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World War III: Nuclear or Cyber?

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DQW Bureau
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US announcement to setup a Cyber Command aimed at gaining military
supremacy in cyber space, might trigger a new arms race, said Peng Guangqian, a
Beijing-based strategist to China Daily.

Recently US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had announced that the US has
established the world's first comprehensive, multi-service military cyber
operation, called CYBERCOM, which could provide US forces a lead in new emerging
strategic fields like space and outer space.

The announcement comes in the backdrop of the reports of cyber attacks
targeting the US. President Barack Obama had also recently highlighted the
importance of cyber security as part of national security.

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The Background

The US Cyber Command is led by National Security Agency/Central Security
Service Director General Keith B Alexander. The command will assume
responsibility for several existing organizations. The Joint Task Force for
Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) and the Joint Functional Component Command
for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) will be dissolved by October 2010. The Defense
Information Systems Agency, where JTF-GNO now operates, will provide technical
assistance for network and information assurance to CYBERCOM, and will be moving
its headquarters to Ft Meade USCYBERCOM will centralize command of cyberspace
operations, strengthen DoD cyberspace capabilities, and integrate and bolster
DoD's cyber expertise.

Consequently, USCYBERCOM will improve DoD's capabilities to ensure resilient,
reliable information and communication networks, counter cyberspace threats, and
assure access to cyberspace. USCYBERCOM's efforts will also support the Armed
Services' ability to confidently conduct high-tempo, effective operations as
well as protect command and control systems and the cyberspace infrastructure
supporting weapons system platforms from disruptions, intrusions and attacks.

The US military operates 7 mn computers and 15,000 computer networks and has
virtually 'no situational awareness' that would enable it to know when a cyber
attack is underway, the new head of the US Cyber Command said on June 3.

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“We have no situational awareness, it's very limited,” Alexander said in an
address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That puts the military at risk because it depends increasingly on computer
networks for maintaining command and control, for communicating, for
intelligence operations and for logistics, he said.

Military computer networks are “probed 250,000 times an hour and 6 mn times a
day,” he added.

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And too often, the military discovers through forensics that network probes
have been successful. As a consequence, response becomes “policing up after the
fact versus mitigating it real-time,” Alexander said.

Mixed Reactions

In response to the US move, Meng Xiangqing, a professor with the National
Defence University in Beijing, said there is a very thin line between a
defensive and an offensive act when it comes to cyber space.

“CYBERCOM ranks high in the US military, reporting directly to the US
Strategic Command, and the US is the most advanced state in cyber technology.
This absolute advantage may trigger a new type of arms race,” Meng told China
Daily.

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Song Xiaojun, a Beijing based military strategist, told Chinese newspaper
World News Journal that even if other countries join in the cyber arms race,
they are not capable of competing with the US since it possesses the core
technologies of the Internet.

Placing computer security, including in the civilian sector, under a military
command is yet another step in the direction of militarizing the treatment of
what are properly criminal or even merely proprietary and commercial matters.
And preparing responses of a decidedly non-virtual nature in return.

The Pentagon and the National Security Agency will not be alone in the
endeavor to establish and operate the world's first national cyber warfare
command. As usual, Washington is receiving unconditional support from NATO.

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NATO not only provides the US with twenty-seven additional voices and votes
in the UN and as many countries through which to transit and in which to base
troops and military equipment, it also allows for American military deployments
and creates the pretext for armed confrontation in alleged defense of other
member states.

Stating that “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of
them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,”
Article 5 is in large part the foundation of and the impetus for the Pentagon's
Cyber Command.

The clamor for a cyber warfare capacity began among leading American and NATO
officials during and immediately after attacks on computer systems in Estonia in
late April and early May of 2007. The small country, a neighbor of Russia which
had been inducted into NATO three years earlier, accused Russian hackers of the
attacks on both government and private networks, and the charge was echoed in
the West with the additional insinuation that the government of then Russian
President Vladimir Putin was behind the campaign.

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Three years later the accusations have not been substantiated, but they have
served their purpose nonetheless: NATO dispatched cyber warfare experts to
Estonia shortly after the events of 2007 and on May 14, 2008 the military bloc
established what it calls the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD
COE) in the nation's capital of Tallin. The bloc's Article 5 has been
repeatedly-and given its nature ominously-evoked in reference to alleged cyber
crimes and attacks, and Estonia has been portrayed as both the model victim of
such assaults and the rallying point for a global cyber warfare response to
them.

From the genesis of the drive for US-NATO cyber warfare operations Russia has
been the clearly implied if not always openly acknowledged target.

This January US based Google accused Chinese hackers of “sophisticated
cyberattacks” and since then Beijing has joined Moscow as the most frequently
cited antagonist in future cyber conflict scenarios, intimately linked to
comparable disputes in space over military and civilian satellites.

The British House of Lords issued a report in mid-March of this year that
explicitly asserted, “Britain needs to work more closely with NATO to fend off
'cyber warfare' on critical national infrastructure from former cold war enemies
such as Russia and China,” and which “highlight the dangers of attacks on
the internet, banking and mobile phone networks by the Russians in Estonia three
years ago.”

Cyber defense and its inevitable correlate, cyber warfare, are integral
components of Pentagon and NATO warfighting doctrine, embodied as such in the
US's new Quadrennial Defense Review and in NATO's latest Strategic Concept to be
formally adopted at the bloc's summit in Lisbon, Portugal this November.

Cyber warfare as an element of military operations in the other four
spheres-land, air, sea and space, especially in the last and in its own right.
With the most advanced computer networks in the world and the most capable corps
of cyber specialists in all realms, the world's military superpower has launched
the first military cyber command.

CIOL Bureau

(Source: DQ)

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