July 21, 2010 - No. 137
United States
Friends of Freedom of Information?
- Nestor Nuñez, Radio Havana Cuba,
July 3, 2010 -
• United
States: Friends of Freedom of Information? - Nestor
Nuñez, Radio Havana Cuba
• U.S. Cyber Command: Waging War in the World's
Fifth Battlespace - Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO
United States
Friends of Freedom of Information?
- Nestor Nuñez, Radio Havana Cuba,
July 3, 2010 -
The news could come as a surprise for those that are
fascinated by the imperial propaganda regarding freedom of expression.
It seems that the U.S. government is trying to assume
the power to cut Internet services in its country using the excuse of a
"national security threat" or undesirable disturbances in the network.
The White House will have a special office that would
turn overnight into the great national censor, the work that at smaller
scale is done by the editorial staff of radio and television outlets
that represents the owners of the mass media and their interests.
Briefly, I believe that the current formula
should be for freedom of information.
It is not that information cannot flow worldwide, but we
cannot be naïve or lack objectivity on the issue.
The malfeasance in the not so
hidden
pretensions of U.S. officials is that only they can censor, manipulate,
alter, silence or amplify as they wish. With their dirty hands they go
about the world proclaiming freedom of information while they are the
first to not respect or allow it. In fact, according to the
ADSL Zone website, the so called Protecting Cyberspace as a
National Asset Act (PCNAA) [introduced as a U.S. Senate Bill on
June 10 -- TML Ed.], attempts to justify itself with an axiom that "the
country cannot wait for a cybernetic September 11 attack to take place
in order to react."
To decide what can be done or not on the Internet will
remain in the hands of the Cyber Security National Center, itself
subordinate to the executive branch which would be the top authority in
these cases.
Of course, for many analysts the passage of such a law
would be like the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of
control of the traffic of news on the Internet which in fact is a
privilege in the hands of the powerful and from which a large scale of
the rest of the planet are excluded.
The creation of the Internet was tied precisely to
"national security" issues, when the Pentagon looked for specific ways
to transmit orders, acquire data and process
military and espionage information in nearly real time.
Afterwards, with the development of the Internet in
civilian life, a
monopoly was established, mainly from the U.S. In fact, the majority of
the total number of servers is based in the U.S., while close to 75
percent of Internet access is concentrated in North America and Western
Europe. The rest of the planet comprises a little more than 20 percent.
If you add to this that 90 percent of the information
that circulates in the world comes from news sources controlled and
established in the United States and its allies, the truth is far from
free -- we are faced with a colossal tyranny of imperial media.
Among the circles of the powerful there is still no
satisfaction with these overwhelming totalitarian figures. It seems as
if the plan that underlies the new official U.S. dispositions is for
this despotism to be as absolute as possible.
Africa has some 1.5 percent of Internet browsers; Asia
15: the Caribbean 0.6; Central America 1; South America 3.5 percent and
Oceania 2.8.
Without a doubt, this is a strange understanding of
"freedom of information."
U.S. Cyber Command:
Waging War in the World's Fifth Battlespace
- Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, May 26, 2010 -
On May 21 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
announced the activation of the Pentagon's first computer command. And
the world's first comprehensive, multi-service military cyber
operation.
U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), initially approved on
June 23, 2009, attained the status of what the Pentagon calls initial
operations capability eleven months afterward. It is to be fully
operational later this year.
CYBERCOM is based at Fort Meade, Maryland, which also is
home to the National Security Agency (NSA). The head of the NSA and the
related Central Security Service is Keith Alexander, U.S. Army
lieutenant general on the morning of May 21 but promoted to four-star
general before the formal launching
of Cyber Command later in the day so as to become its commander.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Alexander for his new position
on May 7. In written testimony presented to Congress earlier, he stated
that in addition to the defense of computer systems and networks, "the
cyber command would be prepared to wage offensive operations as well..."[1]
Two days before his confirmation the Associated Press reported that
Alexander "said the U.S. is determined to lead the global effort to use
computer technology to deter or defeat enemies."[2]
The conjunction "and" would serve the purpose better than "or."
