http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2016/0224/The-making-of-America-s-cyberweapons?cmpid=ema:nws:Weekly%2520Newsletter%2520%2802-27-2016%29&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160227_Newsletter:%20Weekender&utm_term=Weekend_Best_of_Web
SHIFT IN THOUGHT
Since Internet adoption accelerated in the 1990s, the US has proven it can successfully strike adversaries online, but in doing so we've ushered in a dangerous – and unpredictable – new military era.
By Michael V. Hayden, Contributor FEBRUARY 24, 2016
America hasn't militarized the cyberdomain more than other nations. But we certainly threw plenty of resources into our efforts and our natural tendencies toward transparency – and how we talk about defending cyberspace – has opened us up to charges that we have indeed militarized the digital world.
An example: The seminal American thought piece on cyber wasn't written by the deputy attorney general, deputy secretary of State, deputy secretary of Commerce, or even by the president's science adviser. The deputy secretary of Defense wrote it. People outside this country notice things like that.
In 2010, Bill Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs that, "As a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain of warfare. Although cyberspace is a man-made domain, it has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space. As such, the military must be able to defend and operate within it."
It was as if Mr. Lynn had copied the notes from our discussions in the mid-1990s at my first cyber-related command in Texas.
The ideas we developed then and there eventually gained traction in the Department of Defense. In retrospect, however, we didn't appreciate that there was an entire generation growing up at that time believing that cyberspace was a global commons, a pristine playground, and not a potential zone of conflict among powerful nation-states. The debate over those competing archetypes continues today.
The digital Eden fallacy
Several years after I had left government, I was sitting in front of a Skype screen in Colorado arguing via video link with author Jim Bamford, who has made a living writing unauthorized books about National Security Agency, where I was the director from 1999 to 2005. One of my distant NSA predecessors, Lt. Gen. Lincoln Faurer, wanted to have him arrested over his first opus, "The Puzzle Palace," when it hit bookshelves in 1982.
The Skype debate was for a TV trade audience in Beverly Hills organized by PBS, which at the time was hyping an upcoming NOVA special on NSA. Mr. Bamford was a coproducer and was arguing that America had tragically militarized the cyberdomain through actions such as the Stuxnet worm, which he described as an American cyberattack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. America's intemperate behavior, he claimed, had legitimated an Iranian attack against the giant oil company Saudi Aramco and against American banks. The Internet was now a free fire zone and it was our fault.
SHIFT IN THOUGHT
Since Internet adoption accelerated in the 1990s, the US has proven it can successfully strike adversaries online, but in doing so we've ushered in a dangerous – and unpredictable – new military era.
By Michael V. Hayden, Contributor FEBRUARY 24, 2016
America hasn't militarized the cyberdomain more than other nations. But we certainly threw plenty of resources into our efforts and our natural tendencies toward transparency – and how we talk about defending cyberspace – has opened us up to charges that we have indeed militarized the digital world.
An example: The seminal American thought piece on cyber wasn't written by the deputy attorney general, deputy secretary of State, deputy secretary of Commerce, or even by the president's science adviser. The deputy secretary of Defense wrote it. People outside this country notice things like that.
In 2010, Bill Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs that, "As a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain of warfare. Although cyberspace is a man-made domain, it has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space. As such, the military must be able to defend and operate within it."
It was as if Mr. Lynn had copied the notes from our discussions in the mid-1990s at my first cyber-related command in Texas.
The ideas we developed then and there eventually gained traction in the Department of Defense. In retrospect, however, we didn't appreciate that there was an entire generation growing up at that time believing that cyberspace was a global commons, a pristine playground, and not a potential zone of conflict among powerful nation-states. The debate over those competing archetypes continues today.
The digital Eden fallacy
Several years after I had left government, I was sitting in front of a Skype screen in Colorado arguing via video link with author Jim Bamford, who has made a living writing unauthorized books about National Security Agency, where I was the director from 1999 to 2005. One of my distant NSA predecessors, Lt. Gen. Lincoln Faurer, wanted to have him arrested over his first opus, "The Puzzle Palace," when it hit bookshelves in 1982.
The Skype debate was for a TV trade audience in Beverly Hills organized by PBS, which at the time was hyping an upcoming NOVA special on NSA. Mr. Bamford was a coproducer and was arguing that America had tragically militarized the cyberdomain through actions such as the Stuxnet worm, which he described as an American cyberattack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. America's intemperate behavior, he claimed, had legitimated an Iranian attack against the giant oil company Saudi Aramco and against American banks. The Internet was now a free fire zone and it was our fault.
