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America's War on the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The Sunday Herald is reporting that while the US is continuing to pursue traditional means of protecting national security, they are also planning to launch a new wave of 'information warfare' to help combat a perceived growing threat of IT security. From the article: 'The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document's recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of "a revolution in the concept of warfare". The report orders three new developments in America's approach to warfare [...] the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.'"
A summary with a bit more information (and without horrible formatting errors), including a link to the actual document, can be found here. Apparently it's been declassified for a couple months now...but better to get this info out a little late then never I suppose.
The last time I checked Al-Qaeda uses a rather primitive approach to terrorism. They use incendiary devices in shoes, which often fail, second hand weapons, and other non-technical approaches.
The website for Al-Qaeda should be near the bottom of the list for the defense department.
Everyone has the idea that terrorists will one day hack into the power grid and cripple the stock market. They should focus on protecting the power grids from physical attacks before they start focusing on "cyber terrorism" where they could take the grid by "hacking into the system."
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
Someone has been dropping spam bombs on my mailbox for years now.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I have two reactions. Is this actually new information?
If it is, God help us. Since the Defense Department "invented" the internet, shouldn't they have kind of been working on this for a while now?
Why not dubya seems to be making war everywhere else :op
Seriously though as someone working in government IT I see lots of places where security is very much lacking, money needs to be put into securing government IT systems right now as the recent articles on security at the DoJ shows. Investing in anything IT related but internal security is just stupid.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Our civil liberties are eroding like a California mud-slide.
E.g. an American creates an anti-us website, and happens to cross-link an image located on a Pakistani website. Now this is considered an "international communication channel" which justifies to the NSA full sniffing of packets, forfeiture of logs from the ISP, etc.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
I guess if the electrical and phone grids are fair game, digital communications are too. And if it saves a few lives because folks surrender because they can't email grandma, check the weather, or connect to iTunes (whereas it used to take a bullet to the head) then it's a good thing, right?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Submit the targeted server to Agent CmdrTaco. His legion of followers will take care of the rest.
NMG
Once again, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri proves to be the best game ever made:
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
--Pravin Lal
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
The government is going to contract this job out to Cyberdyne Systems in California?
Seriously, we are able (most of the time) to have oversight on what the government is doing to its own citizens, and that hasn't worked out so well in the US so far... can I mention here things like: The pristine bullet, McCarthy, weather control, and a number of other things that 'seemed ok at the time' but later turned out very wrong, and would have been stopped with oversight.
WHO (not the doctor or the World Health Organization) is going to monitor those in the government that will be monitoring the Internet? Mr Orwell, we miss you!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'd think that the simplest solution would be to (ironically) wall of the US internet. Of course this would allow the rest of the internet to publish what they want.
So is the US essentially saying that it wants to control (or influence in nicer terms) the entire internet?
This is the level of behaviour we expect from children.
cfd39df79bd871b2d18133e71409490d
Now which internet are they talking about?
It can also be used to say, spread the truth about illegal covert activities by the US against sovereign nations, allow oppressed people to get word out about their plight, give Americans a say in how their money is spent, and generally promote freedom and democracy. I can see why the Pentagon would be so frightened by the Internet.
Sorry to tell the pointy-heads in the Pointy-gon, but you're going to have a hard time bringing down even small portions of the Net. Perhaps you can take out individual sites, or even clusters of sites that reside on the same server farm, but I doubt they could take out enough to stop Internet traffic. They could certainly disseminate false or misleading information, but hey, people do that everyday already. As to dominating communications around the planet, the only thing I know of that can do that is the sloar wind. I think the Pentagon would have itself a cyber-Vietnam on its hands if it ever tried to 'attack the Internet'.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
to fund terrorist organizations, does that mean no income taxes on April 15?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Instead of seeing "Punch the monkey and win an Ipod", we might get "Kill Osama and win $25 million".
... the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet ...
Is there anything that America doesn't "wage war" against? It's like a mentally retarded child who responds in the same way, regardless of stimulus.
Who decides who an enemy is? Warfare should be used to fend off attacks, and minimize risk and not to ATTACK the information of someone because they have a different point of view.
Throughout history capturing and using enemy information has been a lot more useful in combat than attacking the information of the enemy.
In the light of the fact that the Dept of Homeland Security just got an 'F' on its recent general security practices and server audits, I wonder what if this is really supposed to intimidate anyone....
Should they not get their house in order firstbefore thinking about greater things?
Mmmm... I think I am starting to see a pattern here.
Z.
...Down!
I drank what? -- Socrates
There is no national security problem. Look here http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/d rugfact/american_users_spend/table2.html Just with those drugs, cocaine and heroin, there are an estimated 300+ tons of the stuff coming into this country annually, and it would be easier to teach my mom to do a sed substitution than a WMD substitution for the cargo.
i g
c s/illegalalien/#Table1 They are even talking about making illegal immigrants being illegal! Gasp.
But there is no profit in that!
Well, unless your on this list: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_f
OK. Now about people just walking into this country. There are 5 million people illegally living in the US, source: http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statisti
While it hasn't yet been modded up enough for me to see it, I'm sure there's already a bunch of whining about how us eeevul hegemonistic Americans are all set to sally forth trampling across the internet in our zeal to wage war.
Sorry, this is just being smart. Keep in mind how prevalent botnets are, how they basically rule all of Asia, Eastern Europe, most of South America, and even substantial chunks of America and Western Europe. Keep in mind how much spam those networks churn out on a daily basis, how much money they earn the people who own them. Then realize that spam is about the *least* harmful thing they could be used for.
From TFA:
Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media - from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) - to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy. Psyops involve the dissemination of lies and fake stories and releasing information to wrong-foot the enemy.
Wow, now that's a good idea. I sure don't see anything immoral here, and certainly no potential for abuse. After all, the only way to have a stable democratic state which protects its citizens' freedoms is if that state controls the media and uses it to knowingly distribute lies and propoganda. The founding fathers knew this, which was why when they wrote the first amendment, they... Oh wait, that's right. The media is supposed to be independent from the state. A state that uses the media to distribute lies is a mortal danger to freedom, and needs to be deposed, quickly.
Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth's electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.
Do I really even need to comment on this one? Combined with their planned propoganda campaign, they're looking to completely exclude targeted populations from recieving accurate and timely information. Again, if the true objective here was to combat terrorists by spreading democracy, this would obviously be massively counterproductive. But of course we all know that this is not about spreading democracy, or combating terrorism, any more than Iraq or Afghanistan were about freedom and democracy. It is about control.
A contrived "war on the web"? Who gives a shit? How can we focus on that when Brian Bouchard is about to revolutionize the computing world? Linux was nothing; Brian's got this OS stuff all figured out.
Our president has declared war on people who don't think we are at war.
These fiendish scoundrels lurk in the dark corners of our communities, ready to leap out and make us think. They must be stopped.
We must not question motives of those fighting this war lest we fall victim. Think of the children!
Or, we could be civilized and either initiate or sign on to an Internet Weapons Treaty (like the Outer Space Treaty). Oh, wait, that's way too PRE-911 thinking, isn't it?
From the Article:
"IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will."
Imagine? We don't have to imagine, we are already living it!
The irony is, it's not the military that's waging a ware of dis-information, it's our own government waging a war of dis-information on us! Examples: Terror Alerts, WMDs, Climate Change, Evolution...Contradictory statements are being released by government officials. The government rebrands military operations: The War on Terror, The Global War on Terror, The Long War, or The Global War on Extremism...
This is indeed an interesting time in which we live.
C'mon....our "intelligence" agencies (in the US) couldn't even reliably tell whether or not Saddam had any serious weapons. Do you think these guys will be able to really crack systems that are set up by reasonably smart people? Can these agencies crack 1024 bit encryption? Can they break into systems that meet D.O.D. levels of security? What exactly do these guys think they will accomplish?
It's a waste of time and money. Terrorists want one thing - BODY COUNT - you don't get that from DOS'ing a bank's web site, or even by breaking into a bank's web site. Terrorists like the idea of disrupting our economy and lifestyle, but that isn't the primary goal, that goal is a byproduct of the act of terrorism.
The goal on 9-11 was to kill as many people as possible. The economic fall-out was just gravy as far as the terrorists are concerned.
Even if we hardened our networks, and we preemptively attacked the IT infrastructure of the bad guys, do you think it would have prevented 9-11? The first think Osama did after 9-11 was stop using his satellite phone. He found much lower-tech ways to communicate (and we still can't catch the bastard).
It's a waste of time and money, and another excuse to bug the law-abiding world.
-ted
Would information warfare be locking Muslims in libraries and then throwing books at them?
The US and DARPA manage to invent a decentralized network capable of widthstanding nuclear attacks, and now that they got it, they want to get rid of it? :-/
I'd really appreciate it if Mr. "War-on-terror" Bush did something more useful for the internet and getting rid of the ROOT CAUSE of computer terrorism: Microsoft and their crappy OS.
Are we starting yet another war we can't win? How about we win the war on terror, or the war on drugs, or the war on anything else we declared war on before we start going after the Internet. I don't understand why a war on the Internet is needed anyway? This country is getting more and more insane by the moment. I was watching CNN one day and they were conducting a poll asking "should we build a wall between the US and Mexico?" and I just imagined the appearance the rest of the world would have of us if we did such an idiotic thing. It's amazing what people are willing to give up and put up with for the illusion of "security" after 9/11. Terrorism can fester in a free society, it's just a fact. Instead of attacking the terrorists themselves, why do we constantly look for other ways to secure our nation? Nation building in Iraq, surveillance at home, and a war on the Internet for "security's sake," everyone is willing to accept the next restriction before it is even mentioned.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
PGP encrypt your data if the issue of it's privacy is that critical to you. I've been doing it for years and showing others how to use PGP / it's benefits.
:\
You can only protect yourself, and educate others how to do the same.
Heh, I think someone mentioned this already but the DoD, seeing that they are the 'inventors' of the internet, should have been up on this a long time ago. I guess a lot of people never really expected this kind of growth and dependency of such an infrastructure.
Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess
The first question that came to my mind when I saw this was, "Which of Bush's big business buddies will this benefit the most?" Of course, that's the first question that comes to my mind whenever I hear of anything the Administration comes up with these days.
"A statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen." Opus
the military has been after the EM spectrum since 2002. it's no big surprise that they see the FCC as a terrorist threat, and demand regulation over the air.
Just post the URL of such website and before you know it, it will be slashdotted back to the stoneage.
Not to trivialize anything that the government would say (oh precious politicians, you do entrance me so) but isn't the whole "Cyber Terror" idea a bit absurd. You have websites that issue propaganda, and the like, sure, but it's not as if you're forced to look at them, you can just close the window and/or block the site. The fact that they exist isn't threatening in anyway, as you can simply choose to ignore it.
And really large defacements/ DDoS attacks haven't occured much, if at all in recent history. I understand the fear of DDoS attacks on government electronic infrastructure, but the important stuff shouldn't be accessible from outside sources at any rate.
On top of that, why would one require a whole militarization of what overly zealous and patriotic hackers have been doing for quite some time now? Bankroll their cause if you're so interested in combating an enemy digitally.
I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
Military and intelligence sources in the US (...)
Gee, finally the allegations of military sources being in any way influenced by intelligence have stopped. It's about time!
If you hit that button, you'll set the entire civilized world back 10,000 years ....
; How may I direct your call.?
Spreading democracy and freedumb to Iraq. My ass.
Cheers,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
Don't make me Tomahawk your spam.
War on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror... now war on the Internet...
And here I always thought a "war" was "a state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties."
Well, the Internet is sort of like a party, I guess.
I also always thought that it was Congress that had the power to declare war, and that it wasn't war until Congress said it was war.
