06.01.11
We Reserve the Right to Always Be Assholes
In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.
The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.
A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.
Via tip from Pine View Farm, where it is drily noted:
This is a gross over-reaction to making a little-visited website unavailable for a few hours.
Or condensed, as I told SecurityNewsDaily a couple weeks ago re this brewing matter:
“You can frame or phrase it in a different way — the aim [is] to create the impression, through ambiguity, that the U.S. will resort to unreasonably scary escalation if someone who actually controls the levers decides in favor of it … “The U.S. always reserves the right to overdo things. That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,” Smith said. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.”
So could Smith think of any possible cyberattack that would warrant military response? Blacking out the entire Eastern Seaboard? Opening the floodgates on the Hoover Dam?
“I’m not really in the business of making predictions, particularly here. Too many variables, and the intelligence on such matters is always fuzzy,” Smith replied. “I’m going with a conservative ‘no.'”
We’re not going to be seeing the opening of the floodgates of the Hoover Dam in our lifetimes. Or the former.
Chuck said,
June 1, 2011 at 8:25 am
Obviously, just another pretense for war.
I am perpetually amazed how, that on every Memorial Day, there appears not on op-ed pointing out that most of the wars of the last century that the US has engaged in have not been defensive in nature. Those same wars cost many thousands of lives and no Chief Executive is ever held to be responsible for them.
The president’s duties on that day seem to extend to making a speech, laying a wreath and then going golfing.
Until we begin assigning blame for fruitless and wasteful military exploits, we appear to be condemned to repeating them, over and over…
George Smith said,
June 1, 2011 at 9:14 am
Just had a telephone call from some reporter doing a story on this thing. It’s maddening that there are those who actually believe that if the US government says a military response leading to war is proportional to something that has occurred in or through cyberspace, this is the new state of normal.