Web Is War: We All Live In a Warzone Now

Now the Internet is a battlefield.

The United States Armed Forces have officially advanced into a fifth theater of warfare with yesterday's release of the Department of Defense's Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace (here's the pdf). The department's strategy had been stewing for a while, purposefully embargoed until after the White Housed revealed its "International Strategy for Cyberspace" (pdf) last May. At a curt 19 pages, the plan entails five strategic initiatives. The DoD will:

• treat cyberspace as an operational domain to organize, train, and equip so that DoD can take full advantage of cyberspace's full potential;
• employ new defense operating concepts to protect DoD networks and systems;
• partner with other U.S. government departments and agencies and the private sector to enable a whole-of-government cyberspace strategy;
• build robust relationships with U.S. allies and international partners to strengthen collective cybersecurity;
• leverage the nation's ingenuity through an exceptional cber workforce and rapid technological innovation.

The plan also warns of the "low barriers to entry" for nefarious web activity. This includes the proliferation of readily available hacking tools, which democratize the potential for any "individual or small group" to inflict crushing blows to the DoD and U.S. national and economic security writ large. Not surprisingly, then, the strategy emphasizes virtual redemption. James Andrew Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies tells PBS that the DoD has “identified the right problems and the right approaches to addressing them.”

And, hey, what timing. Speaking from the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn outlined the strategy while admitting that some 24,000 files were lifted last March from a "defense contractor developing weapons systems and defense equipment," according to Al Jazeera, by some as-yet-undisclosed nation-state. There have been grumblings that the U.S. is totally unprepared to go on the cyberdefensive, a claim amplified earlier this week in one of the largest hacks in history. Anonymous affiliate "AntiSec" hacked consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton, releasing over 90,000 military e-mail addresses and passwords. They also wiped 4 GB of source code.

But officials took pains to dispel the whole we're-militarizing-the-Internet thing. Lynn explained how brute retaliation would only be result of a cyberattack passing for "an act of war" with effects akin to those of "kinetic," physical offensives and, even then, only if the president gave the nod. And as Howard Schmidt, White House cybersecurity adviser, told NPR: "My father was in a war. My son's been in a war. I've been in a war. And this is not what we're going through right now."

Take cover?

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