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| Obama administration to form new cyber war doctrine |
| 2008-12-31 |
| The Obama administration is set to appoint General Keith Alexander, the current Director of the National Security Agency, to be the new Cyber Czar. In a major departure from the past, Alexander, who will receive his fourth general's star, will have an initial budget of around $8 billion and will control how it is spent within NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. In effect, this will mean that the new head of NSA will report to him instead of to the Secretary of Defense on a huge area of business. In the past five years, President Bush has had five Cyber Czars, all of whom failed miserably to get to grips with the cyber security challenge, in part because they had no money to dispense. Absent that carrot, no amount of sticks will make the slightest difference in the Washington bureaucracy. The result of the Bush administration's indolence has been the wholesale pillaging of economic and military secrets by foreign nations such as China, Israel, Iran and Russia and the phenomenal growth of cyber organized crime which is now a multi-billion dollar a year illegal business that involves almost no risk. The raising of the power and influence of the cyber czar along with his huge budget will have a significant global impact. America will be developing and implementing a new doctrine for war in cyberspace which will include clear offensive capabilities and when and how they will be used. For that doctrine to be effective, there will have to be extensive discussions with allies and potential enemies and the Obama administration will be seeking to develop a new Cyber Treaty along the lines of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to codify this new realm of warfare. Although exactly who Alexander will report to has not been decided, he will likely sit in the office of the Director of National Intelligence which will be run by Admiral Denny Blair, whose appointment was announced last week. Alexander has a reputation as a hard-charging technology innovator who took over NSA from Mike Hayden, the current head of CIA, in 2005. The handover was a frosty one as Alexander loathes Hayden who he considers to be an incompetent blowhard and the men rarely speak. Alexander is, in some ways, a classic geek as he holds five different degrees, including one in electronic warfare and another in physics. However, he is also amusing and congenial company. He had a rough start at NSA which had a very poor record of innovation under Hayden. Within weeks of starting he embarked on a very ambitious technology program codenamed Turbulence which grew to include other programs such as Traffic Thief and Turmoil at a cost of more than $500m a year. Collectively, these highly classified programs have enabled NSA to collect, process and deliver real time analysis of the millions of communications that are intercepted worldwide by NSA every minute. For now, Turbulence only operates in limited geographical areas such as parts of Asia but it is expected that Alexander will use some of his new budget to ensure the program's expansion to other regions. It is unlikely that Alexander will face the confirmation challenges that confront many others who served in the national security arena during the Bush years. It was Hayden, not Alexander, who encouraged and implanted the widespread and illegal bugging of Americans in an operation codenamed Stellar Wind. And Alexander's fingerprints are not on any of the kidnappings, torture or assassinations that have formed part of the Bush foreign policy. Not sure any credit should go to Obama, but General Alexander is great choice. He's an "idea a minute" type. Hope they can form a team to keep up with him. The last two sentences are hate-America BS and conjecture the readership could have certainly done without. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Alexander is, in some ways, a classic geek as he holds five different degrees, including one in electronic warfare and another in physics. Oh, yum. I would love to have this man to dinner someday. In the meantime, may he be a spectacular success at his new assignment, for we will all benefit therefrom. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-12-31 16:30 |