Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace

[Richard]

From today's Pravda on the Hudson - another czar in the making. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace
David SANGER and Thom Shanker, NYT, 29 May 2009

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.

The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.

:eek: ***Safeguard...or control?*** :eek:

Mr. Obama, officials said, will announce the creation of a White House office — reporting to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council — that will coordinate a multibillion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system.

White House officials say Mr. Obama has not yet been formally presented with the Pentagon plan. They said he would not discuss it Friday when he announced the creation of a White House office responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States — largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments — every day.

But he is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand, officials said. It is a recognition that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use — as a deterrent or alongside conventional weapons — in a wide variety of possible future conflicts.

The White House office will be run by a “cyberczar,” but because the position will not have direct access to the president, some experts said it was not high-level enough to end a series of bureaucratic wars that have broken out as billions of dollars have suddenly been allocated to protect against the computer threats.

The main dispute has been over whether the Pentagon or the National Security Agency should take the lead in preparing for and fighting cyberbattles. Under one proposal still being debated, parts of the N.S.A. would be integrated into the military command so they could operate jointly.

Officials said that in addition to the unclassified strategy paper to be released by Mr. Obama on Friday, a classified set of presidential directives is expected to lay out the military’s new responsibilities and how it coordinates its mission with that of the N.S.A., where most of the expertise on digital warfare resides today.

The decision to create a cybercommand is a major step beyond the actions taken by the Bush administration, which authorized several computer-based attacks but never resolved the question of how the government would prepare for a new era of warfare fought over digital networks.

It is still unclear whether the military’s new command or the N.S.A. — or both — will actually conduct this new kind of offensive cyberoperations.

The White House has never said whether Mr. Obama embraces the idea that the United States should use cyberweapons, and the public announcement on Friday is expected to focus solely on defensive steps and the government’s acknowledgment that it needs to be better organized to face the threat from foes attacking military, government and commercial online systems.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has pushed for the Pentagon to become better organized to address the security threat.

Initially at least, the new command would focus on organizing the various components and capabilities now scattered across the four armed services.

Officials declined to describe potential offensive operations, but said they now viewed cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields.

“We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain,“ said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.”

Although Pentagon civilian officials and military officers said the new command was expected to initially be a subordinate headquarters under the military’s Strategic Command, which controls nuclear operations as well as cyberdefenses, it could eventually become an independent command.

“No decision has been made,” said Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a Pentagon spokesman. “Just as the White House has completed its 60-day review of cyberspace policy, likewise, we are looking at how the department can best organize itself to fill our role in implementing the administration’s cyberpolicy.”

The creation of the cyberczar’s office inside the White House appears to be part of a significant expansion of the role of the national security apparatus there. A separate group overseeing domestic security, created by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, now resides within the National Security Council. A senior White House official responsible for countering the proliferation of nuclear and unconventional weapons has been given broader authority. Now, cybersecurity will also rank as one of the key threats that Mr. Obama is seeking to coordinate from the White House.

The strategy review Mr. Obama will discuss on Friday was completed weeks ago, but delayed because of continuing arguments over the authority of the White House office, and the budgets for the entire effort.

It was kept separate from the military debate over whether the Pentagon or the N.S.A. is best equipped to engage in offensive operations. Part of that debate hinges on the question of how much control should be given to American spy agencies, since they are prohibited from acting on American soil.

“It’s the domestic spying problem writ large,” one senior intelligence official said recently. “These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders. So how do you fight them if you can’t act both inside and outside the United States?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[SF_BHT]

Here we go the start of the building of "Skynet":eek:

OK is it just me but why is our government so fascinated in making Czars? Has Russia slowly infiltrated our Political party's?

Originally, the title Czar (derived from Caesar) meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, that is, a ruler who claims the same rank as a Roman emperor, with the approval of another emperor or a supreme ecclesiastical official (the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch).

Occasionally, the word could be used to designate other, non-Christian, supreme rulers. In Russia and Bulgaria the imperial connotations of the term were blurred with time and, by the 19th century, it had come to be viewed as an equivalent of King.

"Tsar" was the official title of the supreme ruler in the following states:

Bulgaria in 913–1018, in 1185–1422 and in 1908–1946
Serbia in 1346–1371
Russia from about 1547 until 1917.

I thought we were not supposed to have Royal titles and sorts. Is this a slight change in society back to having all powerful rulers?

OK back on subject...... What happened to Openness in Government. Here the Great O will be signing a classified Order.... Shame on him. Just put it on the website and let his cyberczar try to protect the info.... This is going to be fun watching both hands of the Great O. In one hand he demands openness and hands out the all the family jewels while in the other hand he holds it behind the back and does all the things he publicly denounces.... These people scare me.....3yrs and how many days? I know TR is counting...

