Pentagon Confirms Cyber Command, Under NSA Control

eldavojohn writes "The Pentagon's been planning a cyber command for a while now but it's just been confirmed. The Pentagon will set up a Cyber Command outfit most likely around — surprise surprise — Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. From the article, 'The head of the Cyber Command would also be the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance and communications interception and is also based at Fort Meade.' The Air Force has been no stranger to digital warfare."

Comments

Concentration

[DoofusOfDeath]

Is it just me, or does it seem like the U.S. is being foolish about over-concentrating its forces?

The NSA, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and Pres/VP are all in/near D.C.

It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack.

Re:Concentration

[El Torico]

It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack.

Are you proposing that the DoD use some sort of decentralized command and control system? That's crazy talk.

Re:Concentration

[Satanboy]

there are plenty of other bases and stations throughout the country.

don't forget, we also have about 2 guns per person in this country, it would be very hard to disarm the country if we were invaded.

Re:Concentration

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Perhaps we could begin research into a sort of "inter-network" whereby these decentralized command and control nodes might communicate with one another...

Re:Concentration

[T Murphy]

If one or two nukes manage to hit DC and these leaders have no warning to get out or deep underground I think we've got a big enough problem that it doesn't matter if we have said leaders. I'm sure these organizations have something in place should everyone in DC get killed or isolated, but I would be worried if those in charge of our defense weren't confident in their ability to defend themselves.

Re:Concentration

[ScentCone]

It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack

Impossible.

I live near DC, and carry a balance on my Citibank Visa card. At these interest rates, they won't let anything happen to me. The nation's capital is safe. As long as you don't ride the Metro, anyway.

Re:Concentration

[Shooter28]

Ahh, moded flamebait.

He's talking about the difficulty in disarming the population if we were invaded.
I'm just pointing out that the government has already been attempting to disarm the population.

Re:Concentration

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, Shooter, how many legally purchased guns have you had taken away? I mean actually taken away (or been forced to turn in)? I'm guessing no more than I have. Sure, a couple of things have been made difficult to obtain legally (full auto weapons, large capacity clips), but this "They're coming for our guuunnns!!!!!11!!" hysteria is getting a little tired...

You were modded flamebait because you posted flamebait.

Re:Concentration

[endianx]

Excuse me, but are you suggesting that drivers on the beltway put the entire city and surrounding area at a risk equivalent to nuclear war?

...yeah that's about right...

Re:Concentration

[NotBornYesterday]

He was probably modded flamebait because what he wrote was perceived to be against the prevailing opinions on slashdot. Most readers, writers, and mods around here have no problem with anti-government conspiracy sentiments, so the word that must have set them off was "guns".

If you are naive enough to believe that 2nd Amendment rights are freely available to all law-abiding, qualified, rational, sane, and otherwise okay US citizens, I would suggest you travel around a bit, or at least do some research. For instance, here is Massachusetts, we have "may-issue" set of laws for gun permits (ironically, considering we're home to the "shot heard 'round the world", and all that). Local police chiefs have the final say. Let me emphasize that - an unelected official may deny a qualified citizen's legal right to exercise a Constitutional right. If you live in a city or town whose chief of police opposes guns (and here in MA, that is a sizeable number) it is damn near impossible, and in some cases actually impossible, to receive the permit necessary to exercise that right without breaking the law. I live in such a place. Why do we allow this? I don't require a permit from my police chief to exercise my 5th amendment rights ... why should I for my 2nd amendment rights?

What I don't understand is the pervasive silence. When our other Constitutionally protected rights (free speech, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, habeas corpus, etc) are abridged, there is righteous outrage. Slashdot, in fact, is a hotbed of rebellion when issues of censorship, free speech, and other human rights come up ... unless the right in question is the right to own a gun.

Americans and the American press fought harder to extend American-style rights to the detainees in Gitmo (I'm not trying to open up a Gitmo debate, just offering a comparison) than we have to defend the rights of US citizens in our nation's capitol, or MA, or any of the other areas where the 2nd amendment has effectively been repealed.

