Cyber Warfare17

Cyber warfare, sometimes called cyber terrorism, refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct espionage, sabotage, and subversion against a country, its government, its military, or its economy by either state and non-state actors.

Primarily, cyber warfare involves disrupting or damaging the computer systems of competitors or enemies, largely by electronic means but also by such techniques as missiles to destroy satellites and interception and even forging orders. The most obvious points of attack include banking and finance, communications, electric grids, government offices, manufacturing and research, and transportation. The richest military targets are command-and-control systems, air defense networks, and weapons system that require computers to operate. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence estimates that intellectual property theft including client lists, product development test results, financial data, and pricing information cost the US about $400 billion per year and a substantial number of jobs. While the US focuses on physical and economic damage, fragile regimes such as China and Russia (as principals in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) unsurprisingly are more concerned with dissemination of information “harmful to the spiritual, moral, and cultural spheres of other states.” Development of negotiated international agreements to bridge this difference seems unlikely at this point.

With low barriers to entry and high potential for anonymous attack, cyber warfare provides even the weakest of countries with the means to attack the most powerful.

The US divides authority for defense against cyber warfare between the Department of Homeland Security and Cyber Command within the Department of Defense. By 2010, Cyber Command alone was spending about $200 million a year responding to attacks. By 2012, US lawmakers were belatedly beginning to suggest comprehensive approaches to the growing threat. Their first effort, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act [CISPA], passed the House but not the Senate. It would have allowed the government to share information with American companies about attacks and encouraged companies to share information voluntarily about attacks they identify so that computer analysts can develop defenses and share them with other networks.