security impact. They're very easy to shrug off. However, there is the negative thing it might do. It might inflame the situation and cause some Russian hacking reaction back that might not have happened otherwise. But it's possible that it might just do something significant and relevant. For example, if they're really able to get some information on Putin's regime and share some information about how corrupt he is, or if they're able to work with leakers inside Russia that release military plans or information on massacres that Russia might want to keep secret.

There have been reports about Elon Musk sending Starlink terminals to Ukraine to create satellite internet service. If the landlines go down in Ukraine, how effective do you think this strategy might be? I think it's a fabulous start because it is possible that the Russians would try to shut down the internet in Ukraine. This is what they were successfully able to do with a much smaller country, Georgia, when they invaded in 2008. And one of my colleagues, Dmitra Perevich, really thought it might be, I thought the Russians were going to face two choices. Keep the Ukrainian internet open so that way you can flood them with disinformation and cyber attacks or try and shut the Ukrainian internet down so that they can't get out their message so that we don't see videos of atrocities so that the only message that we would hear about Ukraine would be the Russian message. And neither of those has really come to pass, but for, Unfortunately, having these Starlink terminals, having these other ways for Ukrainians to get out their message is, I think, very important. And so how will what we're seeing going on in Ukraine or not seeing going on in Ukraine, how will that change the future of cyber warfare, do you think?

You know, to you and me and most of the listeners are cyber conflict and cyber war pops up on our headlines, right? We only really pay attention to it when something bad has happened. And so it feels episodic. But what the U.S. strategy has said is it's not episodic. It's happening really all of the time. There's this constant contact between the cyber forces of the United States, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Brits, the French, the Israelis. And they're all in there in this pit and they're all grappling for advantage trying to spy on one other and stop what each other are doing. And so I can imagine that after Ukraine, well, even now with Ukraine, that, the U.S. cyber forces are out there now trying to figure out what the Russians are doing, even in Ukraine. They're trying to figure out what the Russian cyber teams might be planning against the West, such as in response to sanctions, and directly trying to stop them, to cause friction, to throw sand in the gears.

Can we anticipate retaliation against the recently imposed sanctions? One of the reasons why we've thought that cybertax in general haven't gotten so bad is because of what an academia we would say entanglement. Russia would never want to disrupt the Western economy because that's where they're parked their money. And so the more that we cut Russia out of the Western economy, the more that we are no longer dependent on Russian energy, the less blowback they would have to suffer if they disrupted. That's not a reason to keep them involved in the Western economy, but it does mean for those of us that are watching saying, boy, if we have decided we're not going to deal Putin in and let him play the game anymore, then he might just decide to flip the table and disrupt Western finance and banks to disrupt the electrical grid, to disrupt liquefied natural gas, to say, look, if you're going to make Muscovites suffer, then I'm going to make your people suffer to. So we can anticipate possibly retaliation. Yes, and the Washington, D.C. has been taking this very seriously at the White House, at Cyber Command, the United States military, as well as European capitals, to look what might be coming next from Russia. People are worried about their money in banks. You're speaking about banks.

Are U.S. banks sufficiently secure enough to prevent potential Russian hacks? And even the stock market, it's all run by, right? It's all run by software. Yeah, the banks have been worried about this kind of stuff since at least the mid-90s, if not before. Citibank got hit by a Russian hacker named Vladimir Levin for millions of dollars. And that led to real structural changes in the finance sector. They started to have chief information security officers.

A few years later, 1999, they set up an information sharing and analysis center, which I used to help run, to share information across all of the banks, to make sure that they were sharing information, to make sure they were looking at threats. And so since then, they've done nothing but continue to build their resilience for moments just like this. Now, what Russia might choose to throw at the bags could be significantly more than would ever seem. The Iranians tried this almost exactly 10 years ago, and so the backs are going to be looking back at that for lessons. But I think there are, going to find that the finance sector is very tough. Should individual citizens be worried about their cybersecurity? I'll say, Ira, we've got so much to worry about right now. I don't think

it's primarily a thing that people need to fret. That said, there are some really important things that you can do. For example, making sure your software is up to date. If your Apple, if your Microsoft, if your Chrome is saying, hey, you need to update me, please take care of that immediately. Put on your automatic update. Yes. And it might ask you to reboot the computer. Don't put that off. Putting it off right now would be a tremendous mistake. Also, if you've seen this thing, two-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication and you haven't quite understood it, now is the time to understand it and take care of it. Because that is one of the most important things that you can do to help keep yourself safe and make sure that no one's going to be taking over

your banking account or other important accounts of yours. All right. I think that's a great place to stop, and thank you for that hopeful note. Okay, thank you. Jason Healy, senior research scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs based in New York City. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Before we hit out the door this hour, how about a treat, a soundscape from the world according to sound podcast? And for this one, I highly encourage you to Wear your headphones.

Dr. Nigel Mann recorded these two Bay Wrens doing a little call-and-response. Here's the female, and here's the male. Now they're going to sing together. This is called an antithinal duet, except now we've separated their songs. These are actually two distinct birds. In 1984, James Jacoby recorded this kawai-O-Bird. It's a male calling for a female.

but he never gets a response. This bird was the last one of its kind. These sounds are part of a communal listening series. The World According to Sound is hosting this winter. For tickets to their 90-minute binoral events, visit The World According to Sound.org. Here's Christy Taylor with some of the folks who make this show happen. Anna Niro is our individual giving manager.

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