[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Pentagon's Cyber Command

[Bill Totten]

Formidable Infrastructure arrayed against the American People

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research (April 26 2009)


The Wall Street Journal revealed April 24 that current National Security
Agency (NSA) director Lieutenant General Keith Alexander will "head the
Pentagon's new Cyber Command".

Friday's report follows an April 22 piece published by the Journal
announcing the proposed reorganization. The Obama administration's
cybersecurity initiative will, according to reports, "reshape the
military's efforts to protect its networks from attacks by hackers,
especially those from countries such as China and Russia".

When he was a presidential candidate, Obama had pledged to elevate
cybersecurity as a national security issue, "equating it in significance
with nuclear and biological weapons", the Journal reported.

The new Pentagon command, according to The Washington Post, "would affect
US Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring US 'freedom of
action' in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which
shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense
Information Systems Agency".

How Cyber Command's launch would effect civilian computer networks is
unclear. However, situating the new agency at Fort Meade, under the
watchful eyes of National Security Agency snoops, should set alarm bells
ringing.

Charged with coordinating military cybersecurity programs, including
computer network defense as well as a top secret mission to launch cyber
attack operations against any and all "adversaries", the new command has
been mired in controversy ever since the US Air Force declared it would be
the lead agency overseeing Cyber Command with the release of its
"Strategic Vision" last year.

Since that self-promotional disclosure however, multiple scandals have
rocked the Air Force. In 2007, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber flew some
1,500 miles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air
Force Base in Louisiana with six live nuclear-tipped cruise missiles
affixed to its wings. For nearly six hours, the Air Force was unable to
account for the missing weapons. While the scandal elicited scarcely a
yawn from the corporate media, physicist Pavel Podvig wrote,

"The point is that the nuclear warheads were allowed to leave Minot and
that it was surprised airmen at Barksdale who discovered them, not an
accounting system that's supposed to track the warheads' every movement
(maybe even in real time). We simply don't know how long it would've taken
to discover the warheads had they actually left the air force's custody
and been diverted into the proverbial 'wrong hands'. Of course, it could
be argued that the probability of this kind of diversion is very low, but
anyone who knows anything about how the United States handles its nuclear
weapons has said that the probability of what happened at Minot was also
essentially zero." {1}

As a result of the affair and numerous procurement scandals, Air Force
Chief of Staff General Michael Mosley and Air Force Secretary Michael
Wynne were fired by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for incompetence.
Numerous defense analysts believe this was a major reason why the Air
Force was supplanted as the lead Cyber agency.

While one can reasonably support government efforts to protect critical
infrastructure such as electrical grids, chemical plants, nuclear power
stations or the nation's air traffic control system from potentially
devastating attacks that would endanger the health and safety of millions
of Americans, these goals can be achieved by writing better programs. Yet
from its inception, Cyber Command has been theorized as a nodal point for
launching crippling attacks against the civilian and military
infrastructure of imperialism's enemies.

As I reported last July, Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) is centered at
the secretive Barksdale Air Force Base. At the time, AFCYBER had a unified
command structure and a $2 billion budget through the first year of its
operations.

The Air Force Times reported last year that AFCYBER "has established
seventeen new enlisted and officer Air Force Specialty Codes - creating
major changes in the career paths of more than 32,000 airmen". Whether or
not the command structure already in place will transfer to NSA is unknown
as of this writing. Nor is it clear whether AFCYBER's offensive capability
- real or imagined - will transfer to NSA. But with billions of dollars
already spent on a score of top secret initiatives, included those hidden
within Pentagon Special Access (SAP) or black programs, its a safe bet
they will.

Defense analyst William M Arkin points out in Code Names, that these
programs fall under the rubric of Special Technical Operations (STO).
Arkin defines these as,

"Classified SAPs and other programs, weapons and operations associated
with the CIA and 'other government agencies'. Entire separate channels of
communication and clearances exist to compartment these military versions
of clandestine and covert operations involving special operations,
paramilitary activity, covert action, and cyber-warfare. A STO 'cell'
exists in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at most operational military
commands to segregate STO activity from normal operational activity, even
highly classified activity." {2}

Specific cyber-warfare programs identified by Arkin include the following:
Adversary: an Air Force information warfare targeting system; Arena: an
"object-based" simulation program to create "country studies of electronic
infrastructure characteristics, targeting analyses, operational
information warfare plans" as well as nearly three dozen other cyber-war
programs and/or exercises.