But, OK, Bush had is way on the war thing, but just let him try issuing a letter of marque and reprisal and a betcha Congress will hit him upside the head with a check and a balance.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Think — if any other country was planning this, the US would threaten to go to war with them.
Honestly, this threatens practically every other country, I've never seen a bigger justification to go to war with the US. They've obviously gone totally power-crazy under the guise of "keeping people safe from terrorism".
... who feels this seems to be pretty intimidating and ego-centric as a non-American?
.. could get nuked :(
That's it! I'm going to make my own protocol and call it "NAP" or "No Americans Protocol".
An attack to my network could then be considered an act of war.. and.. um.. I
This is very intimidating and comes off as very dominant.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Decentralize the comm infrastructure. As widely as technically possible. Redesign it to fail gracefully. Deploy mesh networking as backup system. For cellular telephony, form a mesh network of both the base stations and the handsets themselves, so even if all the bases are destroyed the handsets still can maintain the network themselves, at least for text messaging. Same for wifi routers and other kinds of comm nodes. As a non-military benefit, this could serve as a fallback for cases of "normal" infrastructure overload.
Develop and deploy ultrawideband technology for consumer devices, making it difficult to impossible to jam the band using the military EWAR toys. This should also make the communication more robust against non-military noise sources.
Develop and deploy phase-array antennas for consumer devices, to automatically adjust the antenna patterns according to the position of the comm devices, both saving batteries and rejecting jamming signals from unwanted directions.
Design the civilian infrastructure to be hardened against both intentional attacks and natural disasters taking out swaths of infrastructure. Make it a matter of national security.
All the technologies required are already existing. Now they just have to be brought out of the labs and released on the street.
Last but not least, prepare lower-tech fallback to establish networks disseminating the people's version of truth to counter the occupant's version, as you can not rely on the infrastructure providers. Prepare a diverse range of tactics, from people physically meeting together and swapping printouts and tapes to low-power FM and TV stations made of repurposed consumer equipment (eg. an antenna connected to the modulated output of a VCR - covers only a block or so but better than nothing. Covers significantly more with an output amplifier.) So take out your old book about antennas and read it today. You do not know when your expertise will be needed.
Be ready. Be prepared. Be Pentagon-proof.
The article may have briefly talked about terrorism, but I suspect the real danger comes from state-sponsored cyber-attacks, like from China. Terrorism is just a convenient explanation to use to the public. You can't come out and say you're preparing for an attack by China now, can you?
BTW, for those who think that cyber-warfare is a science-fiction concept, I draw your attention to the following analysis of Operation Allied Force. In particular, the section regarding cyber-attacks on surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems to protect our fighters (F-22, F-35):
Information warfare WILL happen, my friends. In fact, it's happening now. No, you won't find that written up in the newspaper. Do a little bit of googling and see what you come up with. :)
GMD
watch this
I am waiting for Vincente Fox to make a speech echoing Ronald Reagan's speech to Gorbachev... "Señor Bush, tear down that wall, and set your people free."
Teh interwebs are serious business!
$383 Million, that's like....12 horse armor patches for TES: Oblivion
So the FBI pressured congress into making it illegal. Suspect they will need to centralize all radio and landline communications to make sure everyone has safe government approved communications. Damn my VCR won't stop blinking 19:84.
But look at what happens when the game is changes. A few punks go buy $20 of box cutters, hijack some planes and fly them into some buildings. There's nobody to point the aircraft carriers at.
In cyberspace it gets even harder to launch an attack. A recycles 486 running a firewall is as much security as anyone needs.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The US should always have a strong military but I don't think we should project it the way we do. I think we should mind our own business and I'm sure I won't have trouble finding people to agree with that simple view.
Recently I downloaded "Why We Fight" a BBC documentary detailing the buildup and creation of the US's Industrial Military Complex. It goes a long way to explain how it happened, why it was useful and why things are the way they are today. It spells out in great detail, for example, how the US put Saddam Hussein into power and GAVE him his weapons of mass destruction. (The US was fine with them using them as long as the humanity they used them against were considered enemies of the administration in power at that moment.)
Watching this really helped me to change my perspective on what "war" is and how it's being abused by the current "system" in power in the US. In short, it's all about power and making money. It has nothing to do with world peace or spreading democracy. I believe now more than ever before that we can spread peace and democracy through peaceful and genrous means.
Whether you agree with the information presented or not, I urge anyone to see this. Refute it or believe it. But I think it's quite enlightening.
All of your websites are belong to US(A)!!
"But this one goes to 11!"
During the Spanish-American War (1898), the American Navy cut the oceanic telegraph cables that connected Cuba to the rest of the Spanish Empire. See Cable-Cutting At Cienfuegos. During the first and second world wars, underseas cables were high-priority targets and were often cut.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
We need to invade Canada now to stop those them from broadcasting Terrance and Phillip!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
FTFA: The plans include
the establishment of "Humanitarian Road Shows", which will talk up American support for democracy and freedom.
First stop Guantanamo Bay! For more info see http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/usa-summary-eng
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
And elections?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
SS Web Agent: Mr. President The Chinese are throttling our server, we need a decision now!
President: Let's PHP-Nuke the bastards!
Also do not forget the potential of wifi and bluetooth-enabled smartphones, together with user-installable software. I personally do not care if the decentralized functionality is carrier-pushed and legal, or blackmarket and homemade, as long as it is widely deployed.
Please.
This has to be an April fools joke. (I checked snopes.com, but it did not return a result.)
There is no way we could hope to maintain any shred of respect from other nations with a plan like this. We (the U.S.) would no doubt have a fit if some other nation pulled this kind of stunt.
Please, tell me this is an April fools joke.
where can we find some leaders (polictions, etc) that don't want to fuck us over?
They should be there to serve us, not to rule us!
in typical kneejerk reaction fashion, the US is viewed with greater suspicion than some dangerous people who have demonstrated a willingness to kill themselves in order to kill Americans...
I don't agree with much that this current adminstration is about... but for a moment let's separate "America" from "Bush" and recognize that other countries make false propaganda, conduct information warfare by circulating falsehoods and so on.
