Whenever i hear about cyber - efforts for the U.S i automatically think of general Keith Alexander. In an recent article by wired magazine called
"the secret war" a lot of light was shed on the activities of Alexander, and how he does what he does ( heres a link to the article
www.wired.com... )
"General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close
to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A
four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National
Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over
the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army."
"Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability
to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so
mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and
emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity
on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private
sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”
Heres an exert from the article about stuxnet and how he and his "cyberwarriors" launched the attack.
"And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the
NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment,
Stuxnet was aimed at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an industrial control link known as a Scada
(Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear
material. "
Either way you look at it, this is just down right scary. This is exactly what we have to watch out for, people like Alexander are beyond smart and
know that this arena right now is growing and in the coming years will probably be a more serious threat than most things in this world. Using that
to his advantage hes scared the hell out of congress with his assesments on how vulnerable we are and got a massive chunk of the whole intelligence
budget funneled right into his cybercommand program. People dont realize it, well or some people dont realize that cyberwar is infact the future, it
is inevitable, as we advance technologically as a species our methods of warfare will evolve and advance as well. As a people we've become so
dependent on the internet being at our fingertips 24 /7, i've even refereed to the internet many times as an extension of the human brain and i truly
believe that. Most of us dont think of this because we think it would never happen but what if one person controlled the flow of information through
the internet, could you imagine that power and control?
the article "the secret war" is linked at the top of this post i suggest you read it (one more link so you dont have to scroll up.
www.wired.com...), its truly eye opening and intriguing. At the end of the day, if you
hear and branch of government fighting for cyberweapons you can bet that Alexander is the one whos chosing how they get it and how quick. He
literally has the monopoly on cyberwarfare and all things related.