Is the U.S. government vulnerable to cyberwarfare attacks?
For as long as militaries have been using computers, people have been hacking those computers.
One time, when I was a kid, I accidentally hacked into Air Force computers and almost started a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union. Seconds before missiles were launched, I was able to stop the war by forcing government computer systems to play tic-tac-toe. Nuclear holocaust averted, I celebrated by skipping school and singing "Twist and Shout" in Chicago's Von Steuben Day parade.
Nevermind. That wasn't me. That was two different Matthew Broderick movies. Why do I always confuse my life with his?
The first sentence of this column is true, however. Computer warfare has been around nearly as long as computers have been around.
American and British operations against the Germans in World War II were as successful as they were in large part because the Brits (with Polish help) successfully hacked German communication encryption computers.
To this day, the Association for Computing Machinery's most prestigious annual award is named for Britain's ace WWII programmer/hacker, Alan Turing. Turing's pioneering computer work saved countless lives. The British government thanked Turing for his work by prosecuting him for being gay.
I wonder if any modern-day Alan Turings have been driven away by the U.S. military's idiotic discrimination against gays. It's possible. The U.S. government hates gay people more than it hates terrorists. The military has fired dozens of Arabic translators — people who can listen to and read enemy communications — simply because they're gay.
The idea that 21st-century Turings are being shunned is especially disturbing when you consider just how vulnerable the U.S. military is to cyberwarfare.
Keep in mind, the United States is not necessarily vulnerable because our computer systems are weak or because politicians pander to social conservatives.
We're vulnerable to cyberwarfare because we rely on it so heavily.
Pretty much everything the U.S. military does is computerized.
Interpersonal communication is computerized. Troop movements are computerized. Bombs and missiles are computerized. Even the U.S. Army's rhyming marching cadences are online. Sing it with me now: "GI beans and GI gravy. GI wished I joined the Navy!"
The Financial Times reports 35,000 "cyber incidents" have been directed at U.S. government computers so far this year. That's up, the paper says, from 4,100 in 2005.
The most disturbing incident (or set of incidents — I'm not sure which is more accurate) took place in June.
Hackers from China's People's Liberation Army hacked American, German and British government computers.
Among the systems hacked was the computer network serving Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Reportedly, Gates was unable to "poke" any of his top generals on Facebook for hours.
In a report to Congress this year, the Pentagon warned that China's military has "established information warfare units" whose job it is to "disrupt battlefield network information systems."
English translation: China is working hard to thwart the U.S. military's ability to communicate with itself on the battlefield. In January, China successfully tested a missile capable of blowing up satellites. U.S. weapons systems cannot function if their support satellites are crippled or destroyed.
It's not clear what, if any, damage was done or important information was stolen in the June attack. Strategically speaking (which is a great way to speak, really), the attack may have backfired.
Some analysts and journalists speculate that the hack attack was the result of Chinese domestic politics — an attempt by the PLA to do something impressive shortly before the Communist Party leadership convened for budget talks. If that was indeed the PLA's objective, then, yeah, oops.
China's already on Western government shit lists because of its recently discovered propensity for allowing its exporters to poison our kids with lead and kill our dogs with tainted kibble.
Obviously, getting hack-attacked so brazenly will only encourage politicians in the West who want to take a hard line against China. Furthermore, it will encourage the United States, Germany, Britain and other targeted nations to harden their computer networks — to build a Great Firewall to protect our computers from China.
Get it? Great Firewall!
Oh, nevermind.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2007.