06.03.13
Today’s dose of cyberwar stupid, courtesy — students!
Because President Obama will be meeting China’s premier, Xi Jinping, will be meeting in southern California this week, count on the press to deluge everyone with pieces on the latter country’s cyberespionage, always said to be stealing our economic future, precious military designs, and everything.
Today the New York Times fulfills the role by finding two students at Yale Law School, both who were about four — or maybe younger — when talk of cyberwar and digital Pearl Harbor plundering the nation first started.
Because they have no history or background in cybersecurity or cyberwar, they are therefore the most senseless and fit for the job.
Write Jordan Chandler Hirsch and Sam Adelsberg of Yale, for the Times:
In confronting today’s cyberbattles, the United States should think less about the Soviets and more about pirates. Indeed, today’s cybercompetition is less like the cold war than the battle for the New World …
Among those who view these hostilities as the cold war redux, some are proposing a more strident response. Earlier this year, the United States military announced the formation of 13 units dedicated to offensive cyberstrikes and endorsed pre-emptive cyberattacks. And late last month, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former ambassador to China, and Dennis C. Blair, the former director of national intelligence, suggested allowing American companies to retaliate against Chinese hackers on their own.
This emergence of cyberhawks in both nations raises the odds of a hack’s [sic] becoming a cyberwar …
This is part of a slightly longer discussion in which the authors warn the country runs the risk of being like Spain sending the Armada against Elizabethan England.
“In these legally uncharted waters, only Elizabethan guile, not cold war brinkmanship, will steer Washington through the storm,” they conclude.
Elizabethan guile.
The only thing remarkable about the piece is that it’s at least the second time in about a week or so the Times has put the crackpot idea — from a lobbying firm for national security and corporate America called the Intellectual Property Commission — that American businesses ought to be empowered to conduct their own retaliatory cyberstrikes against China.
It’s an idea that’s truly excrement and has been treated primarily as such by experts and the tech press, or just about anyone not on the corporate/government cybersecurity payroll.
Nevertheless, the Times continues to push it on its opinion pages, today’s contribution by law students adding to it without actually having the nerve to express much of an opinion about it, one way or another.
What’s needed is Elizabethan guile, though.
Sam Adelsberg recommends Elizabethan strategy. Was about four when electronic Pearl Harbor was invented.
Jordan Chandler Hirsch. Here he recommends we give Israel fuel tankers so it can just go ahead and attack Iran without calling on us.
With future lawyers like this we’re in good hands.
The IP Commission — 1 Percenter stealth business and cyberwar lobby.
Frank said,
June 3, 2013 at 7:23 pm
One of the drivers of the cyberwar hype is that most persons have no idea how networks work.
Their computers are magic boxes filled with delights and danger. They love them and fear them while holding them in awe.
I am hardly a guru, but even I know it’s only ones and zeroes.
George Smith said,
June 4, 2013 at 10:50 am
Not pirates, not Spanish Armada, either.
Mike Ozanne said,
June 4, 2013 at 12:03 pm
Elizabethan Guile? Is that the one where you do nothing decisive other than harassment, until the weather turns nasty and blows the enemy around the far side of Ireland?
George Smith said,
June 5, 2013 at 8:36 am
Egg-zackly. These two and their essay at the NYT were such a standard example of privileged class culture of lickspittle product, it all needed special mention. The whole idea to hope Barack O. would be reading it over breakfast, maybe get to thinking, maybe I could have some of these bright whippersnappers working for me.