A great amount of the mistrust America faces pre-existed Bush... his style has fanned the flames to be sure, but about fifty years of very nasty misrepresentation (KGB info warfare) had already created a fertile bed for anti-American feeling. It is no great trick to tap into negativity... base unobserved human nature is easily encouraged down the line of suspicion and cynicism about another's motives. They merely took advantage of latent human frustration and weakness... they knew that many people are incapable of believing that another's motives could be better than their own. They also knoew that these could be cultivated as bullying loudmouths, and soon any moderate opinion or balancing information would be drowned out. The moderator him/herself could expect to be assassinated or beaten to a pulp. Lots of people stay quiet and so the angry ones dominate and the fires burn out of control.
This has been effective, around the world and in the US as well, to the extent that many people believe nothing good about their own country, in fact will readily believe anything unfavorable to the US, and a fair number of the posts in this thread have departed into anti-American tirades.
The plan itself seems like a typical bureaucratic half-measure. Patch up our PR by jamming what we deem as misinformation. (Fail to seriously repair it with wise foreign policy). But the hatred coming back toward that seems excessive, doesn't it?
Seriously though. As an American citizen, I'm actually kind of happy that our military is toying with defending against and initiating these types of attacks first. Rather than a memo from the president that reads:
Take this RAND publication from 1996, for example:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR661/
Citizens of western countries like ours should be very familiar with Information Warfare, our states have been practicing it upon us for years.
Well lets hope they don't run windows while comiting cyber warefare or all it will take is one smart ass chinese kid to pwn our entire war effort
After I erased my hard drive, my address book was gone! Hah!
Incidentally, having this kind of capability isn't a bad idea, even if you never use it. You have to have some level of expertise to know what's possible.
Slashdot already ran a story about this document, IIRC.
I can see why we would need to defend ourselves against such an attack.
But once we've bombed our enemy back to the stone age, what's the point of Pwn1ng their web servers?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth's electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.
More information is available on this project at video.google.com and searching for HAARP. View video 'HAARP Holes in Heaven'.
Scary stuff. It's sketchily declassified, but very little information escapes on it. If anyone has anymore information on the subject, it would be much appreciated.
always read infowars.com , which is likely where the poster originally found the link-- it and similar organizations are our last stronghold.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
the Web attacks YOU ! (via spam, viruses, Internet Explorer, Vista and.. Oh wait)
... of phishing spam from those lovable Russian script kiddies?
That's how the Arabs are going to get the bomb.
This item, relating to the US control of cyberspace, is a long-standing item on PNAC's agenda, as stated in Sept. 2000 (PDF). See pp 50-57 of the document (62-69 of the PDF). The fulfillment of this agenda has already witnessed: a) the invasion of Iraq b) increasing the DoD budget to Reagan-era levels (as a % of GDP), which necessitated the scaring-sh!tless of the American populace via a Pearl Harbor-type of 'catalyzing event' c) moving on projects to weaponize space. One needs only to remember that the people behind this agenda are true Straussians, believing that the public is stupid, is to be held in great contempt, and must be shown the way forward, regardless of its incongruence with their best interest. That such a notion is incompatible with a democratic system of govenment should be obvious to a child.
I can see it now, 10,000 jarheads trained as script-kiddies unleashed on the internet. The US MARINES pwns J00!
Ah yes, nothing will be safe, except someone who keeps up to date on Apache upgrades.
The writing for SMAC was excellent, and very creepy, considering just how true it was. You reminded me just how good and creepy it was.
Sign me up for the "Unity" crew.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
...and you get modded troll for crying out for sanity :(
Maybe they should think about securing their own servers so that when the counter-hack-attack comes back they won't be owned. Oh I forgot, they are probably already owned. What a joke!
skynet.
I can see it now.... "Windows has caused a General Protection Fault in the US Government. Replace democrats and press any key to continue." --Yea, I know, but I'm bored.
"brix_zx2, What is your sole purpose in this forum!?!?!"
"To do whatever you tell me MODERATOR!!!!"
This is why conservatives don't trust American liberals (leftists).
And its sad that both words have been hijacked. Today's liberal is in reality a socialist,
while today's conservative would be either authoritarian or national socialist.
Do you mean US American liberals or liberals in general? A fair portion of US American 'liberals' (the ones the fair and balanced Fox news channel delights in presenting as the worst plague to afflict humantiy since the appearance of smallpox) would be considered as being either moderate conservatives or as occupying the political center most other parts of the world. What the rest of the world calls 'liberals' would be closer to Social democrats with whom US American liberals have some ideals in common. However, 24ct Socialists and Communists are way, way to the left of even the Social Democrats.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
...order a fleet of backhoes.
The War on the internet. It will be as successful as the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. The internet provides an even playing field for all. Anyone with a mind to attack is just as vulnerable to attack. The information Genie is out of the bottle and, as China is slowly learning, knowledge cannot be withheld from those who seek it.
You've taken one poorly worded line and turned it into some dumb conspiracy theory about how "all liberals" think. I certainly wouldn't do the same thing about all conservatives, but I will make that statement about those two media idiots.
Stop posting like a reactionary talkshow host. Can we at least try to take things in context, realize people don't always speak perfectly, etc? I really don't know how you got from someone making an offhanded comment about an "anti-US" website to assuming he was talking about some kind of "attack the united states" website. The statement was very unclear and you should treat it that way.
AccountKiller
It's one thing to put forth tons of money in true defense, to protect ourselves from such attacks from abroad. It's another one entirely to support (and especially announce) that we're making it a point to gather offensive moves.
You put way too much emphasis on the mod points. If you truly want to find insight you need to find it for yourself, not by what others think. ;) I turned off mod points and browse at -1. It surprises me how much insight and humor I was missing out on before.
You're nothing; like me.
I'm sure they intend to fight via the internet, but that appears to be just the beginning. Page six clearly says "We Must Fight the Net. DoD is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to 'Fight the Net.'"
