The U.S. needs to make it illegal to pay ransom. Then respond with force, arresting people, targeting however you can.

Further, this should be a wake up call. If you're a business harden your network and make backups.

> The U.S. needs to make it illegal to pay ransom.

They don't need ransom if they can buy put options.

See Matt Levine's 10 laws of insider trading. In particular, "5. Don’t do it by planting bombs at a company and shorting its stock." Somebody nicely put a non-paywall link here: https://github.com/0xNF/lawsofinsidertrading.com

Buying puts in this fashion will generally be a remarkable, traceable event. There's a reason ransoms typically go through cryptocurrency.