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The Cyber Wars Begin: Obama Says US "Must Retaliate" Against China For Historic Data Breach
On Friday, we highlighted a "secret" NSA map which purports to show every Chinese cyber attack on US targets over the past five years. "The prizes that China pilfered during its ‘intrusions’ included everything from specifications for hybrid cars to formulas for pharmaceutical products to details about U.S. military and civilian air traffic control systems," intelligence sources told NBC, who broke the story.
The release of the map marked the culmination of a cyber attack propaganda campaign which began with accusations that North Korea had attempted to sabotage Sony, reached peak absurdity when Penn State claimed Chinese spies had taken control of the campus engineering department, and turned serious when Washington blamed China for what was deemed "the largest theft of US government data ever." "Whether all of this is cause for the Pentagon to activate the 'offensive' component of its brand new cyber strategy remains to be seen," we said yesterday.
As it turns out, the Office of Personnel Management breach will indeed be used to justify a cyber "retaliation"against China, because as The New York Times notes, "the hacking attack was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases [do] not apply." Here’s more:
The Obama administration has determined that it must retaliate against China for the theft of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans from the databases of the Office of Personnel Management, but it is still struggling to decide what it can do without prompting an escalating cyberconflict.
The decision came after the administration concluded that the hacking attack was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases did not apply.
But in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among options that range from largely symbolic responses — for example, diplomatic protests or the ouster of known Chinese agents in the United States — to more significant actions that some officials fear could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two countries.
That does not mean a response will happen anytime soon — or be obvious when it does.
So the US will do something, it just doesn’t yet know what or when or even if anyone will notice, but one thing is clear: "this aggression will not stand, man."
The problem with "symbolic" responses is that they are merely, well, symbolic, and any real retaliation risks escalating the "cyberconflict." Then again, not doing anything also risks prompting an escalation:
But over recent days, both James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the military’s Cyber Command, have hinted at the internal debate by noting that unless the United States finds a way to respond to the attacks, they are bound to escalate.
Mr. Clapper predicted that the number and sophistication of hacking aimed at the United States would worsen "until such time as we create both the substance and psychology of deterrence."
This echoes the rhetoric from the DoD’s "cyber strategy" released in April which says that "deterrence is partially a function of perception [and] works by convincing a potential adversary that it will suffer unacceptable costs if it conducts an attack on the United States."
For now at least, it looks like criminal charges are off the table.
The Justice Department is exploring legal action against Chinese individuals and organizations believed responsible for the personnel office theft, much as it did last summer when five officers of the People’s Liberation Army, part of the Chinese military, were indicted on a charge of the theft of intellectual property from American companies. While Justice officials say that earlier action was a breakthrough, others characterize the punishment as only symbolic: Unless they visit the United States or a friendly nation, none of them are likely to ever see the inside of an American courtroom.
"Criminal charges appear to be unlikely in the case of the O.P.M. breach," a study of the Office of Personnel Management breach published by the Congressional Research Service two weeks ago concluded. "As a matter of policy, the United States has sought to distinguish between cyber intrusions to collect data for national security purposes — to which the United States deems counterintelligence to be an appropriate response — and cyber intrusions to steal data for commercial purposes, to which the United States deems a criminal justice response to be appropriate."
Instead, the US may look to remove the so called "great firewall" which Beijing uses to censor content it considers to be subversive or otherwise objectionable.
One of the most innovative actions discussed inside the intelligence agencies, according to two officials familiar with the debate, involves finding a way to breach the so-called great firewall, the complex network of censorship and control that the Chinese government keeps in place to suppress dissent inside the country. The idea would be to demonstrate to the Chinese leadership that the one thing they value most — keeping absolute control over the country’s political dialogue — could be at risk if they do not moderate attacks on the United States.
So perhaps there's a silver lining in all of this: China's 650 million internet users may, if only for a split second, be free to surf the web without the Politburo filter.
Of course if the US really wanted to do some cyber damage, the Pentagon could hack into China's National Bureau of Statistics and see what the country's real GDP figure looks like, and if that doesn't teach them a lesson, maybe the best option would be to breach China Securities Finance Corporation and hit the "sell" button.
Finally, for those interested to monitor the global cyber war in real time, you can do so via Norsecorp by clicking on the following map.
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John D. Rockefeller died in 1937.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. died in 1960.
jest sayin
The USG lets in 250,000 Chinese students every single year, who knows how many are actually students. They also let in untold amount of business visas to The US, which by the way they just extended the visa to 5 years for students and 10 years for business people. Also there are many coming in on investment visas. There are millions of Chinese in the US coming from China. Attack within. They have the numbers here and we keep letting them in. I'm sure the US has been hacking China for decades. I'm just asking why let so many in when many can be spies and I think impossible to track them all.
Some of those Chinese Babes in my class are super hot. If they are spies maybe they'll try to debrief me?
