Are we at CYBER WAR?

At this point there is seemingly no one in the Intelligence community who disagrees that Russia meddled in our 2016 election. Trump kept saying they didn't do it because of course Putin said they didn't do it and he complimented him before so there's no way he would deceive him or feed him a story to give to the American people. Robert Mueller says they're doing it even as we speak and because Trump says he would accept foreign help it seems to be open season on our democracy.

When we consider what America is and why it works the foundation of that is the ability of the public to vote. If we don't like something we can change it. The keyword is WE. With all this talk about "America First" why is it that this seems to be extended to Russia as if Putin should give a few million votes. Next maybe China will contribute a few million votes and the Saudi Royal family will contribute a few million votes. How many millions of votes in key swing states would it take for the will of the American people to be undone? We already have a system where the minority can leverage their money to buy/influence millions of votes. Imagine if we add other nations to that. Imagine the corruption. We're not even their people. They're not our representatives. We couldn't even pay them to give a crap about us. So whose interests will be at the heart of these foreign government casting their vote? Safe to say not ours.

As a Jedi, the balance of power is extremely important to me. This is the same power that Americans have fought and died for. And yes, sometimes the Nazis will want things that benefit you. That doesn't mean you give them power. That doesn't mean you don't pass legislation to protect the US. It's kind of like being in a physical war where some of your soldiers sympathize with the other side and so they find ways to help the other side win. And it's amazing to me how this party that promotes so much patriotism, fiscal conservatism, and moral values has really shown in recent years not to care about any of it; all one big marketing ploy to secure the conservative vote.

here, here. Beating a dead horse, but yeah, they're never going to work towards making our elections more secure because the insecurity very consistently works to their benefit.

And don't get me started on the latest "We need to label ANTIFA as a terrorist group" nonsense, because OH BOYOH BOY .

According to the US Constitution, voting isn't the strongest or most direct force for change..

As for electoral interference. The US has interfered in dozens of elections. Hillary attempted to hack Putin's election while serving as secretary of state. Obama tried to interfere in Netanyahu's election..

The American Empire has interfered in governments for decades. Color Revolutions in Europe. Assassinations in the middle east. So called "Russian Interference" just seems like chickens coming home to roost to me..

Foreign and Domestic interest groups have controlled and or dominated the political machine of the US since the mid 1800s if not before then. It's the reason we are Federal Nationals instead of Nationals of the Several States now. Corruption has ran rampant since the days of FDR and his goading Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. None of this is new nor exclusive to the Trump Era. If anything, this presidency has threatened to bring down the whole veil just due to it's existence.. if Pedophile Epstein's case, and his Political and Intelligence is any indication the only reason we are so tied to the Saudis is because of the petrodollar. Financial Elite it Europe, and Britain in particular, have wanted to bring America back into the fold since it left in 1777. Succeeding through the advent of WW1..

America has been corrupt for at least the past century. I recommend reading "War is a Racket" by a decorated US Marine Smedley Butler. This isn't anything unique to the Trump administration and if people truly desired change. They would sue their govermnent, under threat of abolishment and removal, as the first amendment calls for..

Obviously, America is corrupt as is every other government that has that little thing called power. I do want to ask about the evidence for Obama interfering in Israel's election. According to what I read...

"The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded that $350,000 had gone to a group called OneVoice. It obeyed the rules of the grant, intended to support peace.

Once the grant ended, though, the infrastructure and resources “created, in part, from US grant funds” were, said the Senate, used “to support a political campaign to defeat the incumbent Israeli government.”"