The day Alexander assumed his new command Deputy Defense
Secretary William Lynn "called the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command
at Fort Meade, Maryland, today a milestone in the United States being
able to conduct full-spectrum operations in a new domain," adding that
the "cyber domain... is as important
as the land, sea, air and space domains to the U.S. military, and
protecting military networks is crucial to the Defense Department's
success on the battlefield."[3]
The Pentagon's second-in-charge is not the only person
to refer to cyber warfare as the world's fifth battleground after those
of land, sea, air and space, nor to link the first with the other four.
Indeed, the Defense Department's Quadrennial
Defense Review released earlier this year focuses on "a broader range
of military responsibilities, including defending space and cyberspace,"[4] and the Pentagon's space operations are now
grouped with cyber warfare as the
new Cyber Command is subsumed under U.S. Strategic Command
(USSTRATCOM), which is in charge of the militarization of space as well
as the global interceptor missile project, information warfare and
related missions.
In its own words, "USSTRATCOM combines the synergy of
the U.S. legacy nuclear command and control mission with responsibility
for space operations; global strike; Defense Department information
operations; global missile defense; and global command, control,
communications, computers, intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR), and combating weapons of mass
destruction."[5]
"U.S. CYBERCOM is a sub-unified command under U.S.
Strategic Command, of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. But it will be
run out of the super-secretive communications-gathering National
Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md."[6]
Three months ago U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General
Norton Schwartz addressed a conference of the Air Force Association,
but he "did not mention fighters, special operations or mobility,"
instead concentrating on space and cyberspace. "We have an enduring
need for robust space and cyberspace capabilities,"
he told the audience.
The Air Force Times
provided background information regarding Schwartz's comments and
connected the role of space and cyber warfare: "Space and cyberspace
missions were brought together last year, when the service moved many
of its communications and computer missions into Space Command and
created
the 24th Air Force to be the service's in-house 'cyber command.'
"At the same time, Space Command's nuclear missile role
was transferred to the new Global Strike Command."[7]
The 24th Air Force will be joined by the Army Forces
Cyber Command and the 10th Fleet and Marine Forces Cyber Command
(representing the four main branches of the U.S. armed forces) in
providing the first 1,000 personnel for the new multi-service Cyber
Command.
The day that CYBERCOM was launched, the Pentagon
announced that "The U.S. Army will consolidate 21,000 soldiers in its
cyber warfare units under a new unified command led by a three-star
general." Army Forces Cyber Command, ARFORCYBER, "will be fully
operational by October at Fort Belvoir,
Virginia, a sprawling base south of Washington," and will achieve
"unprecedented unity of effort and synchronization of Army forces
operating within the cyber domain." In the words of the Army's chief
cyber commander, Major General Steven Smith, his service is "trying to
understand what a cyber warrior should
be, and how they should be trained."[8]
A few days before the Air Force revealed that since last
November it has transferred at least 30,000 troops from communications
and electronics assignments to "the front lines of cyber warfare."[9]
Earlier this month Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller was cited as maintaining
that "The Pentagon would consider a military response in the case of a
cyber attack against the United States." He was quoted as proposing a
direct military reaction to computer attacks, stating "we need to
think about the potential for responses that are not limited to the
cyber domain."[10]
Placing computer security, including in the civilian
sector, under a military command is yet another step in the direction
of militarizing the treatment of what are properly criminal or even
merely proprietary and commercial matters. And preparing responses of a
decidedly non-virtual nature in return.
The Pentagon and the National Security Agency will not
be alone in the endeavor to establish and operate the world's first
national cyber warfare command. As usual, Washington is receiving
unconditional support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the
military bloc it initiated in 1949 and has extended
throughout Europe and, operationally, into Asia, Africa and the Middle
East over the last eleven years.
NATO not only provides the U.S. with 27 additional
voices and votes in the United Nations and as many countries through
which to transit and in which to base troops and military equipment, it
also -- through its Article 5 mutual military assistance provision --
allows for American military deployments and
creates the pretext for armed confrontation in alleged defense of other
member states. Troops from all 28 NATO members and over 20 partner
states are embroiled in the nearly nine-year war in Afghanistan because
Article 5 was first invoked in September of 2001.
