A particularly over-the-top example, distributed everywhere by Reuters.
This “news” video creates the impression, one reinforced by its unnamed talking heads, that a cyberattack on America’s power grid would be more devastating than the worst natural catastrophe. The attack would be untraceable, would take a second and would burn out tens of thousands of transformers around the country, it is alleged. It would take months, perhaps years, to recover from it.
American civilization crippled in a second, delivered in a “news” video about two and a half minutes long.
The Reuters reporter cites as a National Academy of Science report on the power grid to bolster its case. It seems reasonable to viewers but is a case of utter mendacity, if you actually read the report.
And the report was pointed to by by Steven Aftergood of the Secrecy blog here.
At the time, I wrote:
In the aftermath of the Sandy natural disaster, it has again been made obvious to some that the electrical grid can be damaged. And that electrical power, if it is disrupted for a long enough period of time, can result in death or the serious damage to the health of citizens in our modern world, particularly if they are old, sick and dependent on technological services.
For example, from the opening pages of the report:
“If such large [theoretically terrorism-caused] outages were to occur during times of extreme weather, they could also result in hundreds or even thousands of deaths due to heat stress or extended exposure to extreme cold.???
One of the recurring memes of the Cult of Cyberwar is the insistence that the electrical grid can be disrupted with little effort by cyberattack on the infrastructure.
This pernicious meme has created the impression that catastrophically turning off the electricity in parts or all of the United States can be done by many, simply by pushing software buttons from the internet.
The NAS report has this to say on “cyber vulnerability:???
If they could gain access, hackers could manipulate SCADA systems to disrupt the flow of electricity, transmit erroneous signals to operators, block the flow of vital information, or disable protective systems. Cyber attacks are unlikely to cause extended outages, but if well coordinated they could magnify the damage of a physical attack. For example, a cascading outage would be aggravated if operators did not get the information to learn that it had started, or if protective devices were disabled.
That’s about it, essentially.
The report describes the biggest hazard to the electrical grid as physical, not digital.
Physical attacks by terrorists, which are deemed not likely but possible, could — for example — destroy critical high voltage transformers. (The physical failure of such a transformer serving New York City, by Sandy and rising water levels, was recently and repeatedly on television and preserved on YouTube.)
“Although major terrorist organizations have not attacked the US power system, such terrorist attacks have occurred elsewhere in the world,??? reads the report. “Simply turning off the power typically does not terrorize people. However, the United States should not ignore that possibility of an attack that turns off the power before staging a large conventional terrorist event, thus amplifying the latter’s consequences.???
And there you have one clear cut example of outright lying in a news piece, an exercise in which a National Academy of Science report is used to buttress an extravagant claim when the actual report did nothing of the kind. The report was about the potential consequences of grid failure, largely as the result of either natural disaster or potential terrorist plots that successfully destroy large components of infrastructure, both in the physical, not digital, realm.
Readers please take note: Who are the two unnamed talking heads in this video? DD blog wants to know.
The US national security megaplex has set up a system rife with internal contradictions. As a consequence it has no firm ground to stand on when making arguments about what is and is not appropriate conduct by other nations.
And so it is with the shoeshine of cyberwar. NSA director Keith Alexander, or General Keith Shoeshine, now slightly infamous for making the absurd claim that cyberwar against the United States constitutes “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” is a man who can only make arguments from authority.
This was on display on Tuesday of last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The chief of the military’s newly created Cyber Command told Congress on Tuesday that he is establishing 13 teams of programmers and computer experts who could carry out offensive cyberattacks on foreign nations if the United States were hit with a major attack on its own networks, the first time the Obama administration has publicly admitted to developing such weapons for use in wartime.
“I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team,??? Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.???
General Alexander has been a major architect of the American strategy on this issue, but until Tuesday he almost always talked about it in defensive terms …
Since it was theater, no one asked a tough question.
A tough question would have been to ask our cyberwar shoeshine man why the US had created an environment in cybersecurity that was one big conflict of interest.
Last year Alexander spent a lot of time campaigning in support of cybersecurity legislation. That effort failed in Congress. But during it he lobbied for more instantaneous “information sharing” on cybersecurity threats, signatures and trouble between the government and corporate America.