How much of this work will be outsourced to India?
they want corporations to run most everything, including most governmental services-things that are run by governments now. For example, toll roads-they want all or most roads to be private for profit roads. Municipal water/sewer. They want that in an ideal world to be run by private companies. And etc. So, by allusion, corporations turning into government the Randian way could be logically construed to be extreme far right. Extreme far left would be governments seizing all the corporations and running them.
Where's the big diff in the endgame? There isn't any!
IMO, both ideas suck the big one, because it is in essence the same idea! Both wind up with the total amalgam of corporations/government, and both are examples of totalitarian fascism, even if they tell you that you might have a "vote" on this or that, because in practice, you can see how that works already. The fatcats rule, it's that simple, stick any left or right label on it that might make you happy, but reality is that it is NOT left or right, it is entrenched establishment big money and total authoritarian political control versus everything else. Coming from the left or right, you still wind up with the "company store" mentality and you are a *serf*, beholden in perpetuity to the company store. We all wind up "employees" of the WESAYSO corporation dot gov.
This is why I think there needs to be a huge abandonment of this phony "left/right" thinking* (it is used more to keep the rabble in line more than anything else) and address the real problem which is those already in control-coming from the left or right-always seek to continue that way until the control is complete total. This has always happened in every example in history so far.
We need a global centrist non aligned independent movement, one that keeps both corporations and governments completely distinct and separate, and where individual freedoms are universally acknowledged, and where neither governments nor corporations have total power, and where individual people may not be screwed over by power mad chair throwers or by power mad aircraft carrier order arounders..
*here's a prime example of how well the mass brainwashing techniques have suceeded, the last US presidential election. MoveOn over here on the left, we have a rich priveleged class international globalist "free trader" skull and bones worshipping millionaire running. On the so called "compassionate conservative" right we have a priveleged class globalist skull and bones worshipping jobjacking illegals promoting "free trader" millionaire running.
wow, those were GREAT CHOICES!
Why people still think there's a real long term difference in these two "partys" is beyond me, this last election should have *finally* made most of them bingo to it. Over 90% of the people in the last election *wasted their vote* on "choosing" the globalist or globalist. Man, that's some serious thinkin' went on there, a-yup!
The left/right paradigm is a *scam* perpetuated by the global rulers (who could care less about the lower classes and national borders, etc) over their serfs, to give them an illusion of "political choice".
Here is a big clue: the aristocracy and feudalism have never gone away, it just has more blinkenlights on it now and the propoganda and brainwashing is much more sophisticated, ie, it works on well over 90% of the population it appears, plenty to keep the feudalists in power year after year and generation after generation.
Why is it that I rarely read comments like the parent post from outside the US and people convinced we're in a holy war? Note the parent poster is from Wisconsin. I've basically come to the conclusion that it's not even about hating America. It's about cynical people looking for authority figures to blame so they can point a finger as if everything is black and white or good and evil. There are plenty of Canadians that talk trash about their own government. Same goes for Australia, the UK, France, Germany, and just about any other country that doesn't brainwash their population into thinking the rest of the world is out to get them. I'd be willing to bet that the same people blamed their teachers for any stumbles in their education. They go to work, blaming their boss for their own lack of progress. As the only remaining superpower though, not only do America's cynics blame the government for everything that happens in our country, but also for things that happen to the rest of the world.
Let me repeat what I said and expand. We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures. We don't have a choice because it's happening organically. When there's a culture that believes westerners are the devil, peaceful integration is very difficult to accomplish. We can't just exclude certain parts of the world and expect them to live in their own "Islands". Bush is trying to rush the integration of Islamic nations with Western nations. He had a very difficult decision to make. He could either let things continue to happen organically and knowingly face more 9/11 incidents or he could make a desperate attempt to speed up the integration. I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes because it isn't an easy decision to make. It's not as simple as many make it out to be.
I'd like to expand on Iraq in particular because it seems to bring out the most cynical of viewpoints. There are so many people blaming us for the current state of Iraq. I can understand blaming us for Iraq no longer being under Saddam's control and therefore introducing freedoms that the people never had. Nobody seems to want to put any responsibility on the Iraqis themselves. They have many more freedoms that they never had before. Unfortunately, some of them decided to go to war against each other due to different religious beliefs and an established bloody history. If we Americans all started putting roadside bombs in each others neighborhoods, is it really right to blame the government? No, it isn't. The governments we have are made of people like you and me and there's only so much they can do to assist us in getting along. The rest is up to us as the people. We have our own responsibilities in society to make it work. Paying taxes isn't where our responsibility ends. In Iraq, we dropped a huge bomb of democracy and now we can only help as the Iraqis themselves use it as a tool to build something that works for them. Hopefully, it will grow into a society that doesn't see westerners as evil by membership and a strong relationship will form. It's not up to us though. Ultimately, it's up to them. Of course, you could always oversimplify things and in the end make statements like "Iraqis all hate us because we bombed their homes and schools". Whatever helps you reach a simple conclusion I guess.
I know they're not sexy, but IMHO SCADA boxes are the weak link. There seems to be a large effort to secure financial and military systems, but if the power goes off because internet connected scada boxes are infiltrated, then nothing works!
Is kinda like:
Golstaff: I wanna cast...Magic Missile.
Cheeto: The room where he's casting all these spells from.
DM: He hasn't cast anything yet.
Golstaff: I am though, if you'd listen. I'm casting...Magic Missile.
DM: Why are casting Magic Missile? There's nothing to attack here.
Golstaff: I...I'm attacking the INTERNET!
[[[laughter from Cheeto and DM]]]
DM: Fine, fine, you attack the INTERNET.
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
If you thought gas prices where high wait till you see your ping times.
Ever heard of the Project for a New American Century? Believe me, this project is for real. Yes, they really do aim to dominate the world.
It's both. They are both hegemonic and incompetent. Why is that so hard to imagine?