Stating that "The Parties agree that an armed attack
against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be
considered an attack against them all," Article 5 is in large part the
foundation of and the impetus for the Pentagon's Cyber Command.
The clamor for a cyber warfare capacity began among
leading American and NATO officials during and immediately after
attacks on computer systems in Estonia in late April and early May of
2007. The small country, a neighbor of Russia which had been inducted
into NATO three years earlier, accused Russian
hackers of the attacks on both government and private networks, and the
charge was echoed in the West with the additional insinuation that the
government of then Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the
campaign.
Three years later the accusations have not been
substantiated, but they have served their purpose nonetheless: NATO
dispatched cyber warfare experts to Estonia shortly after the events of
2007 and on May 14, 2008 the military bloc established what it calls
the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence
(CCD COE) in the nation's capital of Tallinn.
The bloc's Article 5 has been repeatedly -- and given
its nature ominously -- evoked in reference to alleged cyber crimes and
attacks, and Estonia has been portrayed as both the model victim of
such assaults and the rallying point for a global cyber warfare
response to them.
From the genesis of the drive for U.S.-NATO cyber
warfare operations Russia has been the clearly implied if not always
openly acknowledged target.
In an August 2008 column in the influential Wall
Street Journal entitled "Russia's Aggression Is a Challenge to
World Order," two leading U.S. senators, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey
Graham, called for "reinvigorating NATO as a military alliance, not
just a political one. Contingency planning
for the defense of all member states against conventional and
unconventional attack, including cyber warfare, needs to be revived.
The credibility of Article Five of the NATO Charter -- that an attack
against one really can and will be treated as an attack against all --
needs to be bolstered."[11] This
January U.S.-based Google accused Chinese hackers of "sophisticated
cyberattacks" and since then Beijing has joined Moscow as the most
frequently cited antagonist in future cyber conflict scenarios,
intimately linked to comparable disputes in space over military and
civilian
satellites.
The British House of Lords issued a report in mid-March
of this year that explicitly asserted "Britain needs to work more
closely with NATO to fend off 'cyber warfare' on critical national
infrastructure from former cold war enemies such as Russia and China,"
and which "highlight[ed] the dangers of attacks
on the internet, banking and mobile phone networks by the Russians in
Estonia three years ago."[12]
A few days before NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, while promoting the military
bloc's new Strategic Concept in nominally non-aligned Finland,
reiterated that although Article 5 military defense of the Alliance's
28 members' territory remains NATO's chief function, it isn't
sufficient to "line
up soldiers and tanks and military equipment along the borders," as the
bloc needs "to address the threat at its roots, and it might be in
cyber space," adding that an "enemy might appear everywhere in
cyberspace."[13]
A year earlier Rasmussen's predecessor as head of the
Western military alliance, the Netherlands' Jaap de Hoop Scheffer,
foreshadowed NATO's preparations for its 21st century Strategic
Concept, unveiled by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
and her self-styled Group of Experts at NATO headquarters
this May 17, in stating "we need to take a broader approach and
gradually consider the notion of collective security, rather than
strictly collective defence."[14]
To expand the North Atlantic bloc's missions
internationally, the distinction between military threats and a
multitude of self-identified security concerns needs to be blurred.
The litany of non-military excuses for NATO
interventions throughout the world includes frequently intangible,
unverifiable and highly subjective factors like perceived missile
threats, climate change, demographic shifts and dislocations, and
"storms and floodings" amid "a myriad of determined and deadly threats"
as Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd's of London, characterized
NATO's current challenges at a conference his firm co-organized with
the military bloc last October 1.[15]
Arguably by their very nature, cyber security issues are
among the most amorphous, nebulous and ethereal threats that can be
devised (and concocted) and as such are characterized by near universal
applicability and the effective impossibility of being disproven. An
indispensable arrow in the Pentagon's and NATO's
collective quiver, then.
In the speech cited above, former NATO chief Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer specifically addressed the matter of cyber security,
demanding that NATO "should consider drawing on the unique capabilities
that already exist in our military and look to build on them. They
could, for example, form a rapid response service
to support Allies and perhaps even partners in the event of an attack.
And given the vital role that space and satellites now play within our
cyber networks, should we not also start to follow activities in space
more closely and consider the implications for our security?"[16]
In June of last year U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo
Daalder, former National Security Council staffer currently on loan
from the Brookings Institution, also tested the waters on whether the
Alliance's Article 5 war clause should be activated in response to
"energy strangulation" or "a cyber or bio attack of unknown
origin."[17]
"Energy strangulation" -- that is, the accusation of
energy cutoffs to Europe -- is inevitably coupled with charges of cyber
attacks in Europe and both are in exclusive reference to Russia. For
example, in Scheffer's recommendation of last year on the application
of NATO's Article 5 for cyber and space use he
added this:
"The disruption of a
country's energy supply can destroy the economic and social fabric of a
country in a way that resembles a war -- yet without a single shot
being fired. It is therefore vital that NATO defines what added value
it can bring, for example in terms of protecting critical
infrastructure or securing
chokepoints through which supply lines run."[18]
In her May 17 remarks to NATO's North Atlantic Council
on the new Strategic Concept, Madeleine Albright stated that "NATO must
maintain a flexible mix of military capabilities, including
conventional, nuclear, and missile defense" and laid stress on "the
primacy of Article 5," which stipulates that "the Alliance
must continue to treat collective defense as its core purpose."
Among threats justifying the activation of Article 5 are
"cyber assaults and attacks on energy infrastructure and supply lines."[19] Her group's report demands that NATO
"accelerate efforts to respond to the danger of cyber-attacks by
protecting its own communications and
command systems, helping allies to improve their ability to prevent and
recover from attacks, and developing an array of cyber-defense
capabilities aimed at effective detection and deterrence."[20]
Anticipating the Pentagon's William Lynn by two months,
NATO's Director of Policy Planning Jamie Shea said that "120 countries
currently have or are developing offensive cyber attack capabilities,
which is now viewed as the fifth dimension of warfare after space, sea,
land and air..."
On March 22 "Shea said there are people in the strategic
community who say cyber attacks now will serve the same role in
initiating hostilities as air campaigns played in the 20th century."[21]
Shortly after this year's presidential election in
Ukraine, the country became the first non-NATO member to be recruited
for cyber defense cooperation with the North Atlantic military bloc.
"On 11-12 February 2010, cyber defence experts from Ukraine, NATO and
Allied countries participated in the first NATO-Ukraine
Expert Staff Talks on Cyber Defence in Kyiv."[22]
NATO's pioneer project in this area, though, remains its
cyber warfare center in Estonia. The operation's experts "second-guess
potential adversaries, gazing into what they dub the 'fifth
battlespace,' after land, sea, air and space."
Colonel Ilmar Tamm, the top Estonian military official
at the site, was quoted late last month claiming "Definitely from the
cyber-space perspective, I think we've gone further than we imagined in
science fiction."[23]
Estonian Defence Minister Jaak Aaviksoo spoke with
Agence France-Presse about events in 2007 and the present, saying "It
clearly heralded the beginning of a new era... It had all the
characteristics of cyber-crime growing into a national security threat.
It was a qualitative change, and that clicked in very many
heads. Cyber-security, cyber-defence and cyber-offence are here to
stay. This is a fact of life."[24]
On April 23, the second day of a NATO foreign ministers
meeting in the Estonian capital, a memorandum of understanding was
signed which "creates a legal framework for cyber defence cooperation
between NATO and Estonia. It will facilitate the exchange of
information and provide means for create a mechanism
for assistance in case of cyber attacks.
"The agreement was signed on behalf of NATO by
Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero, Deputy Secretary General..."[25]
The individual who personifies the organic and
inextricable connection between the Pentagon and NATO is the one who
simultaneously heads up U.S. European Command and is NATO's Supreme
Allied Commander Europe, from General Dwight Eisenhower in 1951 to
Admiral James Stavridis currently.
On February 2 of this year Stavridis said that because
of "attacks on computer networks in Estonia, Georgia, Latvia and
Lithuania in the past several years," although he didn't offer either
specifics on or substantiation for the claim, "the definition of
protections for NATO members should be expanded."
The four countries identified as victims leave no doubt
as to who Stavridis views as the perpetrator.
Addressing an Armed Forces Communications and
Electronics Association conference and speaking of NATO's Article 5, he
said that the "likelihood that the next conflict will start with a
cyber attack rather than a physical attack highlights the importance of
changing the treaty's definitions."[26]
Employing a line of reasoning that he has repeated in
the interim, he said, "In NATO we need to talk about what defines an
attack. In a country like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all NATO members,
what defines an attack? I believe it is more likely that an attack will
come not off a bomb rack on an aircraft, but
as electrons moving down a fiber optic cable. So this is a very real
and germane part of this challenge that we face in the cyber war."
NATO's top military commander was also paraphrased as saying that "NATO
has taken the first step toward making cyber warfare combat an
international effort by standing up the
Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence in 2008 in Estonia, but
facing cyber threats will require cooperation among U.S. government
agencies, and between governments and industry as well."[27]
In early May Stavridis delivered a speech in Paris in
which he again highlighted "new threats facing NATO from cyber space"
in relation to "NATO's role in combating these threats, in particular
Article 5 operations and collective defence."[28]
On May 19 he appeared as the guest of honor at a special
Commanders Series event at the Atlantic Council[29]
in Washington, D.C., where he was introduced by Madeleine Albright two
days after she had presented her Group of Experts report on NATO's 21st
century global
Strategic Concept in Brussels.
Stavridis boasted that NATO nations have a combined
gross domestic product of $31 trillion, have over two million men and
women under arms, and "130,000 soldiers and sailors and airmen and
Marines on missions on three different continents." The above despite
the fact that "No nation has ever attacked a
NATO nation."[30]
His presentation was accompanied by slides and his
comments included: "I think that Secretary Albright's paper hits this
exactly right. We must, as an alliance, begin to think coherently about
cyber. We find here the flags of four states that have been involved in
cyber intrusions. [Presumably the four former
Soviet states he identified in February.] I think it's important that
as an alliance, we begin to come to grips with what is a cyber attack.
"We need centers that can focus on it; we need
procedures to provide defensive means in this world of cyber."[31]
Cyber defense and its inevitable correlate, cyber
warfare, are integral components of Pentagon and NATO warfighting
doctrine, embodied as such in the U.S.'s new Quadrennial Defense Review
and in NATO's latest Strategic Concept to be formally adopted at the
bloc's summit in Lisbon, Portugal this November.
Cyber warfare as an element of military operations in
the other four spheres -- land, air, sea and space, especially in the
last -- and in its own right. With the most advanced computer networks
in the world and the most capable corps of cyber specialists in all
realms, the world's military superpower has launched
the first military cyber command.
Notes
1. Agence France-Presse, May
12, 2010.
2. Associated Press, May 5,
2009.
3. U.S. Department of Defense, May 21,
2010.
4. Financial Times, January 31,
2010.
5. U.S. Strategic Command,
http://www.stratcom.mil/about.
6. Stars and Stripes, May 22,
2010.
7. Air Force Times, February
19, 2010.
8. Stars and Stripes, May 22,
2010.
9. Air Force Times, May 19,
2010.
10. Agence France-Presse, May
12, 2010.
11. Wall Street Journal, August
26, 2008.
12. The Telegraph, March 18,
2010.
13. Agence France-Presse, March 4, 2010.
14. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
March 11, 2009.
15. "Thousand Deadly Threats: Third
Millennium NATO, Western Businesses Collude on New Global Doctrine,"
Stop NATO, October 2, 2009,
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine.
16. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
March 11, 2009.
17. Defense News, June 8, 2009.
18. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
March 11, 2009.
19. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
May 17, 2010.
20. Aviation Week, May 18, 2010.
21. Defense News, March 23,
2010.
22. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
February 22, 2010.
23. Agence France-Presse, April 24, 2010.
24. Ibid.
25. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
April 23, 2010.
26. Defense News, February 2,
2010.
27. Ibid.
28. North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, May 7, 2010.
29. "Atlantic Council: Securing The 21st
Century For NATO", Stop NATO, April 30, 2010,
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/atlantic-council-securing-the-21st-century-for-nato.
30. Atlantic Council, May 19, 2010.
31. Ibid.
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|