Tyler Cross
Published on: March 14, 2025
The EU is still figuring out how to respond to the US Trump administration’s decision to withhold cyber funds for Ukraine.
Last Wednesday, US administrators declared that they were cutting off support for Ukraine until President Zelenskyy was ready to negotiate with Donald Trump. The action had immediate backlash both from within the US and internationally. The EU, which supports the war efforts in Ukraine, was left reeling.
“Everybody is trying to figure out and make sense of what happened,” said Estonian ambassador Tanel Sepp. “We are going to have, within the EU, a cyber commanders and cyber ambassadors meeting under the Polish presidency, and there will be some other meetings coming.”
Sepp noted that there haven’t been any “substantial discussions” of how to move forward without US cybersecurity, but believes the right time will come. He explained that US companies are likely to feel the impact of Trump’s decision.
EU business partners will see the US as less trustworthy and purchase their cybersecurity tools from other countries. Estonia isn’t counting on a dime from America, and while there is no plan in place, their top officials are working on a solution.
“We will stay calm and carry on,” the ambassador said. “There is no point in reacting to every single piece of news that comes from D.C., but it’s confusing and it is sad to see that also these principled, allied values are kind of at stake here.”
The decision is one of several controversial cybersecurity-related actions taken by the Trump administration.
Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the U.S. Secret Service, confirmed to Politico that the Cyber Investigations Advisory Board has been completely disbanded, but refused to elaborate. Other US agencies like the Cyber Safety Review Board were also heavily impacted by Trump’s administration.
