Reality Bytes

Virtually every major business and government function is connected and often fully operated through a constant array of analytical sensors, computers and/or servo-control mechanisms. Right down to the level of the computer brain in your car to the mobile device in your hand to your financial life (online or not), you are connected to the vast network of electronic bits and bytes that pretty much govern every facet of your life. Grids and networks overlap, speak to each other, as medical records cross wires with interbank transactions passing stock trades and electrical power grid control signals slide by. Maybe the federal government has a “second Internet,” black cables buried in unmarked underground passageways – an interesting phenomenon particularly in and around Washington, D.C. – but it is hackable and vulnerable nonetheless. Somewhere, even that system is connected to the rest.

In an era of budget-cutting and shifting priorities, military and civilian operatives vying for dollars, everything is a priority to somebody. We are also so good at crying “wolf” that the litany of horribles if we don’t do this or that is increasingly looking like white noise that seems too easy to tune out. We scream this threat or that threat, go to war or launch missiles or saber rattle all the time. Sometimes the threat is real. Sometimes, government has a Pinocchio moment (remember Colin Powell at the United Nations with his clear evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction?). So what if our digital connectivity is vulnerable? So what?

But there is hacking going on all the time. From criminals trying to get your credit card and social security numbers, to sport-hackers trying to seek how far they can go, to data scrapers pushing to the edge of what’s legal to find out everything they can about you so that they can sell that information to advertisers and __________(???), to U.S. governmental operatives looking for more threats to foreign governments trying to break in and perhaps break the system. More damage could be inflicted on the United States by killing our financial system and/or shutting down our power grid and/or stopping modern telecommunications… well you get the picture. And it’s not as if hostile forces out there aren’t trying.

Congress seems to embrace deadlock, each side holding out on the other because the willingness to compromise has left the building, a reality that is unlikely to change no matter who is in the White House next January. The GOP has told the Dems that after the election when “Mitt is President,” he will reach across the aisle for their support… within his parameters and limitations of course and only if they follow his agenda… and the Dems have retorted that they are no more “Mister Nice Guy” when it comes to compromise, that they will continue this horrible game of political chicken in the new administration, when “Barack is reelected.” Meanwhile a fiscal cliff looms, and neither party is likely to have a sufficient hold on Congress next year to be able to blow away the log jam.

Combine all these variables and get back to cyber security. What do you get? Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls the threat a “cyber Pearl Harbor” in the making. “In a speech at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, Mr. Panetta painted a dire picture of how such an attack on the United States might unfold. He said he was reacting to increasing aggressiveness and technological advances by the nation’s adversaries, which officials identified as China, Russia, Iran and militant groups…  ‘An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches,’ Mr. Panetta said. ‘They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.’

“Defense officials insisted that Mr. Panetta’s words were not hyperbole, and that he was responding to a recent wave of cyberattacks on large American financial institutions. He also cited an attack in August on the state oil company Saudi Aramco, which infected and made useless more than 30,000 computers… In August, a cybersecurity bill that had been one of the administration’s national security priorities was blocked by a group of Republicans, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who took the side of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and said it would be too burdensome for corporations.

“The most destructive possibilities, Mr. Panetta said, involve ‘cyber-actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at one time, in combination with a physical attack.’ He described the collective result as a ‘cyber-Pearl Harbor that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life, an attack that would paralyze and shock the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability.’ ” New York Times, October 11^th. Yep, but they want more available boots on the ground, more “they aren’t as reliable as we had hoped” F-22s in the air and a whole lot more swanky stealth ships on the sea. What if they have nothing left to protect? Do you believe Mr. Panetta this time?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the entire notion of global conflict is profoundly different today than at any other time in history… and we need to understand the new rules of engagement.