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Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
diewlasing sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran's Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet."
So I guess this means we're officially at war with Iran since it was declared that acts of cyberterrorism would be considered acts of war, right?
We have always been at war with Iran, citizen.
We have always been at war with Afghanistan. Even in the 1980s, when Saint Reagan gave vast funds to our allies, the Russians, to defeat Osama Bin Laden.
I believe the old joke was, "In Russia, you can only choose the communist party. In America, you can choose the capitalist party, or the other capitalist party!"
Palm trees and 8
A story like this doesn't just magically happen. It's not wikileaked. So why would someone want this story in the public? Could it be so that tension between the USA and Iran ratchets up? Because that could induce a whole lot more spending on the military. And all those people who aren't going to be making buckets of money from Iraq and Afghanistan will either need to adjust their standard of living downwards, or find new sources of income. Getting military with China is a bad idea, North Korea is too close to China - look what happened last time - it's the only reason there is a North Korea. Nope: better to pick on a country more isolated.
I don't understand one thing - all of this is based on David Sanger's book, which in turn is based on "unnamed US, European and Israeli sources".
Other than the author's reputation, do we have anything resembling evidence that this isn't just a science fiction book being sold?
First thought: Who's the source on this? Everybody suspected it was the US or the Israelis, but is this reliable?
Well, let's see ... would Obama be the kind of person to do this? His track record so far:
Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Now considering all that, um, I think ordering a speed up of cyberattacks on Iran where no one dies might be something he does on a whim over coffee on a given morning.
Second thought, while reading through the article: Wow, that's pretty badass.
That's what I don't understand. Everyone has this notion that Obama is some peace loving hippie. At his Nobel Prize announcement, he basically justified going to war with anyone who gave USA the stink eye. He has been more aggressive (albeit more subtle) than George W. Bush and will probably cause problems for Romney who wants to paint him as an indecisive leader that let Libya and Syria happen. But the funny thing is that for all everyone sees him as a harbinger of peace, he sure hasn't been acting like it. And it's probably going to be obvious come this next election when people start looking at his track record ...
My work here is dung.
I can see a campaign commercial now.
Obama single handily Killed Osama, wrote stuxnet AND snuck it into Iran on a USB key.
Just goes to show that an air gap isn't going to save you, if your attacker is keen.
The only fact I see in all this is: The USA has not officially taken responsibility for an international incident.
This story is by someone making sensationalist claims to sell a book, and the NY Times is helping promote it.
As usual, the NY Times reporter relies on anonymous sources. No one knows how reliable they are. No one knows who they are.
The NY Times and their anonymous sources are known to be wrong, like the WMD in Iraq. So we trust them now?
The NY Times is known to make up news, such as Jason Blair. Can anything they say about Stuxnet be independently verified as being correct? No?
Any government that holds secret wars is extremely corrupt. That taxpayer pays for tinkering that almost always causes more trouble, giving the secret agencies more work and more demands on the taxpayers.