International Law

Scary Chinese Cyberattack Stories

By Stan

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare - or even shut down the internet.

The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.

I have nothing against a strong U.S. cybersecurity plan. In fact, it’s rather scary that the military doesn’t already have one.

On the other hand, I hope that the establishment was not bullied into this by politicians that were alarmed after reading lots of newspaper accounts of PLA hackers slicing into U.S. networks on behalf of their PRC government overlords.

Did you notice that line about shutting down the Internet? Funny that, and it reminds me of something from grad school.

I took an amazing seminar on international governance of new technologies, taught by Francis Fukuyama. Yes, the class was as good as it sounds.

One of our units addressed the governance of the Internet, specifically ICANN, how its decisions are influenced, and control of the Net’s root zone file. Despite lots of calls for the U.S. Commerce Department to cede control of the root zone file to ICANN or another international organization, this has not happened yet.

Yes, the U.S. has fundamental control of the Net, and has now come out and threatened to shut it down if need be.

I wish that the New World Order would hurry up and get here soon.

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).