Source: Anna Mulrine, Christian Science Monitor
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have delivered a stark warning to the Pentagon: its failure to address key questions surrounding how the United States military would respond to a cyberattack – and what precisely constitutes an act of war in cyberspace, for that matter – remains a “significant gap” in US national security policy.
Senior Pentagon officials for their part are griping, too, that the current Defense Department approach to cyberwarfare is “way too predictable.” Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently lamented that, in cyberspace, “there is no penalty for attacking [the US] right now. We’ve got to figure out a way to change that.”
To that end, some senior defense officials are increasingly pushing for the US to retaliate against cyber-sieges with counterstrikes – that could ultimately include launching a “land-based attack” on the perpetrator.
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You hack, we shoot: Pentagon discusses armed counterstrikes to cyberattacks
Published: July 21, 2011