Threats From Cyber to Terror Supplant Cold War’s Dangers
The U.S. is searching for ways to
deter, defend against and respond to ever-increasing cyber
attacks and more diverse terrorist threats, even as it tries to
cut spending and finance weapons conceived during the Cold War.
That consensus emerged from a daylong Bloomberg Government
conference yesterday that featured senior U.S. lawmakers,
defense analysts and military officials.
While the world may be safer than it was at the height of
the Cold War, when the superpowers were on a constant hair-
trigger alert, threats such as cyber attacks and terrorism are
more complex and difficult to detect and trace than a Soviet
missile test was, participants said. In addition, the U.S.
faces stiffer economic and technological competition from
nations such as China.
“Cyber espionage is stealing America’s future,”
Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said. Cyber attacks are increasing exponentially
while also becoming more sophisticated and destructive,
according to the Michigan Republican.
Instead of simply blocking access to a website, newer cyber
threats “can break your machine,” he said. “We’re talking
about a complete loss of information. That’s a whole new
ballgame.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings
Institution, a public policy group in Washington, said the U.S.
needs a doctrine on cyber activities to explain its policy more
clearly and spell out “where we won’t go” to avoid giving
legitimacy to attacks by other nations and groups.
O’Hanlon also said he worries “that in the absence of
legislation, the private sector will under-prepare for cyber
attacks.”
Latin America
Even as the U.S. tries to detect increasingly sophisticated
cyber threats, it must root out terrorist groups from Yemen,
Somalia, North Africa and even Latin America, said Michael Chertoff, who was secretary of homeland security in President
George W. Bush’s administration.
“Latin America is underappreciated” as a center for
terrorism, said Chertoff, chairman of the Chertoff Group.
“These transnational groups are becoming more and more
powerful,” Chertoff said. Deciding how severe a threat each
group poses can be difficult, he said.
“The line between a criminal group and a transnational
terror group is a very fine line,” he said.
The U.S. also is struggling over strategy to curtail Iran’s
nuclear program, as a debate among analysts at the conference
underscored.
‘Fear-Inducing Measures’
Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, said the U.S. needs to devise “fear-
inducing measures” to make Iranian’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei understand his choice is “a bomb or his own
regime’s survival.”
Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American
Council, said the escalation in rhetoric and economic sanctions
has only allowed Iran’s nuclear program to grow while
“decimating” the country’s middle class.
“We’re about to have a major crisis as far as Iranian
nuclear weapons are concerned,” Senator John McCain of Arizona,
the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee,
said at the conference. “The world is rapidly changing, and the
world requires American leadership.”
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the
committee, said that “the military option needs to be kept on
the table because that’s an additional pressure point.”
Runaway Costs
Meeting new security challenges under tight budget
pressures will be more difficult because of ballooning cost
overruns in weapons programs, such as Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) (LMT)’s F-
35 fighter jet and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII) (HII)’s new
Ford-class aircraft carrier, McCain said.
“The American people should be more angry than they are”
about runaway weapons costs, he said.
For all the complexity of the new global dangers, several
of the analysts said the world is safer today than it was before
the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
“The world’s plenty dangerous, but people who want to make
the Cold War sound like the good old days are forgetting their
history,” said O’Hanlon, the Brookings Institution analyst.
“On balance, the world of 2012 is a much safer place to live
than the world in 1962 or 1972 or probably even 1982.”
Christopher Preble, a defense analyst at the Cato
Institute, a policy research group in Washington, said military
spending today is about equal to the level in the Reagan-era
buildup of the 1980’s, when adjusted for inflation.
“We’re in a much stronger position today than we were 40
or 50 years ago,” Preble said.
Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American
Enterprise Institute in Washington, disputed that assessment,
citing testimony from military service chiefs who have warned
about growing dangers in the era of cyber warfare and terrorism.
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