A secret
legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has
concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike
if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming
from abroad, according to officials involved in the review.
That decision is
among several reached in recent months as the administration moves, in the next
few weeks, to approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend,
or retaliate, against a major cyberattack.
New policies
will also govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway
computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if
the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive
code - even if there is no declared war.
The rules will
be highly classified, just as those governing drone strikes have been closely
held. John O. Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and his nominee to
run the Central Intelligence Agency, played a central role in developing the
administration’s policies regarding both drones and cyberwarfare, the two newest
and most politically sensitive weapons in the American arsenal.
Cyberweaponry is
the newest and perhaps most complex arms race under way. The Pentagon has
created a new Cyber Command, and computer network warfare is one of the few
parts of the military budget that is expected to grow. Officials said that the
new cyberpolicies had been guided by a decade of evolution in counterterrorism
policy, particularly on the division of authority between the military and the
intelligence agencies in deploying cyberweapons. Officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the
record.
Under current
rules, the military can openly carry out counterterrorism missions in nations
where the United States operates under the rules of war, like Afghanistan. But
the intelligence agencies have the authority to carry out clandestine drone
strikes and commando raids in places like Pakistan and Yemen, which are not
declared war zones. The results have provoked wide
protests.
President Obama is known to have approved the use
of cyberweapons only once, early in his presidency, when he ordered an
escalating series of cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
The operation was code-named Olympic Games, and while it began inside the
Pentagon under President George W. Bush, it was quickly taken over by the
National Security Agency, the largest of the intelligence agencies, under the
president’s authority to conduct covert action. NY Times
The Pentagon
recently approved a major expansion of its cybersecurity force over the next
several years, increasing its size more than fivefold to bolster the nation’s
ability to defend critical computer systems and conduct offensive computer
operations against foreign adversaries, according to U.S. officials. Washington
Post U.S.
intelligence officials believe China and Russia are the sources of a significant
number of cyber attacks on American companies and government agencies, according
to the NY Times. Chinese hackers
believed to have government links have been conducting wide-ranging electronic
surveillance of media companies including The Wall Street Journal, apparently to
spy on reporters covering China and other issues, people familiar with the
incidents said. WSJ The U.S.
government has grown increasingly concerned about Chinese spying on the
government and U.S. corporations, prompting U.S. intelligence agencies to issue
a report a year ago calling Chinese hackers from the government and private
sector the world's most "active and persistent" perpetrators of industrial
spying. WSJ Chinese hackers
for years have targeted major U.S. media companies with hacking that has
penetrated inside newsgathering systems, several people familiar with the
response to the cyberattacks said. WSJ The U.S. itself
has been named in one of the most prominent cyberattacks - Stuxnet - the
computer worm that attacked an Iranian nuclear facility.
AP
AHT/HJ
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