It Always Comes Down to Money.
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
In the end it always comes down to money.
The recent article in the New York Times by David Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller entitled “Pentagon to Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War,” presents a chilling scenario:
“The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.
The new military strategy… makes explicit that a cyberattack could be considered equivalent to a more traditional act of war.” NYT
Just what constitutes a “cyberattack” is not made clear except to say that “any computer attack that threatens widespread civilian casualties — for example, by cutting off power supplies or bringing down hospitals and emergency-responder networks — could be treated as an act of aggression.”
That the Pentagon should employ such a broad reaching definition for cyberattack should give us pause. But it is the proposed response to such an attack that is really mind blowing. In a Wall Street Journal article Pentagon officials outlined the rationale behind the policy:
One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of “equivalence.” If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a “use of force” consideration, which could merit retaliation.
WSJ
Given the increasing alacrity with which the United States has been exercising its military muscle around the world, the conclusions about the effects of this policy are inescapable. As one military official is quoted as saying:
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”
The putative logic presented by the Pentagon is that by laying out a clear and forceful policy for dealing with threats such as malicious cyber attacks, the Pentagon will – at least in theory – provide a deterrent. The model quoted in the article is that of the deterrent posed by an American policy of absolute retaliation in the event of a nuclear attack.
“A parallel, outside experts say, is the George W. Bush administration’s policy of holding foreign governments accountable for harboring terrorist organizations, a policy that led to the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.” WSJ
The main problem with the Pentagon proposal is that it is a stunning display of overkill. Not only is it hard to imagine which foreign country would be lurking out there with the capability or desire to inflict lethal cyber-damage on the United States, but it defies belief that any bit of cyber chicanery that such a country could come up with could possibly produce the kind of devastation that a single nuclear warhead could wreak. Thus, the kind of “mutually assured cyber-destruction that the Pentagon is implying is not only unnecessary, it is incredibly assymetrical and in no way “equivalent.” It’s sort of like responding to a bee sting by hitting the hive with a 2,000 lb. bunker buster.
Another problem with the Pentagon’s policy is that most of the cyberattacks that the United States has acknowledged have come not from foreign nations at all but from independent hackers and loose-nit organizations such as “Annonymous.” Given the broad definition the Pentagon puts forth it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to label any malicious cyber activity as an attack that would merit a military response. One can even envision a group of strategists in the Pentagon basement thinking up strategies for dropping a smart bomb down Julian Assange’s chimney.
Even when cyber attacks represent legitimate threats, it is often difficult to pin down where the attack originates from. As the NYT article notes:
“During the cold war, deterrence worked because there was little doubt the Pentagon could quickly determine where an attack was coming from — and could counterattack a specific missile site or city. In the case of a cyberattack, the origin of the attack is almost always unclear, as it was in 2010 when a sophisticated attack was made on Google and its computer servers. Eventually Google concluded that the attack came from China. But American officials never publicly identified the country where it originated, much less whether it was state sanctioned or the action of a group of hackers.”
“One of the questions we have to ask is, How do we know we’re at war?” one former Pentagon official said.
Another variable not explored in either the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times is the sometimes tenuous dividing line between the U.S. government and the defense contractors it employs. For example, Lockheed Martin recently claimed it’s information systems were the target of a “cyber attack”
Given the fact that Lockheed Martin’s products include the Trident missile, P-3 Orion spy plane, F-16 and F-22 Raptor fighter jets and C-130 Hercules military cargo planes among many other major weapons systems, could this attack on a private corporation be considered an attack on the United States and thus one that would merit a military response by the U.S. military? With all the various contractors and sub-contractors now employed by the Pentagon would a cyber attack on any of them be considered an act of war?
If the danger is not clear and present, if the culprits are hard, if not impossible to identify, and if the list of targets is endless, why on earth would the Pentagon be proposing military action, i.e. war, as a response?
Not surprisingly, like so much that comes out of the Pentagon , the answer comes down to money.
“The Pentagon strategy is coming out at a moment when billions of dollars are up for grabs among federal agencies working on cyber-related issues, including the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. Each has been told by the White House to come up with approaches that fit the international cyberstrategy that the White House published in May. “
Thus, once again, the Pentagon’s strategy for dealing with a perceived attack has little or nothing to do with protecting the homeland.
Surprise, surprise. Once again, it’s all about the Benjamins baby!