How many guns have been denied to qualified individuals because of the government? From my point of view, I think it reasonable to include those in the total of "legal guns taken away" you mention, and it would be a large number.

The President and VP have both expressed strong anti-gun sentiment. Ditto for Obama's nominee for SCOTUS. The government is interested in taking guns.

Re:Concentration

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah if those existed Joe Biden would have told us about them.

one or two nukes in Washington

[Reality Master 201]

If there's one or two nukes in DC, we're not in a "US defending itself against a serious attack" scenario, we're in an "end of human civilization as we know it" scenario. There's plenty of folks elsewhere in the country who will be around to push the button.

Re:one or two nukes in Washington

[mcotdp]

You seem to be forgetting, the Government 2.0 cloud-based NukeButton application relies on a single WebSphere instance located in DC. Sure there will be loads of people to push the button, but their AJAX calls will all fail. >:)

Re:one or two nukes in Washington

[Dunbal]

we're in an "end of human civilization as we know it" scenario.

      I like the way you consider all of human civilization to include the northern hemisphere. We here down south would probably be just fine. Actually a bit of cool weather would be a nice change. That way we could chill out as we watch the giant man eating parrots mutate into being in our jungles.

Contest!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

First one to add Cyber Command to their botnet gets 10 internet points!

Don't buy the cyber-war hype!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Evgeny Morozov's new piece about how all this cyber-war hysteria is just a distraction - to really improve Internet security, governments should be investing in infrastructure.

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.4/morozov.php

Unfortunately

[copponex]

Unfortunately, if we are invaded, we wouldn't have the right to attack the invaders. At least that's the principle we live by in Iraq.

Re:Unfortunately

[ArcherB]

Unfortunately, if we are invaded, we wouldn't have the right to attack the invaders. At least that's the principle we live by in Iraq.

If we were living under an oppressive dictator and another country invaded to remove that dictator and hand the country back to the American public, then yes, you would be correct.

Re:Unfortunately

[copponex]

And if the country invading us had put that dictator into power and then strangled our country with sanctions for a decade, suddenly accused him of atrocities they had allowed while they were sponsoring him, bombed our entire nation into pieces under pretense and lies, destroyed our national security by dismissing the entirety of our former armed forces, allowed terrorists to flood in from every direction, stood by idly while mobs destroyed our infrastructure, bombed our streets and cities so no one had access to clean water, proper sewage, or electricity, took control of our local natural resources and handed them over to private corporations from their home country, invited foreigners to buy up our land while it was cheap, built over seven permanent military bases worth over billion dollars each from border to border, and had mercenaries with no legal oversight roaming the streets with machine guns and RPGs, I guess you'd just sit there and take it?

Interesting.

Re:Unfortunately

[ArcherB]

And if the country invading us had put that dictator into power...

Please, don't let the facts change what you want to believe, but please read the following:

The meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council on July 22, 1979, started with Saddam Hussein reading a list of enemies of the state. There was a stunned silence at the Command Council, as many of the men present were listed as enemies of the state. Included were trade union leaders and religious leaders who had actually helped to consolidate the Ba'ath power. As names were read from the list, each were arrested and taken away from the council meeting. Within mere hours 21 of the men that Saddam named were dead. Not only did Saddam order the executions, but he also personally participated in the murders.

Saddam's first "cleansing" of Iraq continued for a week. And by August 1, at least 450 of Iraq's most prominent men were dead. They included members of the Ba'ath party, union leaders, financiers, army officers, lawyers, judges, journalists, editors, professors, religious leaders, and leaders of most of the smaller parties and ethnic groups.

Tell me again how we played a part in this? Jimmy Carter was President at the time. What did Carter do to facilitate this?

Google "Saddam's rise to power" and educate yourself further.

...and then strangled our country with sanctions for a decade...

UN != US. Also, note that the UN allowed for oil to be sold for food, medicine and infrastructure maintenance (It was called the "Oil for Food Program" for Pete's sake!). The Iraqi government chose to ignore those rules and built palaces, paid bribes and attempted to cheat the system by sneaking in contraband.

