Does The U.S. Have The Most Powerful Offensive Cyberweapons On Earth?

Reuters/Rick Wilking / Reuters

Danny Vinik, Politico: America’s secret arsenal

It’s one of the biggest secrets in the government: The U.S. has the most powerful cyberweapons on Earth. So what are they? And when will we use them?

To this day it remains one of the most sophisticated and mysterious offensive operations ever launched: Stuxnet, the computer virus specifically engineered to attack Iran's nuclear reactors. Discovered in 2010 and now widely believed to be a collaboration between the U.S. and Israel, its existence raised an urgent question: Just what is the U.S. government doing to attack its opponents in the cyber-realm?

Stuxnet's origins have never been officially acknowledged, and the extent of American meddling in malware is still unknown. But for the past few years there’s been something new developing within the U.S. military that has taken "cyber" from a theoretical idea to a deliberate—if secretive—part of U.S. policy. The first ripple came in January 2013, when the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was significantly expanding its cybersecurity forces across all the service branches. By that October, the U.S. Army had launched two teams of technical experts dedicated purely to the cyber realm. Just a year later, the number was up to 10.

WNU Editor: The focus among the media is on cyber defense .... how to prevent cyber attacks from counties like Iran, Russia, and China .... and on cyber surveillance (courtesy of NSA leaker Edward Snowden). There is very little if any coverage on what is America capable of in a cyber conflict .... and that is because no one is talking. As to what is my take .... the U.S. has spent tens of billions on developing these capabilities .... I suspect that what they are capable of would surprise us .... and our enemies even more so.