The coming cyber wars

OP-ED | Richard Clarke

Obama’s cyber strategy is missing the strategy

July 31, 2011|By Richard Clarke

IMAGINE IF President Kennedy issued a nuclear war strategy in the 1960s that omitted the fact that we had nuclear weapons, B-52 bombers, and long-range missiles. What if his public strategy had just talked about fallout shelters and protecting the government? As absurd as that would have been, that is similar to what the Obama administration just did with regard to the nation’s cyber war strategy. The strategy doesn’t even admit that we have cyber weapons.

Under pressure from Congress and commentators to provide a strategy for how the new US Cyber Command will use its “cyber war fighters,’’ the administration recently issued a strategy that was met with barely stifled yawns from cyber experts and military strategists. Apparently, that was the intent. The State Department wanted to avoid charges that the United States was “militarizing’’ cyberspace, or that we were the first to conduct cyber war (the attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz). And the White House wanted to avoid any public discussion of cyber war or our strategy to fight one.

What got issued were five “strategic initiatives.’’ First, the United States will “treat cyberspace as a domain,’’ but only for the purposes of organizing, training, and equipping. There is nothing in the initiative about treating it as a domain for war fighting.

Second, the Pentagon will employ new defense concepts “to protect’’ the Department of Defense. Apparently, those new concepts won’t protect the rest of us.

Third, Defense will partner with other departments and the private sector “to enable a whole of government cyber security strategy.’’ It’s not a “whole country’’ strategy, just government.

Fourth, the Pentagon will build “robust relations’’ with other countries.

Finally, Defense will “leverage ingenuity’’ to create an exceptional workforce and make rapid technology advances.

While it may be difficult to object to those platitudes, it is also hard to call them a strategy. For one thing, they don’t even mention that the United States has an offensive cyber war capability. Somehow that was omitted from the 13-page unclassified document dribbled out by the Pentagon.