We've just seen cases where mainstream media has picked up on various phony April 1 stories around the Internet. How could this be any different? What happens when grass roots news gathering organizations get their hands on this stuff and publicize it? What happens when other world governments get hold of it? Who is authorized to know when something is actually fake? And how does the U.S. react when other countries begin using the same tactics?
And for that matter -- half kidding, but only half -- what does this mean for WikiPedia?
Breakfast served all day!
Unfortunately it's not quite the right word, conveys the wrong connotations, and is A cliche.
Unfortunately it's not quite the right word, conveys the wrong connotations, and is cliched.
Welcome our new Evil US overlords.
I drink to make other people interesting!
...Jerry A. Taylor, City Manager, Tuttle, OK
...prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies...
Uh, wasn't this what this thing was supposed to do? They failed at defense, so now they're going to offense? Is this going to work any better? Is the US capable of doing anything without making a war out of it?
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
...they just found a fix for spam!
We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures.
Why? Where's your authority to act as the world's authoritarian father-figure? Because you have the largest, most well-equipped army? This is the sort of attitude that gets planes flown into tall American buildings - "We know best; when we bomb you, it's for your own good".
It's not America's responsibility to "steer the whole damn world"; it's America's responsibility to steer America. That's what makes sovereign nations sovereign - they steer themselves. The reason many people react against the war in Iraq is because it shows how much America respects the sovereignty of other nations; it doesn't. It wages a war that much of it's populace is against, that was not sanctioned by most other nations, and that, after the fact, has little evidence supporting the original justification for it.
People are are against America because they're afraid of America. You are the last superpower. And you go to war on little more than a whim.
Ultimately, it's up to them.
So if they decide, democratically, to institute a fundamentalist religious government, you're not going to blow the crap out of them again? If it was ultimately "up to them", then you should have left their country alone, and let them sort it out themselves. You're not some school teacher intervening in a fight between school-kids. You are one adult telling all the others how they should behave at the point of a gun.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
they are also planning to launch a new wave of 'information warfare'
This is an old DoD buzzword that people say in order to sound cool. It funds armies of Tiger Teams, and that's about the stretch of it. It's about as futuristic as that, putting it roughly in the paleolithic. Even so, if you sit at a board meeting in a defense contractor, you can sound really smart and macho at the same time by saying information warfare, you 1337 hax0r d00d.
Time to start running my own '.' server. Can someone tell me how to get a complete copy of everything, the following command doesn't work (fails NOTAUTH):
Well put!
;-)
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
"...war against the internet"
Ahh yes American shadow boxing at its finest...
I can see the ads now...Neo recruiting for "Interweb soldiers"..with the rally cry of "iN uR face n00b!!!" instead of "An Army of One".
They pay 160 Million bucks for a single F-22,
and then they invest just 383 Million Dollars
for the whole IT-security from now to 2009?
Great relation.
Napoleon has a better chance of taking Russia during wintertime than the US does going to 'war' with the entire world wide web and winning. How do you even begin a war on the internet?
"My fellow Americans, during these times of tuhr attacks, the threats of the in - innernets have grown too large. We must stand together and keep these innernets from torturing their citizens and invading our beloved country. I've amassed an army of 80,000 marines to invade the innernets and stop the evil man Osama Bin Laden from striking against the American people with tuhr and hate."
"Uh, sir, you can't attack the internet. It's a network of millions of computers."
"My fellow Americans, I've just changed my mind. I'm going to EMP the entire globe. The scientists have dubbed this project 'Project Escape-From-L.A.' God Bless you and God Bless the United States of America."
No? Don't feel like you've been made fools of yet?
You will.
-FL
M.A.D. - Mutual Assured DDOS?
CanadianAlly.com is a Canadian government website used to distribute information in the USA to combat inacurate information sources about Canada in the USA.
Why slashdot? Why not?
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
I see the worst case scenario that has a likelihood of occurring for Iraq being that it gets divided into two countries and they constantly wage war against each other. There would be the occasional radical going off and bombing a European or American target in an act of retribution for what "Westerners have done". As I said before, what Bush did was desperate. There was a lot of risk in what he did and we would be ignorant to think that he didn't know the risks. I'd guess he had mathematicians, foreign affairs experts and several other advisers trying to predict outcomes of various actions both short term and long term. Before the war, I saw the biggest risk being the consequences that would come. We all knew that many people in the world would see the situation as America the Bully pushing around other countries. What would all the consequences of that mentality be, I thought. That's the risk Bush knowingly took when he invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam, thereby attempting to speed up their civilization's growth. I'm sure it's even more complicated than I see it.
Regardless of what I think, I can understand and even sympathize with the opposing opinions. I'm either seeing the truth and it's pretty damn scary or I'm totally wrong. I actually hope I'm wrong and globalization isn't a big issue. I hope that there isn't so much growth the world will have to endure regarding the way countries interact. It would be so much easier and all the growing pains wouldn't be necessary.
is "the Department will 'fight the net' as it would a weapons system"
This is indeed open to interpretation as fighting using the net as if it were one of the US's weapons system. That interpretation is more plausible given that the phrase occurs on page 49 in the context of defense strategies.
It is also open to interpretation with the normal meaning of the word "fight" and the implication that the network is an enemy weapons system. Except it sure seems to be talking about the DOD's network.
Exactly! Whenever I hear of the "War on the Ground" I always find myself wondering why we're fighting dirt and rocks. Do they have ties to Al Qaeda? It should be the "portion of the war taking place on the ground and perhaps a little underground but certainly not more than a few yards above the ground." Calling it the "war on the ground" is a huge troll because anything that I misinterpret, no matter how foolishly, is an obvious attempt to spin the issue against me.
The former: resignation, the latter takes a bit longer to explain:
The US is, compared to any other western society, extremely religious (that Bush actually used the word "crusade" to refer to the Iraq War didn't exactly help, either). Granted, there are quite religious countries in Europe, too (Poland, Ireland and Italy), but not to the same extend, and they seem to be more successful separating it from politics.
You can compare survey data of various aspects of life between countries, and you will find that religion is not as important in Europe as it is in the US. For example, if you look at the results of the question "How important is god in your life?" for the US, Iran, and secular European countries like France or Germany ("Old Europe") the US' relative similarity to Iran, compared to Europe, is striking (sorry, no direct link to the graphs is possible, but trust me it's worth the effort).
I also found a poll that said 45% of Americans believe in the biblical creation, 38% in ID creationism, and only 13% that no god had part in it. In a German poll with the same questions the results were 12%/25%/61% (link in German).
The relatively common references to god even by mainstream US politicians, along with the Good/Evil classification, let many things appear religiously motivated, even if not intended. I assume those Americans that don't share the mainstream's religiousity perceive that rhetoric as as frightening as I do.
When there's a culture that believes westerners are the devil, peaceful integration is very difficult to accomplish.
Well, bombing them probably doesn't help making them see us in a more positive light, either.
Peaceful integration is the only way. You can't force somebody to share your believes.
[Bush] had a very difficult decision to make. He could either let things continue to happen organically and knowingly face more 9/11 incidents or he could make a desperate attempt to speed up the integration.
The key to preventing "more 9/11 incidents" lies in understanding the terrorists' motivation. The US' military presence in the Middle East, along with the support for oppressive regimes as in Saudi Arabia and what is seen as agressive Israeli politics/military actions, is a major factor.
I'd like to expand on Iraq in particular because it seems to bring out the most cynical of viewpoints. There are so many people blaming us for the current state of Iraq. I can understand blaming us for Iraq no longer being under Saddam's control and therefore introducing freedoms that the people never had. Nobody seems to want to put any responsibility on the Iraqis themselves.
The US chose to attack Iraq, and as the occupying power carries the responsibility to provide security for the parts of the population not taking part in the fighting. The US created a power vacuum and different factions try to fill it -- that was predicted by many people who opposed the war from the very beginning. You can put some of the blame on Jaafari & Co., on the terrorists, or on the insurgency if you believe resistance was unexpected, but not on the Iraqi people as a whole.
They have many more freedoms that they never had before.
That depends. Actually many women, especially in the Shiite south, probably would point out several freedoms they have lost. Saddam was bad, but he was secular (which, incidently, is why the islamists hated him).
Also, elections are not the same a
It is simple, and cynical, but I don't know if it's too far off-base. I think the war in Iraq was motivated more by politics than by national security. That may or may not be true, but I don't think I'm alone in holding that opinion.
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
The world is getting smaller, and globalisation is inevitable. I prefer the direction EU is going compared to the USA, however. You're not going to unite the world by tying them together through threat of force. That will last just as long as the force remains viable. Then it will fall apart. The EU's governing body is large, cumbersome and overly bureaucratic. But each of it's member states are there because they feel they need to be there, and they each have at least some say in how the EU is governed.
Most of the world's powers in recent times have been distinct entities uniting: USSR, USA, EU, and most recently, the UAE. Three types of unity are represented there:
- Force. The USSR were united by force, and fell apart when the force vanished.
- Threat. The states of America united against a foreign threat.
- Growth. The EU was established because the only way they could see of remaining relevant in the modern world was to unite.
I'm not sure whether the UAE falls into 2 or 3 - perceived threat from the West, or unity as they realise the power they are beginning to wield on the world stage. But my point is, unless some horrible aliens attack and we have an external threat to unite us, the only way the world is going to be united is discovering that standing on one's own leads to irrelevance as others unite. Being coerced into unity by a glowering father-figure, with his hand on the strap only lasts while the child is still cowed by the strap.Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Every time I see a schematic drawing of the internet, it's a cloud. How do you attack a cloud? It's like, shooting at rainbows, or declaring war on an idea.
Oh wait, you mean we've already been doing that with the war on drugs and the New Global War on Evil?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Strange...the Bush crew is often portrayed as bumblers who can't do anything right, then they are accused of being devious co-conspirators to rule the world. Which is it guys?
You tell me. Bush has been called a great leader who controls his own actions, but at the same time people say that he shouldn't be held responsible for the disasters he's overseen. Can any Bush supporters tell us once and for all which one it is?
I'm really enjoying living through a period in which a world power is spiralling down the toilet. It's fascinating to watch the flailings of a dying empire as they keep desperately searching for relevance and control. Keep it up USA :).
I'm *really* waiting for Civil War II: The Malcontents Strike Back.
Jaye.
Really? What in the hell do you call false, wrong, misleading, and or "bad" intelligence that causes a fuckup on this order of magnitude? I've lived in an Islamic country, and I've worked for the US gov't. in various capacities. I'm telling you the whole goddamned thing stinks and I'm a Republican (generally McCain, with a little less war emphasis thankyouverymuch).
No, it doesn't. It needs a framework that works like the UN was supposed to work (btw, screw you Kofi!) with the teeth of NATO. Who are we (yes, I'm a USian) to dictate what is right and wrong? Compared to actually secular countries (you know, like some of those countries in "Old Europe"*) we're slowly becoming the enemy, only under the guise of Christianity.
What Bush did was criminal. We could have kept Saddam contained and let him rant and rave and then maybe pulled his chain a bit to sell Iraqi oil. Somewhere along the line a group of 'murrkins of recursive genetic ancestry started equating iraQ with al Qaeda. Saddam didn't tolerate competition in his own country, and he goddamned knew good and well that if he sold jack shit in terms of WMDs let alone used them that we'd make him glow in the dark. In the mean time Iran is eating this shit up. They think it's great. We've destabilized a large country that has over night become a cesspool for terrorists.
And don't even get me started on the "axis of evil" speech. The Iranians were starting to lean toward the moderate side of the scale. Now it appears as though their nuke program is buried in so many different locations that we can't even effectively bomb it. What happens when they test their first nuke and then state "oh, and by the way, we built five more just like it and scattered them across the country.. just in case you know".
The problem we've got here in the states is that we really do not understand the Middle East and hence step in piles of shit at every turn. Do I agree with Islam? As practiced in parts of the Middle East hell no! Is it for me to say that it's right or wrong across the pond? Uh no. And no, I'm not implying that the Middle East is "purely Islamic".
