Top Australian cybersecurity journalist cancels travel to US as Trump orders election conspiracy investigation

One of the world’s top cybersecurity podcasters has cancelled a trip to the United States over fears he might be detained, after the Trump administration launched a crusade against a former US government cyber chief for refusing to endorse 2020 election conspiracy theories. 

Australian Patrick Gray revealed his cancelled trip on his Risky Business podcast with Donald Trump’s former cybersecurity adviser Rob Joyce, who said the second Trump administration’s approach to cybersecurity was making “all of us less safe”.

Gray explained he had made the decision not to travel to the US in response to the treatment of former head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency Chris Krebs.

Krebs — who Trump fired by tweet in 2020 after the public servant affirmed that the 2020 election was secure — was one of the subjects of an unprecedented executive order signed by the US president last week, which stripped his security clearance and directed the government’s justice department to investigate him. 

Today, Krebs stood down from SentinelOne, writing that “this is my fight, not the company’s”.

Krebs co-hosts a show with Gray on the Australian’s cybersecurity podcast network, which is also sponsored by SentinelOne. 

Gray told his audience that he was already apprehensive about visiting the US in a few weeks before last week’s executive order, given reports of how Australians had been “hassled a lot at the border” and the suspicion towards people who used temporary, secondary “burner” devices. 

“I would have been travelling on a foreign media visa. And if there’s one thing that this group of people hates more than foreigners, it’s a journalist,” he said.  

Gray said the fact that he was scheduled to host a live podcast event with Krebs and the threat of a possible investigation meant that he didn’t feel like he could travel to the US anymore.

“Chris and I were in contact through his time in government. If they are going to try and come up with some sort of charge that he was behaving inappropriately with journalists, the last thing I want is to be held in the United States as a material witness to some sort of grand jury investigation,” he said.

“[The Trump administration] intimated that they wanted to see if he improperly disclosed classified information which, for the record, is an absolutely ridiculous idea to anyone who knows Chris or has dealt with him.”

“I think the chance of me being thrown into ICE detention in connection with what’s happening to Chris is extremely low, but it’s not zero, and that’s why I cancelled,” Gray told Crikey.

Gray also shared that he had voluntarily pulled an episode at SentinelOne’s request speaking with Krebs about the Trump administration’s cybersecurity policy that had been recorded before the executive order was announced.

Joyce, who was guest co-hosting the episode on which Gray announced his decision to cancel his US trip, concurred with Gray’s pessimism.

“I don’t know where it goes but you know that this clash really blurs politics and cybersecurity. So that, to me, makes all of us less safe,” he said.

Gray is one of the few people in the cybersecurity industry who has spoken out publicly about the Trump administration’s treatment of Krebs. Reuters reported that it had contacted 33 cybersecurity firms about the pressure on Krebs, all of which either declined to comment or didn’t respond. 

Outside of the treatment of Krebs, the Trump administration’s decisions on cybersecurity have caused alarm among commentators. In the past few months, significant layoffs of government security staff have been rumoured and carried out, agencies have been ordered to stop efforts to combat cyberattacks and disinformation, and the funding for a crucial industry resource has been pulled, all before a last minute pullback.

Gray said he’s unclear of the future of his podcast series with Krebs. 

“I don’t know what the future is going to look like. I hope we get to continue it but I don’t know,” he said.