While We Were Sleeping…The New Warfare
January 15, 2010 by Brian Jenkins
Filed under Be Risen, Featured
It seems like the United States of America is still stuck in the Stone Age to match the Neanderthals of terrorism that we are fighting against. The problem is, while we are increasing our missile strength and gun sizes, power is being obtained in a different way by growing super powers. What should have bothered us was the $2 Trillion that China is using around the world, essentially gaining control of countries by having them owe. But, China has even advanced past just financial control; they have snuck into the realm of just being controlling.
President Obama will request a record $708 billion to fund the Defense Department in 2011, plus an additional $33 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. The $33 billion to be used this year is for the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, which includes the 30,000 additional troops that the President ordered late last year. The Obama administration’s next move will be to present what is called the Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on or before February 1st. This review is an important part of U.S. military doctrine and will outline military objectives for the next four years, which include expanding the pilot less drone programs used for surveillance and attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These drones have been seen as revolutionary; well, at least they are for these old style wars that we are fighting.
Then we look at China. First off, news recently broke that Google is threatening to pull out of China because the Gmail accounts of human rights activists were breached. They didn’t specifically accuse the Chinese government, but Google did say that a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China” was detected, and an investigation revealed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.” Google said it is no longer willing to censor search results in China, which has been a requirement of the government.
While looking for more information on this subject, somebody in the know introduced me to a recent FBI report indicating that China has secretly developed an army of 180,000 cyber spies that “poses the largest single threat to the United States for cyber terrorism and has the potential to destroy vital infrastructure, interrupt banking and commerce, and compromise sensitive military and defense databases.” This shouldn’t only bother Wall Street, and let me assure you that it does, it should be a scary sentiment to the U.S. government.
The FBI report’s ultimate assessment is that a massive Chinese cyber attack could “be in the magnitude of a weapon of mass destruction,” adding that it would do substantial damage to the American economy, telecommunications, electric power grid, and military preparation. China’s goal, says the FBI report, is to have the world’s premier “informationized armed forces” by 2020. The FBI report lays out the identifiable attacks originating from China just on the Defense Department computers; they increased from 44,000 in 2007 to 55,000 in 2008, and topped 90,000 last year. “They probe, they test our responses, as quick as we make changes and fix vulnerabilities, and they are moving a step ahead.”
There is a definite war for power going on in the world, and it looks like China is winning. While the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon have for some time tried to hack into country’s computers, it has come to the FBI’s attention that the Chinese are actually able to do it. Their hackers are without a doubt the best in the world, in fact that have already had an affect by implanting “malware” into the computers of unidentified companies in different sectors of business. While I can’t get the names of the companies, what I do know is that this is a scary power for one country to have, and I am not necessarily sure what we can immediately do to stop it. I admit though, I will have to do much more research on it as this is just coming out.
- Brian Jenkins
Twitter: @Brian_Jenkins
Yes, we definitely fell asleep behind the wheel! I didn’t know all of this was going on….
The question now is how we can protect ourselves. I’m sure it is being worked on, but I dont know what the answer would be.
I had no idea China and Google were beefing. Nevertheless I think China provides good economic competition, once we start stepping up to the plate
This is ultra current, just broke a couple of days ago. Today China said that Google has to respect the rules. China is becoming a Super Power like we have never seen before, and its right before our eyes. They have the money, the technology, and now the internet, all while not getting too involved with international wars. They also have the fastest growing middle class in the world…
Yes, China is definitely becoming one of the biggest threats in cyber space, it has me worried too. I’m not sure what we can do to prevent it.
whoops forgot to put my name -tamtamdoll
Wow, a very informative blog. You have stated the problem but in all honesty, what would be some realistic solutions? We need solutions in order to address the concerns you have described. You have asked about innovation in the past; let’s use it on this issue.