Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The Pentagon is to spend $30 Billion building a super secret "National
Cyber Range" in order to prepare for all out cyber warfare by using it
to conduct mock online battles with realistic info-warriors.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), previously
responsible for the development of electronic surveillance programs
such as Total Information Awareness and MATRIX, LifeLog and the Brain
Machine Interfaces enterprise, has been ordered by Congress to create
what is essentially a new internet as a cyberspace battleground.
Wired.com has reported "According to a defense official familiar with
the program: ‘Congress has given DARPA a direct order; that’s only
happened once before — with the Sputnik program in the ’50s’"
The NCR will not only allow for defense from electronic attack, but
will also allow offensive strikes against "adversaries online". It is
rumored to be the keystone of a so called "Comprehensive National
Cybersecurity Initiative", created via a secret presidential order in
January.
A request for proposals, released by DARPA yesterday outlined how the
agency wants the NCR to be able to "realistically replicate human
behavior and frailties," and feature "realistic, sophisticated, nation-
state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces".
The NCR’s operators should be able to "integrate, replicate, or
simulate" military satellite and digital radio communications, mobile
ad-hoc networks, physical access control systems, U.S. and foreign
"unmanned aerial vehicles, weapons, [and] radar systems" — even "cyber
cafes" and "personal digital assistances [sic]." the proposal states.
A previous notice outlined that the NCR would allow the Pentagon to:
• Conduct unbiased, quantitative and qualitative assessment of
information assurance and survivability tools in a representative
network environment.
• Replicate complex, large-scale, heterogeneous networks and users
in current and future Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems and
operations.
• Enable multiple, independent, simultaneous experiments on the
same infrastructure.
• Enable realistic testing of Internet/Global-Information-Grid
(GIG) scale research.
• Develop and deploy revolutionary cyber testing capabilities.
• Enable the use of the scientific method for rigorous cyber
testing.
The project is so secret that it has been referred to as an
electronic"Manhattan Project". The Senate Homeland Security committee,
a key Senate oversight panel has cited concerns about the secrecy
around the project and has been forced to write to the DHS to request
basic information on the project.
Commentators have speculated that the entire project may be a huge new
part of the federal government’s so called "terrorist surveillance
program", which has so far only been shown to constitute cyberwarfare
against everyday Americans via warrantless wiretapping and
interception of communications.
Wired.com comments:
"Why might citizens be worried about privacy and civil liberties?
Consider that the whole initiative appears to have been launched after
the Director of National Intelligence told the President Bush that a
cyber attack might wreak as much economic havoc as 9/11 did. Consider
that the NSA, which currently protects classified networks, wants to
expand into protecting all non-classified federal government networks.
Consider that Congress is set to legalize the NSA’s monitoring rooms
in the nation’s phone and internet infrastructure. For its part, the
FBI says it also needs access to the internet’s backbone, while the
Air Force is hyping its own efforts at cyber defense and offense. […]
Now it seems the only question is whether the government will be
able to turn the net into a controllable, monitorable and trackable
pre-internet AOL-type service or whether the chaotic net will live on
as just another frontier for the military-industrial complex to start
an arm’s race and rake in billions of government dollars."
Could this be the Pentagon’s ultimate "solution" to counter the
internet, an arena of freedom and progress that military strategists
now view as a ******* child they let slip from their grasp some twenty
or so years ago?
While Homeland Security head Chertoff has denied that the project is
part of a vast effort to restrict or "sit on the internet", the
Pentagon has previously made it clear that the internet, free of
restriction and holding such potential for free speech, is in direct
opposition to their goals.
The Pentagon has stressed that the internet needs to be dealt with as
if it were an enemy "weapons system".
Recently, a document entitled Information Operation Roadmap (PDF) was
declassified by the Pentagon due to a Freedom of Information Act
request by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University.
One portion of the document states:
“Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to
military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable
future….. Information operations should be centralized under the
Office of the Secretary of Defence and made a core military
competency."
"Objective: IO [information operations] becomes a core competency.
The importance of dominating the information spectrum explains the
objective of transforming IO into a core military competency on a par
with air, ground, maritime and special operations. The charge to the
IO Roadmap oversight panel was to develop as concrete a set of action
recommendations as possible to make IO a core competency, which in
turn required identifying the essential prerequisites to become a core
military competency."
Another section of the document focuses on what is referred to as
"Computer Network Attack":
"When implemented the recommendations of this report will
effectively jumpstart a rapid improvement of CNA [Computer Network
Attack] capability." - 7
"Enhanced IO [information operations] capabilities for the
warfighter, including: … A robust offensive suite of capabilities to
include full-range electronic and computer network attack…" - 7
While other sections urge the Department of Defense to "Fight the
Net":
"We Must Fight the Net. DoD [Department of Defense] is building an
information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational
center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to "fight the
net." " - 6
"DoD’s "Defense in Depth" strategy should operate on the premise
that the Department will "fight the net" as it would a weapons
system." - 13
A previous document that echoes such sentiments is the now infamous
Rebuilding America’s Defences by The Project for a New American
Century (PNAC). In this 2000 document those that would go on to become
the nucleus of the Bush administration stated:
"It is now commonly understood that information and other new
technologies… are creating a dynamic that may threaten America’s
ability to exercise its dominant military power." - 4
"Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas
- and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers
in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a
key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting
its interests or that of its allies in space or the "infosphere" will
find it difficult to exert global political leadership." - 51
"Although it may take several decades for the process of
transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land,
and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and "combat" likely
will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space," and
perhaps the world of microbes." - 60
The importance of information warfare is clearly laid out in both
these documents. Brent Jessop, a regular contributor to Infowars.net
and Prisonplanet.com has exhaustively documented the phenomenon of
“Full Spectrum Information Warfare” in a four part series of articles.
We have also previously documented the existing moves to kill off the
internet as we know it today by the federal government.
Note that the enemy is never specifically named, it is merely whoever
uses the net, because the enemy IS the net. The enemy is the freedom
the net provides to billions around the globe and the threat to
militaristic dominance of information and the ultimate power that
affords.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=1965
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