By Wes Pedersen
The Pentagon is releasing unclassified portions of its first for-real cyber war strategy. It is far more than a strategy for fighting cyber-fed attacks on vital U.S. facilities by foreign governments or state-supported hackers. It is a warning of potential military responses to all attempting to damage this country by cyber manipulation.
As one in-on-the-plan military official told the May 31 Wall Street Journal: “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”
Those words should be ringing throughout Beijing, which has been a major force taunting the U.S. through important cyber skirmishes.
Admiral Bill Mullen, just retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls cyber warfare the greatest threat ever to national security. He has noted that the U.S., its corporations and its institutions, have been, and are, victims of repeated attacks from abroad.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has said “we are losing” the Cyber War.
The tentative details of our strategy come as a complete surprise to much of the media, which has to date all but ignored the Cyber War.
President Obama will, of course, be making a nationwide address on it all when the Pentagon’s report on America’s cyber strategy is made public soon. He has been pushing for a declaration of Cyber War intent from the start. It is he who will now make the decision on what action we will take in the event of a cyber invasion.
Here, a question. Iran is convinced we played a key role in the disruptive cyber attack on its computer links to its nuclear plant. If it were found that we were indeed responsible, would Iran be justified in sending a missile our way?
Websites of the Defense and State Departments, and of South Korea, have been attacked by web warriors operating in North Korea. If it happens again, would we be anxious to drop a load on Pyongyang?
Pray that we never know.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C. |