06.17.13

Cult of Cyberwar gored, Shoeshine suppressed

Posted in Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 8:14 am by George Smith

The Edward Snowden affair has done many things. One of the most signal is its (at least momentary) destruction of the US government/national security megaplex’s campaign of cyberwar shoeshine.

In the weeks preceeding the emergence of Edward Snowden’s information on cyber-spying in the US government had conducted a carefully staged p.r. operation to paint China as the primary sinner in cyberspace — a country that was not playing fair, one mercilessly targeting our networks and “intellectual property” in the cyber equivalent of a clandestine war.

This was said, most notoriously by NSA director Keith Alexander, to constitute “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” The economic future of the United States was imperiled by Chinese espionage.

The Snowden affair has silenced Alexander on this matter. If only for the time being. And the crisis has forced him to explain, very poorly, what US cyber-spying and cyberwar operations are really up to.

That’s easy to summarize. It was so before Edward Snowden spilled the beans to the Guardian.

The US has been quietly building the biggest cyberwar machine in history.

This should not be a surprise. It’s been fairly obvious to people on the outside who follow the matter, even looking at the black box.

The US outspends every other nation, in every facet, of military development and deployment.

Why should cyber-operations be any different?

The hypocrisy on the subject, practiced by the majority of the US mainstream media is overwhelming.

A couple months back, while running the fund-raising pitch for DD blog, I noted the mainstream media had simply gone absent. It stopped serious reporting on many national security issues and almost completely took up the government line that many enemies were preparing to cut the country down through remote manipulation.

The United States was being surveyed and probed, its networks penetrated in advance of a time when the financial system would be attacked, nationwide power blackouts caused, the water poisoned, almost all facets of modern life disrupted.

And the media accepted all of it, passing on what’s called the “chumpbait” unhindered, no skepticism allowed. Critical response, I remarked — half jokingly, had been banished to, at best, 140-character tweets on Twitter.

The week leading up Snowden’s expose delivered a perfect example of US cyberwar chumpbait.

The Washington Post had been leaked a “confidential” portion of a Pentagon report on China. The “confidential” part was said to reveal massive Chinese infiltration of US networks and the making off with unspecified details on expensive and very important US weapons systems.

An analysis of it is here.

Excerpted:

If you’ve been following along it’s no secret the US government and the national security industry have been waging an increasingly concerted campaign to increase cyber-defense spending. The linchpin of the strategy is the relentless argument that Chinese hackers, under the guidance of its government and military, are into all American corporate business, military networks and the nation’s infrastructure. Because of this catastrophe looms.

Another ploy in this orchestrated theatrical production arrived today in the guise of the Defense Science Board report, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat

However, it is not the same report the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima publicized in a big story on alleged deep Chinese cyberespionage directed against the US military and its arms manufacturers.

“Designs for many of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems have been compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a report prepared for the Pentagon and to officials from government and the defense industry,??? writes Nakashima for the Post.

The public version of the DSB report contains only three instances of the word “China??? and only one of “Chinese.??? “Espionage??? appears only four times in report’s 146 .pdf pages.

What does this mean?

It means one of the Defense Science Board’s members or minions — which can be any number of a pool of representatives from arms manufacturers like Boeing and Northrop Grumman, to consultants to these same businesses or small national security “think tanks??? or lawyers in legal firms providing consultation on cybersecurity issues under contract to the Department of Defense — leaked the real report, the “confidential??? part, to the Washington Post.

These are never selfless acts to get word out about an emerging national threat. That’s not how things work.

What it is is another report, among an increasing number, aimed at growing the national security industry’s cyberwar and cyber-defense programs, in which many of the Defense Science Board’s members are employed.

The secret report, the one the Washington Post tells us about, is to redirect attention toward a new threat. It is part of a national argument that generally lumps all cyber-crime , cyber-spying and claimed cyberwar into one big threat aimed at the United States, over everyone else.

Leaks aimed at fostering government and industry agendas on national security are always applauded. They’re perfectly acceptable shoeshine for national security aims.

On the other hand, Edward Snowden-style leaking, material that shows what the national security complex is really doing, stuff that immediately starts up an acrimonious global stink is abhorrent, even treasonous.

From the wire, today, China delivers a formal response to the Snowden reveal:

China made its first substantive comments on Monday to reports of U.S. surveillance of the Internet, demanding that Washington explain its monitoring programs to the international community.

Several nations, including U.S. allies, have reacted angrily to revelations by an ex-CIA employee over a week ago that U.S. authorities had tapped the servers of internet companies for personal data.

“We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community’s concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing.

The Chinese government has previously not commented directly on the case, simply repeating the government’s standard line that China is one of the world’s biggest victims of hacking attacks.

A senior source with ties to the Communist Party leadership said Beijing was reluctant to jeopardize recently improved ties with Washington …

Snowden told the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s main English language newspaper, last week that Americans had spied extensively on targets in China and Hong Kong.

He said these included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the site of an exchange which handles nearly all the city’s domestic web traffic. Other alleged targets included government officials, businesses and students.

At the briefing, Hua rejected a suggestion that Snowden was a spy for China. [This claim has been delivered by Dick Cheney, among others.]

This is sheer nonsense,” she said, without elaborating.


Just ended at the Guardian, an on-line interview with Edward Snowden. Snowden gave answers showing completeness and sophistication.

The last question he answered was germane to an alleged “free press” operating in a country that isn’t really a true democracy anymore:

So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? – tikkamasala

[Snowden]:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

The question and answer session, now over, is here.

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