However, in cyberspace the US government, in developing and unleashing malware on its enemies in the Middle East, has made a world environment where vulnerabilities are commodities and capabilities, information not to be shared because of applications in cyber-weaponry.
The history with regards to information sharing is fifteen years old.
It started with the Clinton administration where it was vigorously pursued by Clarke and assistant secretary of defense John Hamre. They argued for an exception to be added to the Freedom of Information Act, one to encourage corporate America to be forthright about its computer security intrusions, secure in the knowledge its secrets were safe from competitors and journalists armed with FOIA.
They got what they wanted. And it didn’t make a substantial difference. Subsequently, every year — between then and now — someone has always argued for ever more information sharing. Corporate America is not transparent. A frictionless system of information passage with it cannot be created.
Paradoxically, the US government has contributed to the creation of a global Internet security environment where information is not to be shared because there is value in that. Critical vulnerabilities have great worth in cyber-weapons development. This has created a gray market in which the vulnerabilities, information of zero social value, are sold at good profit.
As with discussions about cyberwar and the creation of cyber-weapons, the American government, by its actions, has cut the ground from under its feet on being in position to take the high ground, right from the start.
You can’t have operations reliant upon security information sharing and security information hoarding and develop trust. In fact, no one should trust you to do the right thing at all. It’s a natural and obvious conflict of interest.
Sorry, General Shoeshine.
Unfortunately, we have a press that gave up on pointing stuff like this out years ago. And the New York Times article on Alexander’s Congressional testimony did not mention it.
General Keith Shoeshine of the NSA believes cyberwar is causing the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.
Can you see the shaded area where cyberwar and Chinese hacking created the greatest loss of wealth in US history?
In England there are still a few people willing to call rubbish rubbish.
Cyberattacks pose more of a threat to the United States than a land-based attack by a terrorist group …
The warning by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper came in his annual report to Congress on the threats facing the United States.
“Attacks, which might involve cyber and financial weapons, can be deniable and unattributable,” Clapper said in prepared remarks before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
However, there is only a “remote chance” of a major cyberattack on the United State that would cause widespread disruptions, such as regional power outages, [the] report says
This is a worrisome facet of how the United States is entering the age of cyberconflict. President Barack Obama has signed off on a new doctrine, but it remains classified. There’s a new national intelligence estimate of cyber-espionage and its economic costs, but it remains under wraps.
From the New York Times:
It is imperative that nations come together to develop rules of engagement for cyberwar. These rules should:
• Protect a certain amount of critical infrastructure from attack;
• Declare botnets and irregular cyberforces as unlawful combatants;
• Prohibit countries from transmitting cyber-attacks through another country’s networks without permission; and
• Require countries to assist in the investigation of cyber-attacks.
Jody R. Westby is the chief executive of Global Cyber Risk, a security consulting firm, and is the chairwoman of the American Bar Association’s Privacy and Computer Crime Committee. She is a co-author of “The Quest for Cyber Peace.”
The quest for cyber-peace. Global Cyber Risk, a collection all white
upper class career lawyers, some of whom have written legal papers and books on cybercrime nobody not paid to pay attention to would.
Specialties: global business development and risk management, shoeshine.
During a recent off-the-record meeting, a senior government official warned that cyber attacks on United States in 2013 will be worse than they were in 2012, a year during which they reached a peak. (Participants were free to use what they were told, but not to disclose the names or venue).
Representatives of private corporations in the audience were told that there is not one whose computers have not been hacked. The official appealed to self interest (“you spend scores of millions on brand ‘D’ and someone else brings it to the market at a fraction of the cost, after stealing the fruits of your studies???), communitarian concerns (“don’t let your computers be used as a basis for attacking others???), and patriotism (“our systems are only one-third secure???). He pointed out that beyond stealing trade and defense secrets, computer hackers destroyed the data of the computers of Saudi Aramco, and warned that they could easily bring down our infrastructure, from the electrical grid to banking.
The White House on Monday accused China of hacking U.S. companies on an “unprecedented scale” and demanded that the attacks stop, in the administration’s most pointed public criticism yet.
