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A Quiet declaration: Digital weapons will lead to an analog death
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by World_Groove | June 2, 2011 at 07:48 pm
255 views | 13 Recommendations | 7 comments
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Digital Dogs Of War
In light of recent Google digital attacks (June 1) from China and the yet un-blamed Lockheed Martin attack just over a week ago, New light is cast upon the Pentagon's recently released plans to Let loose the Analog Dogs of War upon those perpetrators of digital attacks it deems worthy of reprisal.
Quietly declared through the Wall Street journal on May 31, 2011, A recent announcement from the US Pentagon has revealed their new policy declaring that "Cyber Attacks" shall be treated as "Acts of war upon the United States" and "A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Col Dave Lapan.
The stuff of fiction becomes truth
Reminiscent of an early Science fiction episode of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, "A Taste of Armageddon", where digital attacks resulted in real deaths. The pentagon has stated it's plans to respond militarily to cyber attacks and that reprisal will be based upon on the notion of "equivalence" - Equivalence being defined generally as: "whether the attack was comparable in damage to a conventional military strike". It has been reported that the strategy would consider the existing international rules of armed conflict - embodied in international treaties, customs and conventions. Pentagon officials have stated a yet to be released report will delve deeper in to official policy and response.
Digital Fear and Fear-mongering
A recent report over American security fears has shown 45% of polled Americans view a cyberattack as posing a "greater economic threat to the United States than even a traditional military attack by another nation".
As for the Pentagon, they seek to bolster public fears by stating "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks".
The Digital Bitch
The United States having been a Nation who has engaged in Cyber Attacks in the past (even recently) needs to consider the dangerous policy of such strong language in its full light. If we have formally declared Cyber Attacks as "Acts of War", then in turn they are now to be viewed that way by any nation we interact with and indeed "attack" in such a manner. It is obvious that the digital realm is rampant with altered information and it will be hard to prove without the shadow of doubt that a specific attack truly came from a specific source. Thus this becomes a dangerous policy which needs to be watched intently as it is a fertile realm ripe for abuse in the name of "defense". It is not hard to image a soon to be released official report saying "The Federal Reserve and Wall Street have received a digital attack today that has been traced to "country x" and we have issued an appropriate missile response to the area that the attack originated from".
In this new escalated climate of digital war it might not matter whether it is mere intelligence gathering mission, a purposeful act of destabilization, or even minor criminal and personal acts from computer wizards reenacting their own version of Matthew Broderick's "War Games". An attack is an attack and we have now stated the right to decide when a digital attack is worthy of the churning of real life war machines.
Evil minds that plot destruction (Let ye who Cast Stones)
Here is a list of nations which up to this point have been commonly believed to have carried out digital attacks:
Israel
China
North Korea
U.S.A.
Russia
Iran
India
Pakistan (Against India)
U.K.
Many more countries are assumed though less documented.
In the Beginning (Born Again - The Art of Warfare)
One of the earliest known digital attacks (or escalated pre planned digital counterattacks) happened in 1982 when the Soviet Union stole software from a Canadian company that had been modified by the CIA to include a "logic bomb" which caused a Soviet Pipeline to explode due to implanted computer directions to increase pump speeds.
No word yet on an official U.N. or Geneva stance on Cyber Warefare.
Bloodied angels fast descending
It remains unanswered whether the digital attack initiated from inside China will see reprisals in this new age of warfare. Our intention of physical response to attacks upon our computer infrastructure was given to the public on May 31, 2011 and an attack from China Followed on April 1, 2011 against Google in attempts to gain information from Military Mail accounts on their servers. Is a day considered too short of warning and reason enough to walk away from this Evil Lady of war? We await the final decision from the Pentagon as to which is to be the first Cyber trespass to see the angry machines of war bringing double the pain.
.....the eagle screaming for vengeance from the sky.
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sources: (incomplete)
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CBSNEWS.COM
Support for position that cyberattack is act of war. June 2nd 2011 by Charles Cooper.