Many of the Pentagon's cyber-warfare initiatives flow directly from
research conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). For example, the agency's Information Processing Techniques
Office (IPTO) has a brief to "create the advanced information processing
and exploitation science, technologies, and systems for revolutionary
improvements in capability across the spectrum of national security needs".

As can be seen from the brief survey above, the vast majority of Pentagon
programs concern Cyber Command's offensive capability of which denial of
service and other attacks against "adversaries" in the heimat are a
distinct possibility. The Journal reports,

"The Department of Homeland Security is charged with securing the
government's nonmilitary networks, and cybersecurity experts said the
Obama administration will have to better define the extent of this
military support to Homeland Security. 'It's a fine line' between
providing needed technical expertise to support federal agencies improving
their own security and deeper, more invasive programs, said Amit Yoran, a
former senior cybersecurity official at the Homeland Security Department.
{3}

The Obama administration is expected to announce the new agency's launch
next week, after completing what it terms a "comprehensive review" in
addition to recommendations for cybersecurity policy.

Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesperson, told the Journal that Gates is
"planning to make changes to our command structure to better reflect the
increasing threat posed by cyber warfare", but "we have nothing to
announce at this time". Morrell said the Department of Defense's 2010
budget proposal "calls for hiring hundreds more cybersecurity experts".

Aside from lining the pockets of enterprising grifters in the shadowy
world populated by intelligence corporations, where top secret clearances
are traded like highly-prized baseball cards, the potential for abuse by
NSA given that agency's key role in illegal domestic surveillance raise
the prospect of further entrenching the agency in our lives.

While Alexander sought to allay fears that NSA was out to run the nation's
cybersecurity programs, he hastened to add that the agency's "tremendous
technical capabilities" would be used to "assist" DHS in securing the
government's civilian networks. But given AFCYBER's brief for offensive
operations, what does this mean for civil liberties?

As The New York Times reported April 17, with NSA leading the charge to
control "the government's rapidly growing cybersecurity programs", critics
within the national security apparatus fear the move by Gates "could give
the spy agency too much control over government computer networks". The
Times avers,

"Rod Beckstrom, who resigned in March as director of the National Cyber
Security Center at the Homeland Security Department, said in an interview
that he feared that the NSA's push for a greater role in guarding the
government's computer systems could give it the power to collect and
analyze every e-mail message, text message and Google search conducted by
every employee in every federal agency". {4}

This is hardly an issue that should only concern government insiders or
those who engage in bureaucratic in-fighting as if it were a blood sport.
As a Pentagon agency, NSA has positioned itself to seize near total
control over the country's electronic infrastructure, thereby exerting an
intolerable influence - and chilling effect - over the nation's political
life.

As we have seen in our recent history, NSA and their partners at CIA, FBI,
et al, have targeted political dissidents: to varying degrees, antiwar
organizers, socialist, anarchist and environmental activists have fallen
under NSA's electronic driftnet, most recently during last year's
Republican National Convention.

As I reported last November, during the RNC conclave in Saint Paul,
Minnesota, local, state, federal officials as well as private security and
telecommunications corporations conspired to target activists, journalists
and concerned citizens during the so-called National Special Security
Event.

The whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a leaked planning document
which outlined the close coordination across multiple agencies, including
the FBI, NSA, US Northern Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (NGA). Cell-phones and other electronic communications were
routinely monitored in real-time and NGA provided detailed analysis
derived from military spy satellites.


A "Strategic Vision" in the Service of Repression

Although the Air Force has lost out to NSA over control of Cyber Command,
AFCYBER's planning document still provides a valuable glimpse into the
formidable infrastructure arrayed against the American people.

In the view of Air Force theorists, the strategic environment confronting
imperialism is described as "unpredictable and extremely dangerous",
characterized "by the confluence of globalization, economic disparities,
and competition for scarce resources".

