NATO Provides Pentagon Nuclear, Missile and Cyber Shields over Europe

Source: Rock Rozoff, Media Monitors Network.

The Pentagon’s number two official, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, was in Brussels, Belgium on September 15 to address the North Atlantic Council – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top civilian body – and the private Security & Defence Agenda think tank.

His comments at the second event, hosted by the only defense-related institution of its type in the city that hosts NATO’s and the European Union’s headquarters, dealt extensively with what Lynn referred to as a “cyber shield” over all of Europe, which he described as a “critical element” for the 28-nation military bloc to address and endorse at its summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 19-20.

Lynn added that “The alliance has a crucial role to play in extending a blanket of security over our networks,” and placed the issue in stark perspective by stating “NATO has a nuclear shield, it is building a stronger and stronger defence shield, it needs a cyber shield as well,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Lynn’s comments before the Security & Defence Agenda gathering also included the demand that NATO apply the concept of “collective defense” – which is to say its Article 5 military intervention provision – to the realm of information technology and computer networks, as seen above at the same level of seriousness and urgency as maintaining a nuclear arsenal and constructing a global interceptor missile network. In his words, “The Cold War concepts of shared warning apply in the 21st century to cyber security. Just as our air defences, our missile defences have been linked so too do our cyber defences need to be linked as well.”