In Cyberweapons Race, Questions Linger Over U.S. Offensive Capability
Bipin Gautam
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses
When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a
trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered
information that drove them into American gun sights.
When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress
toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an
experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into
their computers and undermine the project.
And the Pentagon has commissioned military contractors to develop a
highly classified replica of the Internet of the future. The goal is
to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the
country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or
freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses
against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons.
Just as the invention of the atomic bomb changed warfare and
deterrence 64 years ago, a new international race has begun to develop
cyberweapons and systems to protect against them.
Thousands of daily attacks on federal and private computer systems in
the United States — many from China and Russia, some malicious and
some testing chinks in the patchwork of American firewalls — have
prompted the Obama administration to review American strategy.
President Obama is expected to propose a far larger defensive effort
in coming days, including an expansion of the $17 billion, five-year
program that Congress approved last year, the appointment of a White
House official to coordinate the effort, and an end to a running
bureaucratic battle over who is responsible for defending against
cyberattacks.
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