White House Cyber Security Guy: There Is No Cyberwar
from the now-if-only-the-rest-of-the-press-would-recognize-this dept
We recently wrote how some special interests have been playing up the idea that there's some sort of cyberwar going on that the US is losing. Of course, there have been similar claims going back for a decade, without anything to support it. Are there state-supported hackers breaking into computers of other countries? Absolutely. Does that reach the level of "cyberwar"? Not at all. At best its a bit of espionage and maybe a tiny bit of sabotage, but escalating it to the cyberwar level only is good for companies trying to sell "solutions." Thankfully, it sounds like there's actually some sanity in the White House over this, as the top cybersecurity adviser to the president, Howard Schmidt, is playing down the whole "cyberwar" rhetoric in an interview with Wired:"There is no cyberwar," Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.Instead, Schmidt seems to be focused on the real issue: espionage. Hopefully, Schmidt's view prevails, and other politicians aren't swept into the moral panic around a non-existent "cyberwar."
"I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept," Schmidt said. "There are no winners in that environment."
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Filed Under: cyberwar, howard schmidt, security
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here are two excerpts from the document:
"We Must Fight the Net. DoD [Department of Defense] is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to "fight the net." " - 6
"DoD's "Defense in Depth" strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will "fight the net" as it would a weapons system." - 13
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Administration schizophrenia
I'm firmly convinced that this is some sort of clash between President Obama (who has a pretty solid commitment to openness) and Joe Biden (who has one of the worst tech records of anyone in Washington).
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Re:
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Not fighting, espionage
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Re: Re:
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Enough Wars
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Fixing our vulnerabilities
There are risks, of course, but no existential ones -- or there shouldn't be, anyway. If it's possible to pose an existential threat to the US (or any other nation) through the internet, the solution is obvious and relatively cheap & easy: disconnect the vital systems from the internet. They should never have been hooked up here in the first place (and most aren't.)
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Sadly, though,
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No Cyberwar? Silly...
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Howard Schmidt
There are more problems with Howard Schmidt than you can possibly imagine.
I have personally tried to whistle-blow an "insider threat" to him that affected his credibility.
Read it and weep: Schmidt Cover-up
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