...suddenly accused him of atrocities...

Are you really saying that there were no atrocities?

Sorry, I just found three pieces of bullshit in the first two lines of your periodless statement. I won't go any further until you pull your head from your ass and recognize facts for what they are. Just because you make it up or really REALLY want to believe something doesn't make it true. Reality is not based on what you think. It should be the other way around.

Re:Unfortunately

[ArcherB]

I'm suggesting that an invading army, who has invaded on a foundation of lies and profiteering...

Profiteering? Really? We've spent $80+ Billion/year. How does $-80,000,000,000 somehow equal a profit?

Again, let me remind you that facts do not rely on what you WANT to believe.

Re:Unfortunately

[copponex]

Tell me again how we played a part in this?

Try 1963.

The coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.

The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.

US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time.

"I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them," he told me.

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm

UN != US.

You have no idea of how politics work between the two if you believe that. We told them if they didn't follow us into a Iraq, they would be a debating society, right? Do you think the UN does anything the United States vetoes? Are you fucking serious?

Are you really saying that there were no atrocities?

I'm saying we gave him the weapons to complete the atrocities, and that we didn't say anything about it while we watched them happen.

Try some elementary moral exercises in your brain, if you can. Very quickly you'll discover that "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" has come back to haunt us so many times it's now sheer irony to watch any international political event involving the United States.

Re:Unfortunately

[winomonkey]

Wow. A few bits of information. Consider them fact or call them a lie, but they kind of contradict your post and back up the parent. Almost 30 years of intervention in Iraq, leading up to the first Gulf War. Citation

1963 -
"To pave the way for the new regime, the CIA is claimed to have provided to the Baathists lists of suspected Communists and other leftists. The new regime is claimed to have used these lists to orchestrate a bloodbath, systematically murdering untold numbers of Iraq's educated eliteâ"killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.[28][31][32] According to an article in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and U.K. oil and other interests, including Mobil, British Petroleum and Bechtel, were once again conducting business in Iraq."

1968 -
"Roger Morris in the Asia Times writes that the CIA deputy for the Middle East Archibald Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and cousin of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.) stated, referring to Iraqi Ba'ath Party officers on his payroll in the 1963 and 1968 coups, "They're our boys, bought and paid for, but you always gotta remember that these people can't be trusted."[20] General Ahmed Bakr was installed as president. Saddam Hussein was appointed the number two man."

1980 -
"Investigative journalist Robert Parry reports that in a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan." "

1980s to '92 -
"A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former U.S. policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in arming Iraq. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous dual use items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction. "Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."
[...]
"Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."

According to reports of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the U.S., under the successive presidential administrations sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992. The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: "The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think its a devastating record."
[...]
"U.S. officials publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mu

Re:Unfortunately

[copponex]

It's a blatant ripoff of a letter sent by MLK. Some say it was a good device to demonstrate the feeling of oppression - which I believe is inherent in military invasion. As an English major, you should probably understand that dogmatic adherence to grammar will net you nothing but a by-the-numbers Grisham novel, which in my opinion, is soulless and not worth the advertising budget it was sold with.

He's quite a bit more eloquent:

"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Uh-oh...

[Christoff9]

Is this when Skynet takes over? I'm not ready for Judgment Day. I just signed a 6 month lease on my apartment...I can't walk away from a commitment like that.

Re:Uh-oh...

[Dunbal]

I can't walk away from a commitment like that.

      No, you will literally be blown away from that commitment. But then said apartment won't exist anymore anyway so what's to worry?

Re:United States Postal Service

[EgoWumpus]

This is brilliant. Grouping a government agency's responsibilities by abstract task we're attempting to accomplish really is a better idea than grouping them by the mechanisms used to achieve the end - especially since those mechanisms inevitably change over time.

NOT under NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyber Command will be under STRATCOM, just led by the same director as NSA. You're confusing people and offices.

not really

[commodoresloat]

cockroaches will survive a nuclear war. I'd like to see a cockroach try to cross the beltway.