National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon called on the Chinese government to recognize the urgency of this issue, investigate and stop the alleged hacking, and be part of a process to create international rules of the road for appropriate activities in cyberspace.
“Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Mr. Donilon told the Asia Society in New York. “The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country,” he said.
One almost pities the current administration.
The Republican Party refuses to recognize the result of the November election with the result being the president cannot govern, except when it comes to these types of petty exercises in reprimanding the alleged great menaces to corporate America. And the President cannot make such a frank statement without creating an international incident.
For a corporate America that threw all its support behind the Republican Party last year.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how our cyberwar and national security shoeshine boys sleep at night, inhabiting, as they do, a world that is all moral hazard. Well, they probably either were, or became, sociopaths a long time ago.
“With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening …” reported the New York Times a week ago.
“The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.
“The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.”
Oh, the Chinese are hacking Apple and everybody else, too! It’s really working!
A bit over a week ago the mainstream newsmedia covered the release of a new report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one documenting an explosive rise in domestic extremist groups. One of the initiators is the presidency of Barack Obama and the persistent belief — now going on five years — that he is going to take away the guns.
The number of anti-government, far-right extremist groups has soared to record levels since 2008 and they are becoming increasingly militant, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It says the number of groups in the “Patriot” movement stood at 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president, an increase of 813%. The report said the rise was driven by opposition to Obama and the “sputtering rage” over federal attempts at gun control …
“We are seeing a real and rising threat of domestic terrorism as the number of far-right anti-government groups continues to grow at an astounding pace,” said Mark Potok, SPLC senior fellow and author of the report. “It is critically important that the country take this threat seriously. The potential for deadly violence is real, and clearly rising.”
Potok said that the demographic factors driving the rise in such groups began before Obama became president – the census bureau predicts that whites will become a minority group in the US by 2043 – but have been fuelled by the changes in America he represents. The growth in extremism has been helped by the “successful exploitation over illegal immigration” and by anger over the gun control debate, he said.
Law enforcement officials have uncovered numerous terrorism conspiracies born in the militia subculture, including plots to spread poisonous ricin powder, to attack federal installations, and to murder federal judges and other government officials …
While I didn’t comment on it at the time, the report, entitled Challengers from the Sideline: Understanding America’s Violent Far Right, analyzed right wing domestic terrorism for contributing factors. The strongest correlator was the number of seats held in the House of Representatives by Republicans.
Simply, right wing violence escalates when their are more GOP Reps. The report reasoned this might be because those perpetrating right wing violence feel supported ideologically by Republicans in that body.
The other possibility, of course, is that the rhetoric emitted by the Republican Party in control of the House creates an environment in which some people feel empowered, or moved, to violence against the government.
The other contributing factor was legislation, specifically that having to do with gun control. The Brady Bill, or Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, signed into law in 1993 during the Clinton administrations, caused a spurt in militia growth and related right wing violence in that period. Two years later Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building in the most lethal act of right wing domestic terrorism in this country’s history.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok told news reporters he “expected extremism to rise, as anger over gun control had become a ‘grassroots rebellion.’. He said that 20 states are considering laws that would aim to nullify federal gun control measures and 500 sheriffs mainly in western US, who say they will not enforce any such measures.”
The ricin plot, which I covered here as the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang, involved four old men who discussed plans to bomb federal buildings and disperse the poison, was a non-starter but rife with the type of language emitted by the insurrectionist right.
Two of the men pleaded guilty. Two remain to be tried on making a weapon of mass destruction. A bucket of castor beans in a shed was recovered by the US government as evidence, along with one of the old internet ricin recipes, uploaded into cyberspace now well over 20 years ago by a bored teenager.
Disclosure: I was consulted on the nature of the recipe because I’m the person who wrote most authoritatively on the subject during the war on terror years. This is when the newsmedia routinely spread the canard that ricin was easy to make simply by downloading instruction from the Internet, a stupid belief that persists to this day.
The recipe doesn’t make ricin. It makes degreased castor powder from castor seeds which contains some ricin, some or all of which may be degraded depending on the instructions actually followed.
