Why the U.S. Should Use Cyber Weapons Against Syria

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/08/why-us-should-use-cyber-weapons-against-syria/69776/

By Jason Healey
Defense One
August 30, 2013

If the Obama administration does conduct military strikes against Syria, 
as seems likely, it should use military cyber weapons at the earliest 
possible moment to show the upside of military cyber power. Though this is 
risky, as it puts the focus on the U.S. militarization of cyberspace, it 
is likely worth doing to show that cyber operations are not evil 
witchcraft but can be humanitarian.

This is not the first time the United States has been here. In 1999, the 
White House was reported to have initially approved a plan for covert 
"computer attacks on foreign bank accounts held by [Slobodan] Milosevic 
and other Serbian leaders, such as draining assets or altering banking 
records."  A few years later, during the time of the second invasion of 
Iraq, a similar plan was rolled out to "cripple" the financial system of 
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, leaving him "no money for war supplies. No money to 
pay troops."

Neither plan seems to have been executed. The Treasury Department and 
senior political officials apparently blocked these attacks, for fear of 
cascading failures and setting a precedent of targeting banks.

More recently, according to the New York Times, the Obama administration 
and military commanders considered “a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even 
disable the Gaddafi government’s air-defense system.” A cyber strike on 
Libya was apparently ruled out both because there was not enough time and 
also because officials felt that cyber capabilities are like a "Ferrari" 
which should be saved for the "big race." The Israeli Air Force apparently 
did not think so, as it was widely reported they used a backdoor "kill 
switch" to disable Syrian air defenses en route to destroying an illicit 
nuclear reactor.

Given this history, what can and should the United States do today against 
Syria?

[...]

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