Government plans for cyber warfare (defensive and offensive strategy)?

Excerpt form “China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon” published by The Times in September 2007


Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times. The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, particularly the US, Britain, Russia and South Korea. China’s ambitions extend to crippling an enemy’s financial, military and communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military documents and generals’ speeches that are being analyzed by US intelligence officials. Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon assessment states that China’s military regards offensive computer operations as “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stage of a war.

At the same time, Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) has been set by by the U.S. military and is due to become operation in autumn 2008. The commanding officer of this Command Lieutenant general Rober J. Elder Jr. gave an interview for ZDNet.co.uk stating the the Air Force is interested in developing capabilities to act in the public cyber space. “Offensive cyber attacks in network warfare make kinetic attacks more effective”, he said with hope that this will help the Air Force reach its objectives. IT people are following the traditional security setup approach in putting barriers such as firewalls, however, applications such as “Cyber Sidearm” that will monitor activity on the cumber information transport system which is part of the vaguely described as U.S. Air Force cyber network will serve as means of doing offensive attacks as well. Currently there are more than 10.000 people working on this, who are both developing tools such as forensics application in order to pinpoint an attack made on government computers and various systems that would protect the SCADA systems. On the other hand, the U.S. government is making partnerships with private and public sector organizations which will help take control on the cyberspace as well as develop offensive tools that will help establish cyberspace superiority, something that other nations are also working on.