Cyber Security Policy1.docx
Content
Cyber Security and Defense 2012APR29
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The United States has remained safe on its home front for the last 60 years due to its overwhelming power—we have the biggest bombs, the fastest jets, and the most effective fighting forces on the planet—and other countries know it. Most of this is thanks to our global economic superiority (even in the midst our current economic woes), but in cyberspace, where this doesn’t matter - where any smart individual with a laptop and internet connection can bring down the power to a whole city, steal defense secrets, or weapons information and sell it to a foreign country—these tools are useless and leave us vulnerable. Admiral Cox gave credence to these fears when he answered a question about being able to effectively “shore up our defenses” by saying that we would never be completely safe: there will always be the potential for catastrophic damage through a zero-day attack or unforeseeable exploitation of critical systems. We are already experiencing substantial attack every day as China, our biggest economic threat, condones trillions of dollars of intellectual theft from the private sector. It would seem our only recourse would be to try to send a destructive virus to the individual transgressors computer but doing so would neither prevent the theft nor significantly damage the capabilities of our assailant to do it again. It was also reiterated that the government is currently very reluctant to do any sort of cyber-attack in retaliation because of collateral damage, but what cyber-attack would be worth doing? We are decades ahead technologically, so what would be worth stealing? The Chinese will not extradite a national, so what good is spending the resources to find out who it is? The whole story is nightmarish: a snake biting at the heel with no way to stomp it out. They can bombard our networks with attacks to gain information with nothing to lose. It is not morally acceptable for a government to stand idly by and allow its citizens and national treasure to be plundered on a daily bases with no recourse. It is clearly an act of war, or
2
at least gross negligence, for China to give implicit approbation to such blatant assaults on our economy, and seeing how China manages to control every facet of their citizens’ lives, it is much more likely sanctioned (if not aided) theft than negligence or incompetence. So the question arises: would the United States be morally justified—or even obligated—to use military force in retaliation for cyber-attacks? The Constitution of the United States, which defines the obligations and power of our government, states in the Preamble that its purpose is to: “ … provide for the common defense… and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” In more modern terms this is saying that our government exists to protect our persons from physical restraint but also to protect our property and ability to provide our own economic needs. The Constitution then goes on to allow the government the use of martial force to enforce the charter, so it would seem that, at least Constitutionally, we would be well within our rights (and maybe even obligated) to initiate a war to defend our national treasures. Even though some may argue that cyber-attacks are not substantial enough, would not a physical attack in the same magnitude as the cyberattacks merit violence? We have tried political action and diplomacy to get the Chinese government to crack down on cyber crime, or to at least extradite the criminals for us to punish them, but it is to no avail. We have to be willing to use our military strength as an “extension of politics.” One of the problems with the cyber-attacks is that the offenders are quite often in and out without being detected, it is just “something that happened,” or we do not think that theft from a large corporation is enough justification for killing. But what people do not realize is that this theft represents the loss of trillions of dollars to the economy in the short term, has the potential to drastically slow research and development, and stunt our technological advance; if our
3
government is unwilling to defend the rights of the innovators, and the innovations just get stolen, then there is no longer incentive to invent new technology. It goes without saying that the United States would not tolerate a mass bank robbery or theft of any commodity—we’ve gone to war to keep our oil safe—so why do we tolerate a virtual theft of our nation’s intellectual property, which is perhaps the most valuable commodity we have? When we contemplate physical retaliation for a cyberspace attack, we must consider the potential impact on the innocent people that country—in this case China. The answer is pretty clear through the irrevocable words of Thomas Jefferson: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” A government is a reflection of the will or apathy of a people, and if they condone the action to be undertaken or do nothing to mitigate it, then they are just as guilty as the actual transgressor. Since the Chinese people allow their government to exist and act in the manner it does, and since they do so in many cases at the expense of the American people, they are morally responsible for the actions of that government. It is either a problem of apathy or a difference of culture in which the people do not hold the same respect for property rights as the West, and we have to decide if our sacred right to the fruit of our labor is worth going to war, and if it is, then we must accept as well that the Chinese people will have to suffer for the actions of their government. It is still our prerogative to limit the amount of destruction that would occur, and I think that the use of our superior navy to blockade the country would result in relatively few lives lost, a short war, and sufficient economic impact to coerce acquiescence. With an enemy such as the Chinese plundering our nation for secrets, technology, and money, we cannot afford to take violence off of the table. They represent a threat to the safety of our people, and the only thing currently keeping them at bay is a technology gap that
4
spans multiple decades, but that is now becoming shorter and shorter with each packet of information that they steal. It will not be too long before they have the same technology, the same size economy—maybe even a larger one since they are not restricted by minimum wages and regulations—and they will have at least 5 times our population. Every metric to measure the potential for war power will suddenly be in their favor, and how then will we keep ourselves safe? If they do not respect individual rights, evinced not only by their lack of respect for our citizens property, but also by the state of privation in which they keep their population, then why would they not dominate the world? We have seen before a world with competing powers, and it was full of a terrible death and destruction that only ended at the outset of the cold war and the rise of American superpowerdom. We have earned our right to defend ourselves through centuries of bloodshed, and we have risen to the top because of not only a superior fighting spirit, but perhaps more importantly because of our principles. We must not sacrifice them now and allow this continuing rape of our intellectual assets; we must act through our moral obligation to the security of our citizens’ liberty and prosperity.
