Pentagon Launching Net Attacks

Today's jihadists don't just use the Internet, occasionally. "They don't exist without the Web," says Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla. Everything from recruiting to training to propaganda is handled online. Which is why "the U.S. military has been quietly developing capabilities to attack enemy computer networks, including hacking into terrorist Web sites," USA Today reports.

“You should not let them operate uncontested” on the Internet and elsewhere in cyberspace, said Marine Brig. Gen. John Davis, who heads a military command located at the National Security Agency. The command was established to develop capabilities to attack computer networks.

Davis and other officials declined to say whether the military has attacked computer networks, which would require presidential authorization. The techniques are highly classified.

Pentagon contract documents show the military asks companies to develop a “full spectrum ... of computer network attack techniques.” Run by the Air Force Research
Laboratory, this program aims to spend $40 million over four years, documents show.

The growth in offensive capabilities signals a shift in military thinking from just monitoring terrorist Web sites for intelligence to attacking them...

Cyber-attacks can take different forms, including eliminating terrorist
Web sites and creating doubts among insurgents about their networks’
security, said Arquilla, who favors an offensive approach he calls a
“virtual scorched earth policy.”

The question is whether the online terror-hunters can be smart and precise in their pursuits. That hasn't always been the case.

"Congress publicly registered its impatience with the management of the National Security
Agency yesterday as lawmakers criticized the agency's new multibillion-dollar effort to identify, track and analyze emerging threats in cyberspace," Siobhan Gorman notes in today's Baltimore Sun.
"Dubbed 'Turbulence,' the signature initiative of the NSA director, Lt. Gen.
Keith B. Alexander, is experiencing "management deficiencies" just 18 months after it was launched."

The other day, I was at a counterterror meeting in the Los Angeles area. One speaker, towards the end of his presentation, showed a series of the baddest of bad guys: Pablo Escobar. The Unabomber. Osama Bin Laden. And then, finally... Wired's Kevin Poulsen.

Uh, sorry guys. You're going to have a little more discriminating than that. I mean, who's afraid of Pablo Escobar, these days?

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