No people have died as a result of attacks using ricin in the entire war on terror. And while al Qaeda has periodically evinced interest in using ricin, it has never done so. In fact, more white right-wing Americans have been arrested and jailed on wanting-to-make-ricin beefs than any other nationality. More specifically, it’s almost exclusively a WhiteManistan thing, where it originated a long time ago.
The Georgia case also illustrates the FBI does have a dragnet out for right wing terror plots, one that makes use of informants recruited to infiltrate potential domestic terror cells.
In slightly related news, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity issued a report about a week ago and almost nobody paid a lick of attention.
This is notable for the fact that the Center was regularly in the news with reports and predictions that catastrophic bioterrorism was imminent and easy to carry out during the salad days of the war on terror.
This was because the UPMC Center for Biosecurity was the house that Tara O’Toole built. When O’Toole left to take a position in the Department of Homeland Security, all the zing and mojo went with her.
As you’ve guessed, or knew, the UPMC Center for Biosecurity existed only to dispense shoeshine on the threat of bioterrorism.
Its most recent report, entitled When Good Food Goes Bad, was covered only by Food Safety News.
From Food Safety News:
From its headquarters on Baltimore harbor, the 15-year-old Center for Biosecurity of UPMC looks out on the historic Coast Guard Cutter Taney, the last ship afloat to have immediately fought back when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.
The way the Taney instantly turned its guns on the enemy is just the sort of reaction the U.S. needs to mount whenever and wherever there is an outbreak of foodborne illness, according to the Center’s new report “When good food goes bad??? …
The Biosecurity Center’s interest in foodborne illness outbreaks apparently stems from the 2010 “credible threat??? by Al-Qaeda terrorists to poison salad bars and buffets at hotels and restaurants over a single weekend, using ricin and cyanide. “U.S. officials cautioned that even in small amounts of these chemicals in food could cause serious harm,??? says the report.
That plot was not executed, but highlighted the problem. “Initially, it will be very difficult to distinguish deliberate contamination of the food supply from a naturally occurring outbreak,??? it says.
The Center for Biosecurity researchers who probably have never actually seen any real documents from terror cases on food plots using ricin (and cyanide) have only one citation for this in their report, a brief piece issued by CBS News back in 2010.
“Manuals and videos on jihadist websites explain how to easy it is to make both poisons,” informed CBS.
Perhaps they have also missed the facts that al Qaeda has been smashed and that, I’ll repeat, more white American men have been convicted for fiddling with castor beans than any other nationality.
And that no ricin plots in America have ever gone forward. In any case, the report is classic shoeshine work, stuff of no value to most Americans unless they’re in the homeland security business.
Most recently, the al Qaeda comic book Inspire, now at issue number ten, recommended jihadists start causing “road accidents” and setting fire to cars.
“We all agree the Kuffar chose the wrong path,” it reads. “Now it’s time for their vehicles to also leave the right path. Demolition Derby Style.
“The best timing for a ‘Causing Road Accident’ operation is during night hours, especially on Sunday night. Most of the Kuffar will be either drinking or showing off their driving talents to their friends. In addition to the poor visibility due to the scarcity of light (hmmm, hasn’t ever been to LA at night, obviously). Thus it is hard for your ambush tools to be noticed.”
Ingenious. What could they work out next? Perhaps urinating in ice machines at hotels and motels?
Last year, Inspire recommended setting forest fires. And six months earlier, running people over with a pickup truck armed with a snow plow.
They all worked well.
Anyway, the Center for Biosecurity report recommended the US government strengthen food surveillance.
“Fewer food safety inspections and an increased risk to consumers will result from the lack of a new 2013 budget from Congress and the upcoming across-the-board spending cuts, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said …” reads a recent news piece, also at CBS.
It should be noted that, so far, the sequester is happening but al Qaeda is not.
“[Hamburg] said most of the effects wouldn’t be felt for a while, and the agency won’t have to furlough workers … Still, she said, ‘We’re going to be struggling with how to really grapple with the cuts of sequestration … clearly we will be able to provide less of the oversight functions and we won’t be able to broaden our reach to new facilities either, so inevitably that increases risk.’ ”
New category, Shoeshine. The growing parts of the American economy are devoted to it, armies of upper middle class lickspittles employed as process workers and analysts in it. It had to happen.