[csquare]

The new Cyber Command has been awarded to San Antonio. Lackland AFB is the preferred alternative for the permanent location of 24th Air Force, a new numbered Air Force headquarters focused on the cyber mission.
Be prepared to have a Cyber COCOM. It's all about the money.....

[Blitzzz (RIP)]

Another Czar pretty much unaccountable but to the POTUS.
Now he has greater emphasis on watching us, yes us. Remember we're considered threats. Blitzzz

[Razor]

Although Pentagon civilian officials and military officers said the new command was expected to initially be a subordinate headquarters under the military’s Strategic Command, which controls nuclear operations as well as cyberdefenses, it could eventually become an independent command.

Expected? Someone should let DISA know that JTF-Global Network Operations isn't operational yet.

So this "czar" will have reign over 1st IO Cmd, the ACERT, NIOC, AF Cyber Cmd, etc., and they will be responsible for protecting Wall Street and FAA networks? Someone is ignoring their ideology.

[Pete S]

Expected? Someone should let DISA know that JTF-Global Network Operations isn't operational yet.

So this "czar" will have reign over 1st IO Cmd, the ACERT, NIOC, AF Cyber Cmd, etc., and they will be responsible for protecting Wall Street and FAA networks? Someone is ignoring their ideology.

Good point, where are the checks and balances with these appointed "czars?"
I foresee a Supreme Court case looming...

Being able to "wage wars" in cyberspace is long overdue.
But we may be so far behind that we will be sloppy playing catch up to the Chinese, etc.
This did not need to be revealed to the world, and should have been kept secret until implimented.
Denying the enemy intellegence on the scope of our capabilities, and all that.

[swpa19]

Now he has greater emphasis on watching us, yes us. Remember we're considered threats. Blitzzz

Yup, George Orwell was right. He was just a quarter of a century off.

[Sigaba]

Source is here (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/510b7792-4c7c-11de-a6c5-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=5aedc804-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8,print=yes.html).

The review mentioned below is available here (http://www.ft.com/cms/c802597c-4c7e-11de-a6c5-00144feabdc0.pdf).

Obama responds to cyber threat

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco

Published: May 29 2009 19:43 | Last updated: May 29 2009 19:43

Barack Obama, US president, on Friday lifted cyber-security higher up his administration’s agenda as he promised to appoint shortly a White House co-ordinator to oversee policy and responses to threats to government and private communications networks.

Mr Obama cited an industry report that put losses from cyber-crime – including industrial espionage and identity theft – at $1,000bn, declaring that increased dependence on electronic banking and commerce made improved security a matter of economic necessity as well as vital to national defence.

“Our defence and military networks are under constant attack,” he said. “Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber-attack on our country – attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against.”

Releasing a review of federal policy, Mr Obama said the government had been hamstrung by the complexity of the issue and turf wars among agencies.

“We’ve failed to invest in the security of our digital infrastructure,” he said. “From now on, our digital infrastructure – the networks and computers we depend on every day – will be treated as they should be: as a strategic national asset.”

Security experts were delighted to see a president publicly address issues that have been a concern for a decade.

“This has been something that we have been trying to educate on and, until recently, it has produced marginal improvement,” said David DeWalt, chief executive of McAfee, an antivirus software company. “Now we’re seeing an opportunity.”
FWIW, I've always been struck by the historical irony of the public attention a president receives when he announces the appointment of a czar. The world is still trying to recover from the House of Romanov.

[Utah Bob]

This administration's packing them in like Czardines.

[Razor]

This administration's packing them in like Czardines.

<groan>

[greenberetTFS]

This administration's packing them in like Czardines.

UB,

That was funny,very funny..........;)

GB TFS :munchin

[Richard]

Here come the camp followers...there go even more of our tax dollars...and to whom? I suffer mild angst over some of the inevitable loyalty issues amongst this crowd. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States
Christopher Drew and John Markoff, NYT, 30 May 2009

The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.

The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

(cont'd)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[kgoerz]

With all these Government jobs sprouting up. Someone told me that Government Employees are going to out number the amount of private sector employees. Is this possible? Or was he way off?

[Utah Bob]

With all these Government jobs sprouting up. Someone told me that Government Employees are going to out number the amount of private sector employees. Is this possible? Or was he way off?

Not even close.

[kgoerz]

Not even close.


Thats what I thought. Maybe he meant Job growth. Like the percentage of new Jobs being created. Government might be leading the private sector.

[Richard]

And so it goes... ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan
Thom Shanker and David Sanger, NYT, 12 Jun 2009

A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries’ computer networks.

