Thursday, February 4, 2010

U.S. Cyberwar Strategy: The Pentagon Plans To Attack

U.S. Cyberwar Strategy: The Pentagon Plans To Attack -- Time Magazine

The China-U.S. diplomatic spat over cyberattacks on Google has highlighted the growing significance of the Internet as a theater of combat. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn recently warned of its appeal to foes who are unable to match the U.S.'s conventional military might. An enemy country could deploy hackers to take down U.S. financial systems, communications and infrastructure, he suggested, at a cost far below that of building a trillion-dollar fleet of fifth-generation jet fighters. "Knowing this, many militaries are developing offensive cyber capabilities," Lynn said. "Some governments already have the capacity to disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure." (On Tuesday, the nation's top intelligence official warned that cyber-enemies have "severely threatened" U.S. computer systems. "Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication," Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee.)

Read more ....

My Comment: As our society/government/military/business sector becomes more and more dependent on electronic communications to manage and run many of our more important institutions .... their vulnerability to disruption from cyber attacks also grows proportionally.

It appears that the US military and their political masters have also come to the same conclusion .... all be it belatedly.

No comments: