China vs. US In CyberWars 2007
06/14/2007, 1 year 2 months ago
China and the Web seem to be in the news every day and today is no exception. According to Lt. General Robert Elder, Commander of the 8th Air force and head of the new "three star cyber-command", China is seeking to be the dominant power in cyberspace. The U.S. cyber-command is leading a new push to maintain its superiority in this area according to Elder. It is difficult to imagine Chinese soldiers manning their laptops as at left, but the reality is apparently here.
Net Wars 2007?
According to this news story China is blatant in their plan to unseat the U.S. in cyberspace. Personally, I never would have regarded cyberspace as a battlefield except between Mac and Windows users, so this news is interesting to say the least. Elder's command consists of 25,000 personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense. The command is tasked with taking over the cyber-domain (and I thought that was Google's mission), which is critical to everything from communications to surveillance. The DOD released its annual report on China's military which revealed their attitude towards dominance of computer network communications for defense, attacks and exploitation including electromagnetic dominance in an early conflict. The Pentagon has identified China's People's Liberation Army's units designated to develop viruses for attacking enemy computer systems and networks.
Counter Intel Today
Elder described the bulk of current Chinese cyber-ops as industrial espionage aimed at stealing trade secrets. The general attributed the espionage to Chinese cyber criminals, hackers and "nation-state" forces that scan U.S. networks for defense and trade secrets. This is reminiscent of the "privateers" of the 15 and 1600's in my book, but Elder seeded to include everyone except North Korea in this activity. According to Elder there looks to be only one laptop in that country and the owner is not allowed online.
Weapons 2.0
In October, the Joint Chiefs of Staff defined cyberspace as "characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures." This definition might cover anything from remotely detonated roadside bombs in Iraq, radar jamming and Internet financial transactions to attacks on global positioning satellites.
Conclusion
And I thought Digg was bad! Seriously, is it just me or does this sound like something out of a George Orwell story? The news sheds a whole new light on the stories about U.S. Internet companies and their difficulties entering these Asian markets. I mean, what if YouTube is a front for some western propaganda agents and etc.? We knew Web 2.0 was serious business but it appears we are headed for "at least" some interesting times in regard to how we view the Web. I hope China does not target me as some operative on a mission to point out the collusion between them and Walmart or something. I have a tendency to get paranoid out of imagination any way, and am wondering if my ISP shutdown the other day was a local problem now.
Photo Credits: Reuters Top
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This appears to set a new standard in wilfully uninformed play-journalism. Go your your local library and get out copies of any newspaper with non-zero coverage of international affairs for the first two weeks in May. Look for articles on Estonia.
HI Ian,I see what you mean and do remember hearing of this, thank you for bringing it to my attention. I was however being honest (not always the best policy I guess, but mine) in that I was "officially" unaware that zillions are being spent figuring out how to kill each other with anything on the planet.Of course we all inherently know that this is what we are all about on some governemental and basal levels. I just reported on a story I read and the way it "probably" makes most people feel. Please do not punnish me because I am not wired into the Pentagon yet. Our readers have other interests we have to think about too. For those of you who are interested in "CyberWars" and the hammer with which Ian has chosen to hit me over the head with, please visit this site. http://www.spacewar.com/cyberwars.html. Alternatively, you can go to the BBC and view this story, and if you are a hard core world journalist you could go to the BBC, type in every country on the planet and eventually you would come to Estonia, where if you type in cyberwars there will be no result. However, if you type in exactly "Estonia cyber attacks" you will find the desired story. LOL Cheers Ian, and feel free to wage your own brand of cyberwar any time you need a target. :)Always, Phil