I think Obama was a very intelligent President. However, I will never give him the kind of credit to where he knew, somehow, that this organization he wasn't part of would campaign against Netanyahu's party at some point in the future. I mean, wouldn't he have to be psychic or some kind of fortune teller? I don't understand how he was supposed to know that OneVoice, which supported Peace, would do that? Not to mention, I'm not a fan of Netanyahu. Israel receives support from the US to the tune of billions; as if it was a state in our union and not just an ally. Netanyahu is similar to Trump when it comes to the Palestinians. So I understand why any activist organization operating in Israel would campaign against him. Why assume peace is even possible under the current administration? But anyway, to me that's not interference. If we support Israel's government financially we're already involved. We just don't control who's in power. And neither does OneVoice which is why Netanyahu is still in power. So people can say they used our money to campaign if they didn't use up all the grant money they were given before that. However, that's not the same. We didn't give them money for that purpose. They simply used it for that purpose. If Putin donated $50,000 to the Red Cross I wouldn't think that was wrong. If the Red Cross decided to campaign against Trump I'd question their ability to do that but I wouldn't think Putin suddenly wanted Trump out. However, if Putin gave 50,000 to the NRA that would be different because they have a well established history of political action and a lot of members also contributing to the same political agenda.

So again it may be somewhat nuanced based on the actions and history of the organizations but I say its not the same thing.

For Russia to actually funnel money to its own people in order to hack us... that's cyber warfare. And if the money is coming from the government then it's state sponsored and a hostile act of war. They're not simply seeking to lobby for some issue like guns. They're actually playing us against each other and supporting a candidate that will further their anti-American goals. We're talking about the same guy who showed a video of his new weapons raining down on what looks like Forida

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43248794

Clearly, we're not playing the same game that he is. So while our people are eager to be benefited by Russian spying and aggression against American democracy, Putin is actually moving chess pieces for a different motive. He doesn't care about their reelection or MAGA or Southern flags or statues. None of that. It's about destroying the American threat to his own power. So in my opinion it should be a matter of patriotism to oppose this outside influence and protect our democracy. It's not good enough to play what-about-ism when we're at war.

Hillary? Really? Hillary cannot hack Hillary. First rule of hacking should be protecting your own dag'on files and system. It's doubtful that she actually did anything. Do I believe foreign government should be able to say who they want to win? Yes. That's a part of their foreign policy strategy. And as far as Putin's "Election"? I'm gonna put that in quotes because I think it barely qualifies. Putin does enough to make his victories appear legal when in reality no one is really allowed to oppose him and win. Their people already know this. America wants other democracies because they're easier to do business with. So yes, it's in our best interest to advocate for a fair system in Russia. But going as far as hacking or whatever, if we did it then why didn't it work? I do think there are other regimes that America has basically installed a puppet in, but that doesn't mean we should allow our democracy to be destroyed and our system thrown into chaos with no one able to verify or certify the results of an election.

A 'cold' war, yes... but that is always ongoing whenever an entity promotes itself at the expense of others. The reason it's a problem is because the lines in the sand are not as evident because it's a murkier shade of grain. Not all nations are exerting the same type of effort, but the bigger nations are still all taking it seriously... seemingly.

Roughly a year ago, I had the opportunity to sit at the desk of the computer security officer of a municipal government department in the U.S. At one point, he wanted to show me the difference in security features between two popular internet browsers, so he walked me through an exercise.

First, he opened the one browser of the pair whose security was best. He shrank the window a bit so I could see both the browser window and the screen image behind it, and within the browser opened the familiar MSN website showing the news of the day. The moment he hit the ENTER key, about 50 lines of code showed up behind the browser window before the scrolling stopped. "Each line of that code is an intrusion attempt on our system," he said.

Then, he opened the other browser, and did the same thing. This time, countless rows of code scrolled up behind the browser window, rolling up too quickly to read and showing no signs of ever stopping. He finally keyed in something to make the scrolling stop, after allowing certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of rows race from the bottom of the screen to the top. After he'd stopped the rolling text, he started pointing to each row of code that had appeared, one to the next, saying, "That's China, China, Russia, China, Russia, Russia, Russia, China, Albania, China ..."

