gregory donovan's eportfolio (a syndication of cyberenviro.org)
Archive for cyberwar
by gtdonovan on November 14, 2011 at 1:47 pm · Filed under boundaries, commerce, cybercity, cybercrime, cyberwar, e-commerce, geoeconomics, geography, quotes, uk, William Hague
From British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s 10/18/2011 guest editorial in Spiegel :
Web-based industry has already become a critical part of our economies. The UK’s industry is already worth £100 billion, accounting for 8% of our total GDP, and is forecast to grow at 10 percent over the next four years. Globally, e-commerce sees $8 trillion change hands each year …
Our reliance on cyber blurs geographical boundaries, breaks down traditional cultural and religious divides, brings families and friends closer together and enables contact between those who share common interests or concerns.
by gtdonovan on August 30, 2011 at 12:33 pm · Filed under cyberwar, Estonia, governance, Internet, link, NATO, norway, security, surveillance, terrorism
“At the moment one thing is clear — as a preventive measure we plan to increase the capacity of Internet monitoring so we can pick up information from the Internet about possible attack plans or anything that can jeopardise internal security,” he told AFP.
by gtdonovan on March 4, 2011 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Al Jazeera, China, Clinton, cyberwar, informationalism, media, quotes, Russia, Senate, TV, war, youth
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2, 2011:
We are engaged in an information war. During the cold war we did a great job in getting America’s message out. After the Berlin Wall fell we said ‘OK fine, enough of that, we did it, we’re done. ‘ And, unfortunately we’re paying a big price for it. And, our private media can not fill that gap . . .
We are in an information war, and we are losing that war. I’ll be very blunt in my assessment. Al Jazeera is winning. The Chinese have opened up a global English language and multi-language television network. The Russians have opened up an English network. I’ve seen it in a few countries and it’s quite instructive . . .
We are in information war and we cannot assume that this youth bulge that exists not just in the middle east but in so many parts of the world really knows much about us. I mean we think they know us and reject us, I would argue the really don’t know very much about who we are. (emphasis added)
by gtdonovan on December 8, 2010 at 4:06 pm · Filed under AEI, Assange, cyberdominance, cyberwar, informationalism, insurance, quotes, security, wikileaks
Welcome to the informational: where jailbreaking your iPhone is a threat to national security, the global dominance of Goldman Sacks depends on government-based policing of proprietary trading code, and WikiLeaks is a thermonuclear device.
From the transcript of Andrew Marr’s interview with Mark Stephens (WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s lawyer):
ANDREW MARR: Now another thing that we read today is that he has a file, a further file of even more damaging and explosive information which he is keeping as a kind of insurance policy.
[ . . . ]
MARK STEPHENS: Well I think the problem is that they have been the subject of the cyber attacks, they’ve been the subject of censorship around the world and they need to protect themselves, and this is I think what they believe to be a thermonuclear device effectively in the electronic age. (emphasis added)
The nouns may change but the verbs stay the same.
-UPDATE 12.09.2010 @ 11:25AM-
In a Washington Post OpEd, the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute ratchet up the WikiLeaks/WikiWeapon rhetoric (h/t IGP Blog):
Like the war on terror, we have been attacked in this new cyber war in ways we did not anticipate . . .
. . . He recently announced through his lawyer that if he is arrested, he will unleash a “thermonuclear device” of completely unexpurgated government files. Think about that: Assange has threatened America with the cyber equivalent of thermonuclear war . . .
. . . If WikiLeaks is treating this as a war in cyberspace, America should do the same. The first step is to rally a coalition of the willing to defeat WikiLeaks by shutting down its servers and cutting off its finances . . .
. . . Governments that provide WikiLeaks with virtual safe havens should be told in no uncertain terms: “You are either with us, or you are with WikiLeaks.” (emphasis added)
From the same people that championed the Iraq War before there was a 9/11: You are either with us, or you are against us with WikiLeaks.
by gtdonovan on November 18, 2009 at 2:32 pm · Filed under CENTCOM, CSIS, cyberdominance, cyberwar, governance, informationalism, quotes, security
This past Sunday, 60 Minutes did a segment on cybersecurity titled “Cyberwar: Sabotaging the System.” The segment mostly focused on the “new” national security issues that cyberspace presents, while barely discussing how many of these “new” cybersecurity issues are — at least in part — caused by traditional social engineering. One example being 60 Minutes’ discussion of how CENTCOM‘s networks were infiltrated by an unknown foreign entity that was able to monitor and record all of CENTCOM’s network activity. A serious security breach, but one that is believed to be caused by modified flash drives that were left in physical areas where U.S. military personal would pick them up and use them. When these flash drives were inserted into a CENTCOM computer, it’s believed they unleashed a code that opened a backdoor to the network that allowed the foreign entity to spy.
The most interesting interview from the segment was with James Andrew Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Towards the end of his interview, Lewis offered an excellent explanation of why the U.S. has come to see cyberspace as a matter of national security and of how U.S. cyberdominance is being rationalized:
. . . if you talk to the Russians or the Chinese they say “how can you complain about us when you do exactly the same thing?” It’s a fair point, with one exception. We have more to steal. We have more to loose. We’re the place that depends on the Internet, we’ve done the most to take advantage of it. We’re the ones who have woven it into our economy, into our national security, in ways that they haven’t. So, we are more vulnerable.
The quote reveals an odd contradiction: “We” are repeatedly told by governments, corporations, and various individuals that weaving the Internet into our environment will bring more security – at the same time “we” are told by those same actors that weaving the Internet into our environment makes us less secure.
