I sincerely doubt that a country could pull out a stuxnet with a couple $100,000 0day and a hundreds of people with computer science diplomas. There's a reason stuxnet was almost instantly pinned on the US and that reason is that apart from maybe China and Russia (who seem to have fun hacking the US and not getting caught or exposed) no other country can match the US.
No one is making that case
This is bizarre to witness.
It's amost like as an American you need to be safe in the perception that the US is #1 always, even in truly terrible things.
No, but doing anything with the data, and being able to get away with doing it, is.
https://qz.com/954265/russian-hacker-pyotr-levashov-arrested...
It's not about being extradited. It's about your country being bombed, economically pressured, embargoed, messed with diplomatically, through your neighbors given preferential treatment and arms, etc.
The kind of not getting away with it I mean involves the impact of the world's #1 military and economy fucking your country over in retribution.
It's not like the US would even feel a pinch if some middle eastern country embargoes its products. Now reverse that, or add even more extreme measures to it (doing to Iraq level measures) and you get the point.
I'd be terrible shocked if this is not just Hollywood-level paranoia, the kind most people around the world merely laugh at. This idea that countries are at some kind of equal footing with regard to those things, "doing the same" with the 10.000ft gorilla that spends more than 3 times for its military what the next player (China) does -- more than the next 7 players combined.
There are maybe 4-5 countries that even remotely do anything like that on a global scale. Most countries merely track their neighbours's and traditional (regional) enemies.
I'd say just the US, the UK and France (ex big colonial powers that have fucked half the world over), Israel (because it has people everywhere, who, due to the terrible persecutions Jews faced in WWII can be very loyal to the cause of the "homeland" even if its not their actual country of citizenship), and China (because of sheer size and economic/global rise) have any such capacity, intent and power. USSR back in the day too, modern Russia, not so much. France a little, as an ex-colonial power. Germany has its secret service too, but not much to write home about either.
And even of those few, even fewer have the history, military and diplomatic means to pressure and reach of using those things to mess with other countries the world over.