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Pentagon Cyberweapons 'Disappointing' Against ISIS (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
It has been more than a year since the Pentagon announced that it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks... "In general, there was some sense of disappointment in the overall ability for cyberoperations to land a major blow against ISIS," or the Islamic State, said Joshua Geltzer, who was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until March. "This is just much harder in practice than people think..."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
The terrorists are winning! We need more cyber stuff (especially mass surveillance) to stop the terrorists! If we don't ramp it up there will be more terror attacks besides 9/11 (year 2001, almost 16 years ago).
Of *course* these "cyberweapons" are ineffective against ISIS!
These weapons and the entire current US surveillance infrastructure were designed from their inceptions to monitor and control the US population and their digital communications. It is entirely unsuited to combating external threats.
That's like using a hammer on a machine-screw. Duh! Wrong tool for the job.
It's either that, or the US government has known beforehand of past attacks and allowed them to go forward and kill innocent people to stir up fear and panic so the populace will be willing to let them take away and violate the people's rights, freedoms, and privacy.
They are either so incompetent they should be removed from power, or they are totalitarian/authoritarian, oath-violating, power-seeking, criminal, seditious, corrupt, shitheads that should be hung by the neck from the nearest tall object and left up as an object lesson. I leave the decision to the reader.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Don't believe it then.
Actually, like all the others, they are dependent on money
The truth is dead...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's hard to believe that ISIS is very dependent on computers.
They have been very adept at using social media. They are younger and more tech savvy than more traditional jihadist groups like Al Qaeda. ISIS is mostly millenials.
But perhaps the Pentagon shouldn't have "pre-announced" their cyber-offensive.