Pentagon Puts Cyberwarriors on the Offensive

I have a hard time believing this is anything new.

"Another complicating factor is that taking action against an adversary often requires surreptitiously operating in the networks of an ally, like Germany — a problem that often gave the Obama administration pause."

In the light of the previous administration specifically targeting our ally Germany[0], including Merkel herself, what is that sentence even supposed to mean?

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/politics/germany-media-spying...

I have a kneejerk reaction to dislike virtually anything associated with the current administration, coupled with an understanding that escalation of actions associated with war rarely leads to _less_ war.

Yet, knowing that actually defending against a sufficiently determined, skillful, and (crucially) patient network adversary is virtually impossible, I'm unconvinced that this move is a bad one. In fact, it strikes me as the only realistic form of defense short of using actual physical force.

Well, the problem with cyber offensive is that while even a minor disruption in network infrastructure in western countries will have a huge impact on both economy and society and could cause significant losses. Whereas even if you completely destroy networks of Islamic state I doubt it will hurt them a lot. Cyber warfare escalation is not really a smart move when your economy really needs IT infrastructure and your opponent does not (or does but to a significantly lesser degree)

Very important context is that this policy is fits an openly stated shift by the current administration (no matter what you think of them) away from the post-WWII international order, based on the rule of law (the 'rules-based order') and to pre-WWII interstate geopolitical competition. IIRC the quote from Kelly or McMaster, 'Geopolitics is back with a vengence' (they embraced that idea), and I think most people are familiar with the America First policy. Early in the Trump administration, two top officials (McMaster and Mattis?) wrote an op-ed in the WSJ where they said, 'there is no community of nations'; it's everyone for themselves.

The postwar order was built by the victors of WWII, including Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, because they believed that nationalism and geopolitical competition led to wars - remember they had seen WWI, WWII, and the centuries of wars before that, which they saw as the worst scourge of humanity (I'm not sure of Stalin's thinking there). They also thought that, due to the technology of 1945, the next major war could devastate civilization, even without nuclear weapons - look at the devastation in Europe, as an example, from WWII. And IIRC 1/3 of European men (or British men?) died in WWI. Imagine what could be done with today's technology. Would civilization survive? ~200 people million died in WWII; how many would die today?

One effect of acting in this way (i.e., as described in the article) outside the postwar rules-based order is that, especially as the U.S. was the foundation of that order, it actively destroys the order and makes it difficult to return to it in the next administration. It creates anarchy, which undermines the authority of law. The success of that order was overwhelming; the greatest period of peace, liberty, and prosperity in history by orders of magnitude. One thing I don't understand is, who would want to dismantle it? For what ends? The only answer I've seen is that it's the Culture Wars taken too far - they've forgotten what they are fighting for.

Are you asserting that Snowden was explicitly working as a Russian agent in order to weaken / embarrass the US intelligence agencies?

While I believe he probably caused more harm to the US than help, I really don't believe he is / was a Russian agent.

Seems like Russia simply ended up with him due to travel restrictions, and since they have absolutely no reason to turn him over to the US as that might discourage future and actual collaborators, they allowed him to remain. A

I have a hard time believing the U.S. "cyberwarriors" were ever truly interested in defense. It seemed as though the U.S. government was interested in weakening encryption standards and encouraging backdoors that spies, law enforcement, and criminals could all exploit.

edit: didn't the NSA intentionally withheld zerodays to exploit them itself, putting everyone at risk?

Shocker. The Department of Defense is actually primarily interested in "offense".