President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons.

Much of the new military command’s work is expected to be carried out by the National Security Agency, whose role in intercepting the domestic end of international calls and e-mail messages after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, under secret orders issued by the Bush administration, has already generated intense controversy.

There is simply no way, the officials say, to effectively conduct computer operations without entering networks inside the United States, where the military is prohibited from operating, or traveling electronic paths through countries that are not themselves American targets.

The cybersecurity effort, Mr. Obama said at the White House last month, “will not — I repeat, will not — include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic.”

But foreign adversaries often mount their attacks through computer network hubs inside the United States, and military officials and outside experts say that threat confronts the Pentagon and the administration with difficult questions.

Military officials say there may be a need to intercept and examine some e-mail messages sent from other countries to guard against computer viruses or potential terrorist action. Advocates say the process could ultimately be accepted as the digital equivalent of customs inspections, in which passengers arriving from overseas consent to have their luggage opened for security, tax and health reasons.

“The government is in a quandary,” said Maren Leed, a defense expert at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies who was a Pentagon special assistant on cyberoperations from 2005 to 2008.

Ms. Leed said a broad debate was needed “about what constitutes an intrusion that violates privacy and, at the other extreme, what is an intrusion that may be acceptable in the face of an act of war.”

In a recent speech, Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a chief architect of the new cyberstrategy, acknowledged that a major unresolved issue was how the military — which would include the National Security Agency, where much of the cyberwar expertise resides — could legally set up an early warning system.

Unlike a missile attack, which would show up on the Pentagon’s screens long before reaching American territory, a cyberattack may be visible only after it has been launched in the United States.

“How do you understand sovereignty in the cyberdomain?” General Cartwright asked. “It doesn’t tend to pay a lot of attention to geographic boundaries.”

For example, the daily attacks on the Pentagon’s own computer systems, or probes sent from Russia, China and Eastern Europe seeking chinks in the computer systems of corporations and financial institutions, are rarely seen before their effect is felt inside the United States.

Some administration officials have begun to discuss whether laws or regulations must be changed to allow law enforcement, the military or intelligence agencies greater access to networks or Internet providers when significant evidence of a national security threat was found.

Ms. Leed said that while the Defense Department and related intelligence agencies were the only organizations that had the ability to protect against such cyberattacks, “they are not the best suited, from a civil liberties perspective, to take on that responsibility.”

Under plans being completed at the Pentagon, the new cybercommand will be run by a four-star general, much the way Gen. David H. Petraeus runs the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from Central Command in Tampa, Fla. But the expectation is that whoever is in charge of the new command will also direct the National Security Agency, an effort to solve the turf war between the spy agency and the military over who is in charge of conducting offensive operations.

While the N.S.A.’s job is chiefly one of detection and monitoring, the agency also possesses what Michael D. McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, called “the critical skill set” to respond quickly to cyberattacks. Yet the Defense Department views cyberspace as its domain as well, a new battleground after land, sea, air and space.

The complications are not limited to privacy concerns. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about the diplomatic ramifications of being forced to use the computer networks of many other nations while carrying out digital missions — the computer equivalent of the Vietnam War’s spilling over the Cambodian border in the 1960s. To battle Russian hackers, for example, it might be necessary to act through the virtual cyberterritory of Britain or Germany or any country where the attack was routed.

General Cartwright said military planners were trying to write rules of engagement for scenarios in which a cyberattack was launched from a neutral country that might have no idea what was going on. But, with time of the essence, it may not be possible, the scenarios show, to ask other nations to act against an attack that is flowing through their computers in milliseconds.

“If I pass through your country, do I have to talk to the ambassador?” General Cartwright said. “It is very difficult. Those are the questions that are now really starting to emerge vis-à-vis cyber.”

Frida Berrigan, a longtime peace activist who is a senior program associate at the New America Foundation’s arms and security initiative, expressed concerns about whether the Obama administration would be able to balance its promise to respect privacy in cyberspace even as it appeared to be militarizing cybersecurity.

“Obama was very deliberate in saying that the U.S. military and the U.S. government would not be looking at our e-mail and not tracking what we do online,” Ms. Berrigan said. “This is not to say there is not a cyberthreat out there or that cyberterrorism is not a significant concern. We should be vigilant and creative. But once again we see the Pentagon being put at the heart of it and at front lines of offering a solution.”

Ms. Berrigan said that just as the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had proved that “there is no front line anymore, and no demilitarized zone anymore, then if the Pentagon and the military services see cyberspace as a battlefield domain, then the lines protecting privacy and our civil liberties get blurred very, very quickly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rss