1
The United States has remained safe on its home front for the last 60 years due to its overwhelming power—we have the biggest bombs, the fastest jets, and the most effective fighting forces on the planet—and other countries know it. Most of this is thanks to our global economic superiority (even in the midst our current economic woes), but in cyberspace, where this doesn’t matter - where any smart individual with a laptop and internet connection can bring down the power to a whole city, steal defense secrets, or weapons information and sell it to a foreign country—these tools are useless and leave us vulnerable. Admiral Cox gave credence to these fears when he answered a question about being able to effectively “shore up our defenses” by saying that we would never be completely safe: there will always be the potential for catastrophic damage through a zero-day attack or unforeseeable exploitation of critical systems. We are already experiencing substantial attack every day as China, our biggest economic threat, condones trillions of dollars of intellectual theft from the private sector. It would seem our only recourse would be to try to send a destructive virus to the individual transgressors computer but doing so would neither prevent the theft nor significantly damage the capabilities of our assailant to do it again. It was also reiterated that the government is currently very reluctant to do any sort of cyber-attack in retaliation because of collateral damage, but what cyber-attack would be worth doing? We are decades ahead technologically, so what would be worth stealing? The Chinese will not extradite a national, so what good is spending the resources to find out who it is? The whole story is nightmarish: a snake biting at the heel with no way to stomp it out. They can bombard our networks with attacks to gain information with nothing to lose. It is not morally acceptable for a government to stand idly by and allow its citizens and national treasure to be plundered on a daily bases with no recourse. It is clearly an act of war, or
2
at least gross negligence, for China to give implicit approbation to such blatant assaults on our economy, and seeing how China manages to control every facet of their citizens’ lives, it is much more likely sanctioned (if not aided) theft than negligence or incompetence. So the question arises: would the United States be morally justified—or even obligated—to use military force in retaliation for cyber-attacks? The Constitution of the United States, which defines the obligations and power of our government, states in the Preamble that its purpose is to: “ … provide for the common defense… and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” In more modern terms this is saying that our government exists to protect our persons from physical restraint but also to protect our property and ability to provide our own economic needs. The Constitution then goes on to allow the government the use of martial force to enforce the charter, so it would seem that, at least Constitutionally, we would be well within our rights (and maybe even obligated) to initiate a war to defend our national treasures. Even though some may argue that cyber-attacks are not substantial enough, would not a physical attack in the same magnitude as the cyberattacks merit violence? We have tried political action and diplomacy to get the Chinese government to crack down on cyber crime, or to at least extradite the criminals for us to punish them, but it is to no avail. We have to be willing to use our military strength as an “extension of politics.” One of the problems with the cyber-attacks is that the offenders are quite often in and out without being detected, it is just “something that happened,” or we do not think that theft from a large corporation is enough justification for killing. But what people do not realize is that this theft represents the loss of trillions of dollars to the economy in the short term, has the potential to drastically slow research and development, and stunt our technological advance; if our
3
government is unwilling to defend the rights of the innovators, and the innovations just get stolen, then there is no longer incentive to invent new technology. It goes without saying that the United States would not tolerate a mass bank robbery or theft of any commodity—we’ve gone to war to keep our oil safe—so why do we tolerate a virtual theft of our nation’s intellectual property, which is perhaps the most valuable commodity we have? When we contemplate physical retaliation for a cyberspace attack, we must consider the potential impact on the innocent people that country—in this case China. The answer is pretty clear through the irrevocable words of Thomas Jefferson: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” A government is a reflection of the will or apathy of a people, and if they condone the action to be undertaken or do nothing to mitigate it, then they are just as guilty as the actual transgressor. Since the Chinese people allow their government to exist and act in the manner it does, and since they do so in many cases at the expense of the American people, they are morally responsible for the actions of that government. It is either a problem of apathy or a difference of culture in which the people do not hold the same respect for property rights as the West, and we have to decide if our sacred right to the fruit of our labor is worth going to war, and if it is, then we must accept as well that the Chinese people will have to suffer for the actions of their government. It is still our prerogative to limit the amount of destruction that would occur, and I think that the use of our superior navy to blockade the country would result in relatively few lives lost, a short war, and sufficient economic impact to coerce acquiescence. With an enemy such as the Chinese plundering our nation for secrets, technology, and money, we cannot afford to take violence off of the table. They represent a threat to the safety of our people, and the only thing currently keeping them at bay is a technology gap that
4
spans multiple decades, but that is now becoming shorter and shorter with each packet of information that they steal. It will not be too long before they have the same technology, the same size economy—maybe even a larger one since they are not restricted by minimum wages and regulations—and they will have at least 5 times our population. Every metric to measure the potential for war power will suddenly be in their favor, and how then will we keep ourselves safe? If they do not respect individual rights, evinced not only by their lack of respect for our citizens property, but also by the state of privation in which they keep their population, then why would they not dominate the world? We have seen before a world with competing powers, and it was full of a terrible death and destruction that only ended at the outset of the cold war and the rise of American superpowerdom. We have earned our right to defend ourselves through centuries of bloodshed, and we have risen to the top because of not only a superior fighting spirit, but perhaps more importantly because of our principles. We must not sacrifice them now and allow this continuing rape of our intellectual assets; we must act through our moral obligation to the security of our citizens’ liberty and prosperity.
