http://www.maskofzion.com/2010/10/wikileaks-is-zionist-poison.htmlThe US Senate has finally and formally approved the appointment of General Keith B. Alexander as head of its new Cyber Command, a sign that the US is deadly serious about extending its warfighting capabilities to cyberspace. Although there is little argument with a sovereign nation developing structures and capabilities that enable it to defend against adversarial actions, the appointment prompts more questions than it provides answers.
Cyber Command was created in June 2009 by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, with the full backing of the Obama administration, and is intended to defend the US military against attacks, espionage and other actions in and through cyberspace that might impact negatively on US military assets. It is paralleled in civilian terms by the appointment of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt last December, a position that also came out of last year’s Cyberspace Policy Review. President Obama has clearly signaled his intentions to treat cyberspace as a vital strategic asset, and is matched in this by the US military’s elevation of cyberspace to a warfighting ‘domain’ equal to land, sea, air and space.
Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) will answer to US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), the military command that oversees US nuclear and space operations, as well as information warfare and global military intelligence. It is designed to act in support of military operations abroad and homeland security requirements at home and its position as a command with global reach reflects the transnational nature of not only the threats the US perceives to its national interests but also the responses that might be required.
The Pentagon insists that Cyber Command is not a sign of the militarization of cyberspace, although the dictionary definitions of militarization might contradict this. If militarization is the ‘reduction to a military model or method’, then recent calls to re-engineer the Internet from senior establishment figures suggest that this would be desirable. If militarisation is ‘to subject to military domination’ then, again, CYBERCOM’s remit to, in part, undertake offensive military operations anywhere the US deems necessary also looks a lot like militarisation.
However, the US freely admits that this is as much a problem of law as it is about the projection of military power. In the recent Senate hearings, Alexander reiterated the need to subject cyber operations to the Standard Rules of Engagement to which all military actions are subordinate. In cyberspace, this might mean knowing from whence an attack originated, or who was responsible, not always the easiest evidence to acquire. The Pentagon has also not ruled out a physical military response to a cyber attack, although it concedes that there are legal questions that remain unanswered.
Not least of these is how cyber operations across national borders are dealt with by the laws of armed conflict and their reliance on principles such as proportionality, neutrality, distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and military necessity. In the battlespace of the global internet, it is hard to know what effects a retaliatory attack might have on another country, and on those citizens and companies that might rely on internet connectivity or other critical infrastructure. Although we can attribute significant accuracy to US military targeting capabilities, the sometimes wayward use of another bloodless combat fix―unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)―is unlikely to quell the unease that accompanies thoughts of more remote technologies in the hands of the world’s premier military power.
There are concerns too about the position of Cyber Commander itself. General Alexander is already director of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon’s foreign intelligence service. He will now ‘dual-hat’ as head of both the NSA and Cyber Command, an extraordinary concentration of intelligence-gathering and military potential. Although the NSA is meant to concern itself with external affairs, it was under Alexander’s watch that the NSA was caught wiretapping US citizens without warrants since 1995 and still does today daily, as well as FBI, CIA and many other UKUSA alliance agencies, DIA, MOSSAD, AMAN and others.... illegaly, in order to protect secrets of the inside JOB of 9/11 and more extra-judicial assassinations on a global scale, especially in Lebanon since January 24th 2002....
If these developments had occurred within a slightly less febrile environment than the recent public claims by senior figures that the US is in a cyberwar and losing it badly, then we could perhaps be more sanguine. As it stands, we have to wonder where this is all leading, and how the US will use its undoubted strength in this field, and to what ends. At present, it looks as if the US is building its hardware and capabilities, and the structures to deliver them, and is going to let the lawyers sort out the details afterwards....
Cryptome has been questioning the role of Wired in recent counterattacks on Cryptome. It appears that Wired is involved in an effort to undermine the credibility of Cryptome as a safe haven for material from whistle-blowers. Just before the latest WikiLeaks/DOD/CIA release, WikiLeaks/CIA/DOD was also under a 'sophisticated' cyberattack. Now Wired, out of all the things it could write about in the massive WikiLeaks/CIA/DOD release, is playing up the rather tenuous evidence, which of course could also be planted by the Pentagon, linking Iran to the war in Iraq. Wired.....is looking like a branch office of the American military and FDDC....