I was shocked. I asked "Why? This isn't some big intelligence outfit, it's a routine department of a city government." He responded, "They're trying to identify the vulnerabilities in our utility services, so if there's ever a conflict they can shut things down." He went on to expand on how most American cities are experiencing the same thing, though of course most also have security in place with the aim of preventing the intrusions from actually gaining access to key portions of computer infrastructure.

I said, "Well, I assume we're doing the same thing to them." He chuckled and replied, "Yes, we invented most of this stuff."

Then he informed me that the technical wizards within America's computer security industry have an active debate going about whether World War 3 has actually already started, with its only theater at present existing in cyberspace. It's speculative of course, but just the fact that such a discussion exists is revealing about the status of cyber warfare.

I kinda doubt that just any employee in any town has a security system which does something more than Kapersky's threat map.

Also the US has constant defensive and offensive cyber operations ( this article talks about one against the IRA - you know the one involved in the 2016 election hacking). We have a relatively robust policy regulating COs rather than the sort of ad hoc operations carried out by many pseudo-national aggressors.


Also for how often people chuck around "oh yeah all politicians are corrupt" that really seems horribly reductive. Sure isolated incidents of corruption happen, but context helps:
https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018

But to respond to the rhetorical questions posed by the OP, yes we are but not in any sort of way that will spiral into kinetic space. (This analysis is intriguing: IDF strike )

Rex wrote: But to respond to the rhetorical questions posed by the OP, yes we are but not in any sort of way that will spiral into kinetic space. (This analysis is intriguing: IDF strike )

Interesting! I'd say
1. Given it was part of a broader kinetic attack, it did not constitue a standalone cyber vs kinetic interaction. If it did, then I reckon the principles of proportionality and necessity might stack up against a kinetic reaction/response.
2. Yep, combined arms just happens to have an additional arm these days.

Warfare is part of a spectrum of conflict, and actors each push conflict in directions depending on motivations and capabilities but I imagine international politics is always conflicting at some level of it, all the time. War just happens to be at one extreme end of it. I doubt a cyber war would occur in isolation of other forms of conflict. The question is will the attacker realize when they are about to cross that line, and does the victim know if it's deliberate crossing or not.

Omhu Cuspor wrote: Roughly a year ago, I had the opportunity to sit at the desk of the computer security officer of a municipal government department in the U.S. At one point, he wanted to show me the difference in security features between two popular internet browsers, so he walked me through an exercise.

First, he opened the one browser of the pair whose security was best. He shrank the window a bit so I could see both the browser window and the screen image behind it, and within the browser opened the familiar MSN website showing the news of the day. The moment he hit the ENTER key, about 50 lines of code showed up behind the browser window before the scrolling stopped. "Each line of that code is an intrusion attempt on our system," he said.

Then, he opened the other browser, and did the same thing. This time, countless rows of code scrolled up behind the browser window, rolling up too quickly to read and showing no signs of ever stopping. He finally keyed in something to make the scrolling stop, after allowing certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of rows race from the bottom of the screen to the top. After he'd stopped the rolling text, he started pointing to each row of code that had appeared, one to the next, saying, "That's China, China, Russia, China, Russia, Russia, Russia, China, Albania, China ..."

I was shocked. I asked "Why? This isn't some big intelligence outfit, it's a routine department of a city government." He responded, "They're trying to identify the vulnerabilities in our utility services, so if there's ever a conflict they can shut things down." He went on to expand on how most American cities are experiencing the same thing, though of course most also have security in place with the aim of preventing the intrusions from actually gaining access to key portions of computer infrastructure.

I said, "Well, I assume we're doing the same thing to them." He chuckled and replied, "Yes, we invented most of this stuff."

Then he informed me that the technical wizards within America's computer security industry have an active debate going about whether World War 3 has actually already started, with its only theater at present existing in cyberspace. It's speculative of course, but just the fact that such a discussion exists is revealing about the status of cyber warfare.

This is a fascinating story. Thanks for sharing!