Considering this administration's record in protecting our freedom, I get a little nervous when I read about another frontier about to be secured by our Department of Defense.
Now, the U.S. Air Force is setting up a cyberspace command. Reuters has the story, which was carried by The New York Times and The Washington Post:
[http://today.reuters.com/...]
U.S. Air Force prepares to fight in cyberspace
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it was setting up what could become a new four-star command to fight in cyberspace, where officials say the United States has already come under attack from China among others.
"The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command as the provider of forces that the President, combatant commanders and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told an industry conference.
This non-techie went Googling around, turning up more from an article written for InsideDefense.com
[http://www.military.com/...]
In part, the service is standing up the new cyberspace outfit in an attempt to ramp up their abilities to protect U.S. military information networks and block attacks aimed at those electronic realms. The move also embodies the latest step by Wynne and (Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael) Moseley to elevate cyberwarfare to the same high-profile status as land-, air- and sea-based battles, as well as the military's growing dependence on space assets.
Increasing activities in cyberspace will put the nation's most technologically capable force on a path to do our share of the task of presenting to our president and the nation, and therefore the combatant commanders, the trained and ready forces they may need to ensure the same securities and freedom of cyberspace that many [around the world] already enjoy in the oceans, in the air and in space, Wynne said this week.
While service officials contend they have yet to fashion cost estimates for creating and operating the new outfit, they say the fiscal year 2009 budget cycle will be key for the new command. That budget process will offer the service its first opportunity to implement a research, development and acquisition strategy for cyberspace. The two service leaders have tasked Air Force Materiel Command with formulating that plan, according to the September missive.
Hopefully, the cost estimates will be in the regular Pentagon budget (subject to oversight) and not the unitemized supplemental budget.
As William M. Arkin of The Washington Post blog "Early Warning" puts it:
... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has hit upon a perfect device for both public control and executive autonomy. He has turned crisis into a permanent state of excess. "Emergency" funding has now become the regular state of affairs. We have, in fact, two defense budgets, a regular budget that receives some scrutiny and is somewhat limited, and an emergency supplemental that grows ever larger without much outside oversight.
But this is conjecture.
Fascinated, I searched for more and found a treasure trove on
MSNBC, which introduces us to Lt. Gen. Robert Elder:
[http://msnbc.msn.com/...]
Air Force prepares to fight in cyberspace
Louisiana base will house command to take battle into wild virtual yonder
Heading the new command will be Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, who said its capabilities would include, for instance, taking down a financial network if ordered to do so by the president or defense secretary.
and
Lani Kass, who headed a cyber task force set up in January by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, told the same briefing that the United States was already at war in cyberspace. She said U.S. foes were using it to attack "asymmetrically," meaning going after vulnerabilities.
In addition, she said, China was a U.S. "peer competitor" in cyberspace and had been involved in efforts to "exfiltrate" information from U.S. networks for at least 10 years -- an activity she said probably was on the "upswing."
And back to Elder's thinking:
Elder, referring to any U.S. foe, added: "If they want to fight with us in cyberspace, we're willing to take them on there, too."
So, our President Bush, who has unlimited powers to redefine anything, will determine "foe," I presume.
I know cybersecurity has been a priority for the likes of Richard Clarke, who now focuses on this in his consulting business. I certainly would like to hear his opinion.
But I am thankful that my curiosity peaked, for this non-techie was led to many a new Web site, and I will share with you.
For a simplified background, DailyKos' John Boy introduced us to:
[http://www.dailykos.com/...]
There is more than one internet
As the World Wide Web was a huge success within the scientific community long before the general public was aware of it, the underlying technology (TCP/IP) was used for everything done by the military. For example, when the pilot selects a target from the avionics computers in an aircraft, the target information is downloaded to the computer on the missile or bomb by TCP/IP. Yup, when you see a plane or a helicopter, you are looking at an internet.
So, the military has its own Internet. Hmmm ...
Then, we are enlightened by "China Builds a Better Internet" (long, but full of information):
[http://www.cio.com/...]
(subhead)
Americans have been hogging Internet addresses for decades, leaving late-comers like China to divvy up the few remaining slivers. But China is fighting back by vaulting to an addressing standard that could rewrite the rules of the Internet--and business innovation--for decades to come.
... with an interesting sidebar:
[http://www.cio.com/...]
A New Weapon for Control and Intelligence?
China's NextGeneration Internet could further tighten its control over Internet access and traffic while offering a strategic advantage in foreign intelligence.
China's NextGeneration Internet (CNGI) has U.S. national security implications as well. While the level of Chinese military involvement in CNGI is unclear, the People's Liberation Army has designed its own IPv6 router, and a recent China IP Council white paper mentions that IPv6 networks have "military and intelligence" uses. Unrestricted Warfare, a widely translated treatise on military doctrine written by two People's Liberation Army officers, calls for China to engage the West in nontraditional combat, and suggests tactics such as computer hacking and cyberterrorism.
DailyKos' alizard wrote a diary on this:
[http://www.dailykos.com/...]
China wants to leverage IPv6 (and probably a true broadband infrastructure in progress) into technological dominance over America and everyone else and worldwide control over the Internet.
...
If the US is going to even stay competitive in the coming world, we not only have to keep up with China in the IPv6 game, we have to upgrade our communications infrastructure to where it is competitive with First World nations.
Add to this the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, which KingOneEye introduced to us in August:
[http://www.dailykos.com/...]
And the not-to-be-left-out Department of Homeland Security's efforts illuminated by aneirin:
[http://www.dailykos.com/...]
I am feeling a sense of encroachment, wariness, nay, fear that our Net freedoms are about to be "regulated" one way or another and in ways we hadn't dreamed of.
From Lt. Gen. Elder:
[http://www.smallgovtimes.com/...]
The Air Force has been operating in cyberspace for some time, but the efforts have been widely dispersed, Elder said. Also, cyberspace efforts until now have been mostly focused on defensive operations to protect the Air Force's network, he said.
"The cultural change is that we're going to treat it as a warfighting domain, and we're going to actually focus attention and put priority on doing things in cyberspace and then balance it against air space and even terrestrial operations," he said.