And as "economic disparities" grow, particularly during a period of
profound capitalist economic meltdown, newer and more effective measures
to ensure compliance are required by the ruling class and its state. This
is underscored by Cyber Command's goal "to achieve situational dominance
at a time and place of our choosing". [emphasis added] According to the
Air Force,

"Global vigilance requires the ability to sense and signal across the
electromagnetic spectrum. Global reach requires the ability to connect and
transmit, using a wide array of communications networks to move data
across the earth nearly instantaneously. Global power is the ability to
hold at risk or strike any target with electromagnetic energy and
ultimately deliver kinetic and non-kinetic effects across all domains.
These cyberspace capabilities will allow us to secure our infrastructure,
conduct military operations whenever necessary, and degrade or eliminate
the military capabilities of our adversaries." {5}

As Wired defense analyst Noah Shachtman wrote last year,

"The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it 'access' to - and
'full control' of - any kind of computer there is. And once the info
warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their
'adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected ...
"Traditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much
about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on
protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the
tone has changed - and become more bellicose. 'Cyber, as a warfighting
domain ... like air, favors the offense', said Lani Kass, a special
assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the
service's Cyberspace Task Force." {6}

While the cut and color of the uniform may have changed under the Obama
administration, placing Cyber Command under NSA's wing will almost
certainly transform "cybersecurity" into a euphemism for keeping the
rabble in line. Indeed, cybersecurity operations are fully theorized as a
means of achieving "full-spectrum dominance" via "Cyberspace Offensive
Counter-Operations",

"Cyberspace favors offensive operations. These operations will deny,
degrade, disrupt, destroy, or deceive an adversary. Cyberspace offensive
operations ensure friendly freedom of action in cyberspace while denying
that same freedom to our adversaries. We will enhance our capabilities to
conduct electronic systems attack, electromagnetic systems interdiction
and attack, network attack, and infrastructure attack operations. Targets
include the adversary's terrestrial, airborne, and space networks,
electronic attack and network attack systems, and the adversary itself. As
an adversary becomes more dependent on cyberspace, cyberspace offensive
operations have the potential to produce greater effects." {7}

And when those "greater effects" are directed against American citizens
theorized as "adversaries" by US militarists and well-heeled corporate
grifters, the problems posed by a panoptic surveillance state for a
functioning democracy increase astronomically.

The already slim protections allegedly afforded by the shameful FISA
Amendments Act have already been breeched by NSA. As The New York Times
reported April 16, NSA interception of the private e-mail messages and
phone calls of Americans have escalated "in recent months on a scale that
went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year". {8}

As Wired reported April 17, the NSA isn't the only agency conducting cyber
operations against American citizens. One of the FBI's International
Terrorism Operations Sections requested an assist from the Bureau's
Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, according to documents
obtained by the magazine under the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI
"geek squad" was in a position to conduct a "remote computer attack"
against the target, and that "they could assist with a wireless hack to
obtain a file tree, but not the hard drive content".

This followed an April 16 report published by Wired that a "sophisticated
FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role
in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and
hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly
declassified documents show".

But as I documented last year in a case involving activists targeted
during anti-RNC protests, with "preemptive policing" all the rage in
Washington, the same suite of hacking tools and spyware used to target
criminals and terrorists are just as easily deployed against political
activists, particularly socialists, anarchists and environmental critics
who challenge capitalism's free market paradigm.

Despite these revelations, the Obama administration is poised to hand
control of the nation's electronic infrastructure over to an
out-of-control agency riddled with corporate grifters and militarists
whose bottom-line is not the security of the American people but rather,
the preservation of an economically and morally bankrupt system of private
profit fueled by wars of aggression and conquest.

Notes:

{1} "US loose nukes", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 12 September 2007

{2} Code Names: Deciphering US Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in
the 9/11 World, Hanover, New Hamphire: Steerforth Press, 2005, page 20

{3} Siobhan Gorman, "Gates to Nominate NSA Chief to Head New Cyber
Command", The Wall Street Journal, April 24 2009

{4} James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Control of Cybersecurity Becomes
Divisive Issue", The New York Times, April 17 2009)

{5} Air Force Cyber Command, "Strategic Vision", no date

{6} "Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers", Wired
(May 13 2008)

{7}  "Strategic Vision", op cit (emphasis added)

{8} http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html


_____


Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay
Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global
Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars,
journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on
Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the
whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State
America: US Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
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(c) Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling..., 2009

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