BBC News
US Pentagon to treat cyber-attacks as 'acts of war' June 1, 2011
Google e-mail accounts compromised by 'Chinese Hackers'. June 1, 2011
Defensenews.com
Major Cyber Attack Is Act of War:Pentagon Report May 31, 2011
The Economist
Cyberwar: The Fith Domain July 1, 2010
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World_Groove
Gated compound in the woods., Pacific N.W., United States
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YankeeJim
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at 20:35 on June 2nd, 2011
man i checked out this story and it looks legit but its so weird that it is not on the dod web site yet as a press release? But the wall street journal usually doesnt lie about this type of stuff much. But why would they release such an important issue like this in this way?
at 00:13 on June 3rd, 2011
Damn I hope I don't get a tomahawk through my dorm window!
at 02:27 on June 3rd, 2011
This is a serious subject. The war has been going on with e-bullets flying for some time.
at 11:46 on June 3rd, 2011
YankeeJim,
Thanks for writing.
I don't have much to add in the way of opinions on the storyline....
I am in conflict. My inner strategic planner has no issues with a doctrine of reprisal. My Inner "Let me live my life in My own Way" freedom fighter has concerns of abuse of this doctrine could lead to.
Either way I thought it was a topic that should be discussed and I was surprised it had not been widely reported.
I also had some creative writing fun with it...heheheh
Cheers
at 03:52 on June 3rd, 2011
"This is not an emerging threat; this is not some future contingency. The cyber threat is here today; it's here now. There are more than 100 intelligence organizations trying to hack into U.S. systems even today. Foreign governments are developing offensive cyber capabilities. Russia and China already have the capacity to disrupt elements of U.S. information infrastructure. And the cyber threat does not end with states. Organized criminal groups and individual hackers are building global networks of compromised computers, botnets and zombies, and renting them to the highest bidder, in essence becoming 21st century cyber mercenaries. And terrorist groups are active on thousands of websites. Al Qaeda and others have expressed a desire to unleash coordinated cyber attacks on the United States.
So our defense networks are already under attack. They are probed thousands of times each day; they are scanned millions of times each day, and the frequency and the sophistication of those attacks are increasing exponentially. It's an unprecedented challenge to our national security. By virtue of its source, its speed and its scope, it marks a new development in the history of war. In the 18th and 19th centuries, ships crossed the oceans in days. In World War II, aircraft could cross the oceans in hours. In the Cold War, missiles could do it in minutes. Today we face cyber attacks that can be mounted in milliseconds. The speed has profound implications for how we mount a defense. If attacked in milliseconds, we can't take days, weeks or months to respond. We need to respond at network speed, before attacks compromise ongoing operations or the lives of our troops.
Fortunately, to this point cyber attacks on our military networks have not cost any lives, but they are costing an increasing amount of money, and the threat is there. In one recent six-month period, the department spent more than $100 million simply defending its networks. For all these reasons, the President has called the cyber threat one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1399
at 08:22 on June 3rd, 2011
While I have no doubt that foreign enemies are plotting cyber-war on the U.S., my main concern as an unjustly, extrajudicially targeted and persecuted American journalist and citizen is the draconian cyber-war that is being conducted against fellow citizens such as I by a malicious and sadistic telecom censorship and harassment regime run by Lockheed Martin Information Systems for agencies and commands of the U.S. government -- entities that appear to have been hijacked by ideologues fighting an ideology-driven infowar against those they regard as their domestic "enemies" -- in other words, those Americans who would stand in the way of creeping fascist authoritarianism operating under the false flag of the wars on terror and crime:
http://nowpublic.com/world/u-s-govt-censors-internet-political-speech-fraud-deceptionhttp://nowpublic.com/world/u-s-govt-uses-spoofed-web-pages-and-urls-censor-internet
at 14:13 on June 3rd, 2011
As you all probably realize, all of our technologies and secrets are at stake today. All research and systems intelligence. Any group intelligence or security agencies networks. All of our infrastructure and services networks. Genome and nano technologies/research. Robotics and military weapons, logistics/specific research. Everything we know today is at risk.
This is the new world order in flux; each country fighting for it's position of power in a new world technology, global economy.