In other words, we're not the world's police, morals and values squad. Especially since what tiny step ladder we had to stand on to brag of moral superiority is now a pit.
*The French are still assholes though. Just because they're French.
On that note I should take a deep breath, have a beer, and hit the sack.
I am guessing that France has the number one spot on the list of nations to test this on...
If they could turn this power against US corporations who are sending me sick porn and fraudulent mortgage offers I would see it under a different light.
realkiwi
>launching cyber-attacks against enemies
Sheik Osama bin Laden uses paper, pencil and camels to communicate. Saddam Hussein's iraqi army used motorcycle couriers. Harry Potter uses owls. Go figure.
Well thats my guess anyway.
We are biologically disposed to wage battle. When some of you slashbots learn that, and stop sidestepping the causes and blaming culture and money, we might actually get somewhere with the nefarious problem of war.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"The hate you give little infants fucks everybody." - Tupac Shakur
The USA is just breeding terrorists and this IS what all the other countries in the world think. You have some misplaced idea that only some Americans think that this whole "War on Terror" is despicable. It just shows how brainwashed you are.
Work on your own country first you dipshit. Maybe a father figure does need to set things straight but that father figure is NOT the US. Shit I mean USA is the abuse alcoholic father figure who just fucks up the kids. Fix your own country up before trying to interfere in other countries problems.
Seriously you have so many terrorists in your own country to take care of. Just one example is the KKK. How are these guys less of terrorists than Osama Bin Laden? BUT you PROTECT the KKK. This is why most of the world thinks the USA is evil.
My land of the free and the brave will soon sadly be reduced to the land of the controlled and censored.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
Of lying?
"Only people who live in the usa have a positive opinion of the usa."
That's so far from the truth that the rest of your arguments, no matter how sound, are ignored. Why make shit up?
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Ever watch the 1990's TV series called "The Pretender"? In that series, the evil extra-governmental organisation called "The Centre" was based upon Rand.
Roy: Come on you crazy bitch. Denholms called a general.
...
Jen: Oh no! not another one.
Moss: I bet he declares war on something, he loves declaring wars.
Denholm: I'm declaring war... On stress
And we've been doing a bang up job of it too, don't you think?
As a nation we've:
I could go on, but it's depressing and demoralizing. Especially in light of the fact that I've voted consistently for administrations that say they are against policies and decisions like those above, and they either don't win the election, or come to power and continue in the status quo.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
> -- LordLucless (582312)
I'm not so sure. In 2004 about 56% of eligible voters voted for pro-war candidates, about 44% didn't even vote, and less than half a percent voted for candidates against the war.
If those who couldn't be bothered to even show up to vote, were against the war, they still have innocent blood on their hands. Those who were against the war but still voted for pro-war candidates because of some other reason - ditto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_e lection%2C_2004 h p?year=2004 a rchives/facts_for_features_special_editions/002957 .html
http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/national.p
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/
Just what we need Web World War 1 #/
The web war to end all web wars. Followed 22 years later by WWW2.
WWW3 will be fought with virtual nukes and WWW4 will be fought virtual rocks and spears.
It all makes sense now Virtual armagedon!
Thats how it will all end LOL.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
A famous German General once wrote about this. His bottom line was an admonition to his commanders to: "Beware the industriousely stupid!". He also imtimated that the 'industriousely stupid' can also be quite treacherous. Originality and logic not being in their repertoir, what is left to an ambitious one not equipped as his/her peers. We all know the low to mid low rank enlisted person who makes life miserable for his underlings by harping on buttons and giglines, and we know the civilian secretary that has gotten ahead by quietly alleging sex harrassment at opportune times in her career. It is low tech and requires no real intelligence, just low ethics.
We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures.
Why? Where's your authority to act as the world's authoritarian father-figure? Because you have the largest, most well-equipped army? This is the sort of attitude that gets planes flown into tall American buildings - "We know best; when we bomb you, it's for your own good".
What? The grapnd-parent just said that a huge military might requires responsibility. Then you come and blame that this means "we know best; we bomb you for your own good".
That's the risk Bush knowingly took when he invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam, thereby attempting to speed up their civilization's growth. I'm sure it's even more complicated than I see it.
If the war in Iraq was so necessary and so justfied, why do our leaders LIE to us all about the reasons? Surely if the cause was just, they could afford to be honest about why they needed our fathers, brothers and sons to die?
In reality, they're actually vulnerable to both types of attack- and the cyber variety happens to have the highest payoff for effort involved.
If you must know, the grid's far, far more fragile than you'd think and it takes all of about 6 minutes or less if you've got your typical intel for hacking to overtake the "security" by remote on most of the substations out there and with it do rather evil things to it and the surrounding grid. This is actually a known by everyone out there in the Utility industry- they demonstrated it out of a test setup at Batelle Labs at a recent Utility Industry conference.
If you target the right substations, you can make the blackout on the East Coast in 2003 look like a sunday picnic in comparison- all without making a single physical attack.
Don't for one second think that any segment of securing things needs to be overlooked- in reality, the overall security of the grid is at risk, from the physical aspects to the SCADA they use to control things with.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They can be "extreme far right" in the sense of wanting corporations to own us all. It's sad to see the third parties being even wackier than those parties they're meant to be alternatives to.
"the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet" omg...wtf!?
;)
To think that by waging war on or with the internet is ludicrous!
Like seriously!? If the american govt is STILL having their sec compromised in this day and age, do they really expect to acheive the status of being a step ahead of us/them (choose ur side..) ????
The best compromise they could come to is communicating with the world, and agreeing on something for once. It seems that their new plan to fight this "battle" is just a playground fad.
Grow up Whitehouse, you can try and run our world, but we can fuck yours too
g00p.
The article is talking about using the internet as a tool to wage war, not waging a war against the internet.
You swallowed, hook, line etc. Please try to be more diligent when selecting what to rant about.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...