This is a set-up for more State-sponsored terrorism by the "Western Banking Military Corporate Mafia". BTW - remember Napolitano warned of large cyber-attacks and, yet to come, the "natural" (cough-cough) man-made disaster larger than Super-storm sandy and worse than the nation has seen...she was dogmatic and these things generally happen 2-3 years after the statement; we are in that time-frame. Right now CaliPornia is burning and do believe for a second that most, if not all, were started by the fascist regime for reasons not yet evident.
Why not start by revoking "most favored nation" status? This can be done by Executive Order.
Amend the constitution to permit government lying all the time.
Cover all your bases once and for all.
At this point, who would believe a single thing the NSA says?
And what type of cyber attacks has our beloved government been pulling off in China (and Russia etc...) for the last decade?
And this zulu won some sort of Peace Prize
OPM wasn't "hacked"... they had CHINESE NATIONALS working on their servers. That's about as "hacked" as the people on Facebook who leave their computers unlocked, logged into FB, then cry, "I WAS HACKED!!!"
Time to go back to pen and paper records...
If the govt stpped using social securiry #'s then most of this fraud against the people and govt officials would stop.
Wouldnt you agree three letter govt agencies hmmm?
Because you are so concerned aboit the american people arent you?!?!???
The Chinese dumped their Cisco routers and Windows PCs a couple years ago, so it will be much harder for the U.S. to hack!
The reason these attacks are successfull is the backdoors created by the NSA. They now have to choose between respecting our privacy or sharing our data with the Chinese.
If Obama said retaliate, there will be no retaliation. Hasnt anyone else noticed this pattern?
My RAM schtick is bigger than yours.
Why do people put important shit on-line?
and what the fuck with these pop up adds?
Just this week Obama called for the US to surpass China and achieve the goal of fastest computer in the world by 2025. Instead of that, why didn't he recommend we shoot for an outside the box solution to computer hacking. I think we might get more out of it than a title of the fastest computer.
The real shit is your H1Bs walking out the door with *all* your shit on 256GB DDR3 USB3 thumbs. In their kooch if necessary, behind the copying machine for recovery when they can't. There's an app for that. Dumbfuck C*s. All the commie quotas in HR? They hated you before they buroughed in, man.
WTFU
Nailed it.
"Everybody takes something from their last job"
How many foreign spies slip through the cracks with all the H1B visa holders that are allowed in to the country?
They have no clue where any so-called hacking originated from and they don't care. This is merely symbollic bullshit. A bogus excuse to create tension with China that the majority of the sheeple will fall for.
We will have to EMP them over there so they can't EMP us over here.
NSA blackmailed the companies to build-in backdoors into (almost) every HDD
NSA blackmailed SW companies to build-in backdors (like Microsoft, or RSA)
BSA blackmailed IT services companies to build-into their clouds spying sw
NSA blackmailed Telecoms to install eavesdropping on every switch
NSA blackmailed network providers to build into every product (SW and HW ) backdoors.
NSA blackmailed DELL HP IBM/Lenovo.....to build into their servers chips-backdoors.
I am very surprised, that now the same NSA complains about the ability of some thugs to expoit all those weaknesses, which have been built into HW, SW, security, Network, even services (to collect passwords)....
FUll morons.
China has nothing worth stealing - Obama is dumb muslim house nigga
Lol WTF! It really is a day of bizzare thoughts and news.
Complaining about data being stolen of 20 million Americans by China and how much data does the NSA & cohorts like GCHQ grab of the 7 billion population worldwide THAT ARE NOT AMERCIAN usng the likes of Apple or Microsoft?
That has to be the biggest hypocrisy this century so far don't ya think?
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Once upon a time the fairytale I knew was the USA stood up for all the right things in the world... You know human rights, common good, etc. etc. and was supported because it was the right thing to do. Through actions and policies over the last couple of decades that candle flickers and glows a little dimmer every day.
All this scare mongering...
First Assange, then Snowden, then the North Koreans, now it's China?
It's the new frontier... time to erect the Great Firewall of USA... privacy has now been eliminated... Lol
Let me be the first to call Cyber Bullshit! It's just another False Frag Attack by the Israelis and the NeoCons. Of course to save our Internet they will have to take it away from us de Frag it.
The sheer amount of jackassery coming out of DC is staggering
Soon it will be an olympic event.
Men's Jackassery for the Gold.
I take it the banks are seeing a downturn in Mid East war profits and are looking to juice their returns if they've trotted out the "We've always been at war with Eastasia" meme.
Que the "Two Minutes of Hate".
Ut Oh! I'm sure the Chinese are pissing in their rice bowls over that threat. Jeez what an absolute shill for big corporate donations this imbecile has become.
What about American attack on the whole world.
Each and every computer is infected by NSA of amreeka.
Even the firmware & bios is not spared.
Every hard disk & router is a game to NSA reporting everything back to Amreeka.