Cyber Warfare : The Threat Of The United State 's National Security

Wars have been occurring since the beginning of time. Wars were once fought with sticks but as humans evolved, so did the weapons involved. Today’s warfare includes anything from hand grenades to remote controlled planes that are thousands of miles away from the operator. The rise of technology has become an issue due to the increasing development of these devices. Technology is used worldwide and as wars continue to develop, so does the possibility that the next war could rise into a cyber war. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act will ensure the United States takes on these new threats with cybercrime by protecting the country’s critical infrastructures and ensuring the people are ready for the future in the cyberworld.

When considering the technological advances over the past 50 years, the Internet has undoubtedly had the greatest impact on everyday life of developed economies and its citizens. The world has become smaller, societies interconnected, and the pace of global integration dramatically increased since the introduction of the Internet. With the world connected, cyber actors represent a very real and often underestimated threat to the United States’ ability to defend national security, protect industrial innovation, and secure privacy information. As a result of globalization, the foreign cyber actors represent the most imminent threat to national security, corporate innovation, and citizen privacy rights.

Cyber security, also referred to as information technology security, focuses on protecting computers, networks, software programs and data from unintended or unauthorized access, change or destruction. Post 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, the United States grows its endeavors to repulse cyberattacks, U.S. corporate organizations and the government agencies wind up in strife over how to adjust to new methods of security and privacy. The current state of security measure protocols and privacy policies placed by the US government in cyberspace raises concerns for the 99%. This is due to the recent cyber-attacks on American corporate organization systems and government alike, where their digital information and network infrastructures within the systems were compromised, and personal data was hacked and stolen.

Primarily, cyber security of the armed forces must be a priority of the United States. As the world becomes increasingly digital, the military must also adapt its ways. A new form of combat, hybrid warfare, has been effective in attaining political objectives without the conventional use of military power (Limnell). Hybrid warfare includes

As technology advances across the globe, the potential for new types of threats arise. The DHS realized that since 1997, cyber-based attacks on federal systems have continued to increase at an alarming rate. This threatens our countries national security because cyber-based attacks are ever expanding and have continued to be one-step ahead of the DHS, until 2003.

In a documentary by Admiral Vern (2002), “the events of September 11, 2001 tragically illustrated that the promise of peace and security in the 21st Century is fraught with profound dangers”. The US foreign policies and interest in key geographic regions of the world sparks controversies resulting in state funded cyber attacks, cyber espionage and terrorism against the United States and its allied nations. When several attempts to cripple the United States and its allied nations through negotiations failed, enemy states and nefarious groups have shifted their focus to cyber attacks and cyber espionage. According to Gady (2016), “China continues cyber espionage against the United States”. Drezner (2014), “Washington and Beijing hardly agree on everything, but they agree on the big things, like maintaining an open global economy, reducing the likelihood of a military confrontation, and tackling climate change”.

The United States of America is one of the most powerful countries in the world, and there are a full spectrum of threats that come from every single direction. The United States Department of Homeland Security is just one entity of the United States to ensure that the country is protected. In doing so, the Department of Homeland Security has a Cyber Security Division with a Mission to “contribute to enhancing the security and resilience of the nation’s critical information infrastructure and the Internet by (1) developing and delivering new technologies, tools and techniques to enable DHS and the U.S. to defend, mitigate and secure current

In “Cyber war is Already Upon Us” by John Arquilla. Arquilla argues that “cyber war has arrived” and there needs to be focus on what can be done to control it (Arquilla 4). Arquilla provides examples of cyber attacks that he considers to be instances of cyber war to argue his point. To be considered an act of war, an attack must be potentially violent, purposeful, and political (Lecture 20. Slide 5). Many of the attacks that Arquilla refers to were purposeful and political, making them comparable to specific battles within a war. However, they should not be classified as entire wars by themselves because traditionally war is defined as a period of ongoing conflict and not one specific attack. While cyber war is a possibility, nothing in

Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb (National Research Council1). The United States Department of States defined terrorism as: “…premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.” Terrorism not only occurs on the real life today but also on the internet. As the technology rapidly developed, there is an increase in the usage of internet, the threat comes along the way. Due to the occurrence of internet terrorism-generating fears to the public, the term “Cyberterrorism” was coined by Barry Collin in the 1980’s (Cyberterrorism Defined). The definition of cyberterrorism differs from various legal systems and government

Clarke and Knake use a mixed method research approach in Cyber War to support their hypothesis that offensive prowess is meaningless without solid defense in cyberspace, and that the United States need immediately fix our defensive cyber shortfalls, or face apocalyptic doom. Specifically, the authors define ‘cyber war’ as “actions by a nation state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.” This infers that they are really talking about ‘warfare’ and

The article “Defending America in Cyberspace” in the journal The National Interest authored by Keith Alexander, Emily Goldman, and Michael Warner taught me much about how the Department of Homeland Security handles America’s cyber threats. The Department of Security is the lead agency in protecting America from domestic cybersecurity incidents. It stated how America fights Cyber crime and security threats. In this day and age, countries are very vulnerable to skilled hackers. Some of them not even under the age 18.

The United States houses more than 15 critical infrastructures, all of which implement information and communication technologies (ICT) systems, making the risk of a cyberwar a constant possibility. In order to

Defining cyber-warfare is also important but suffers from the same lack of continuity between United States military branches and government agencies. Schaap lists varying terminology used ranging from the Department of Defense’s definition which states, “the employment of cyber capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve military objectives or effects through cyber-space” to the Air Force’s definition, “the integrated planning and employment

Cyber warfare attacks can disable official websites and networks, disrupt or disable essential services, steal or alter classified data, and cripple financial systems -- among many other possibilities (definition of cyberwarfare) “.The Tech Target definition includes no reference of nation states. That is because cyber warfare has such a low barrier to entry, a teenager can effectively shut down or damage thousands or millions of dollars of digital infrastructure, something that a real world counterpart would take years to plan, would take weeks, and the only tools needed are a mouse, keyboard, and some type of motivation. Cyber warfare is constantly evolving, constantly becoming more of a threat and is, in fact, being employed right now as this sentence is being read.

The damage of a full-fledged cyber attack would be devastating, the destruction would be unparalleled to any other tragedy that has occurred America. Since technology is responsible for providing America with vital entities and resources, an unadulterated cyber attack would nearly fail the American economy; this is what is known as critical systems failure. Weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks present imminent threats of critical systems failure. Although currently Americas’ critical infrastructures are coordinated by controlled systems, majority of these systems are indeed connected to the American cyberspace. This exposes one of America’s most vulnerable spot amidst cyber security. Another major vulnerable spot within the nations IT security would be the geographical physical location for each of Americas primary infrastructures, as well as their productivity. Due to the proximal locations, the major infrastructures could very well be infiltrated by one efficient CNA.