Cyber Threat Grows More Destructive, Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn Says

The American Forces Press Service released the below piece yesterday:

By Karen Parrish, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2011 - The cyber threat the United States faces is increasing in severity and is accessible to a wide range of enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said in a television interview broadcast last night.

"Most of what we see today is exploitation -- that's theft, stealing secrets, either commercial or military," Lynn told Ray Suarez on "PBS Newshour." "[But] we know the tools exist to destroy things, to destroy physical property, to destroy networks, to destroy data, maybe even take human lives."

Lynn said nation-states currently are the sole possessors of sophisticated cyber tools, but the capability will spread over time.

"It's going to migrate to rogue states, and it's going to migrate to, eventually, terrorist groups," he said. "At some point, you're going to see a marriage of capability and intent, and that is what we should truly worry about."

DOD is working both to defend its own networks and support the Department of Homeland Security's mission to protect systems important to national security, Lynn said.

Pentagon officials yesterday released the Defense Department's first strategy aimed at countering the cyber threat. The strategy document charts the increase of Internet usage since 2000, when there were 360 global users, to 2010's 2 billion. DOD alone has 15,000 networks and more than 7 million computing devices.

"In the first instance, we're protecting those military capabilities," Lynn said. "But we need to go further. Working through the Department of Homeland Security, we need to think about how we might use better defensive capabilities to protect ... the power grid, the transportation network, the financial sector."

DOD is not committing to protecting the entire Internet, Lynn said.

"We're talking with our allies about how we have a collective defense," he said. "We're working with them to share technologies, to share understandings of the threat, so that we have a collective defense approach to this important problem."

Most cyber attacks happening now are malicious activity, some are criminal, and some reach the level of espionage, Lynn said.

We have seen a few cases ... where it goes above that and degrades networks themselves," he said, noting the 2007 attack on Estonia and the 2008 cyber assault on the republic of Georgia.

Defending the cyber domain requires a new way of thinking, Lynn said. 

"It's different than land, sea, air and space," he noted. "It's largely privately owned. It crosses borders. It doesn't respect sovereignty. And the speed at which it moves, keystrokes on one side of the globe can have an impact on the other in the blink of an eye."

U.S. Cyber Command is responsible for organizing DOD's efforts in the cyber domain, the deputy secretary said.

"They're out hiring people, both in uniform and as civilians, with ... [the] cyber skills that we need," he added. "They're different kinds of skills than we might need with conventional soldiers, but they're equally important."

DOD doesn't monitor or scan commercial networks in the United States, Lynn said.

"We're trying to work with the appropriate agencies, the FBI, with law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, for protection of critical infrastructure to provide capabilities ... that the Defense Department has that might be used for those critical missions," he said. "But we don't have the primary role." 

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To learn more about the cyber threat, you can read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on a gathering of current and former intelligence chiefs who discussed the threat of spies, terrorists and criminals using cyber warfare via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/WeaponsMassDisruption3.jpg

You can also read my interview with Thomas Boghardt, the International Spy Museum's historian, about the history of cyber wafare via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt3.jpg

Fighting The Growing Threat Of Transnational Criminal Organizations, The Defense Department Opens Countertrafficking Command Center

By Cheryl Pellerin, American Forces Press Service

NAVAL AIR STATION KEY WEST, Fla., April 19, 2011 - A new, high-tech command center here will move the fight against illicit traffickers to a new level, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said yesterday.

Just before cutting a ribbon to the Joint Operations Command Center alongside William Wechsler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, Lynn said the threat that plagues the region has evolved beyond drugs alone.

"Transnational criminal organizations are posing a not-very-well-understood, but growing, threat to the United States," he told the task force staff. "It's something I know you are on the front lines of addressing and, ultimately, preventing."

The new command center serves Joint Interagency Task Force South, a subordinate command to the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command that integrates military, interagency and international capabilities to combat illicit trafficking.

Lynn traveled to Miami a day earlier to meet with Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, Southcom commander, and his leadership team. In testimony last month before the House Armed Services Committee, Fraser called the task force "the center of U.S. maritime interdiction efforts in the Caribbean basin and eastern Pacific."

Using information from law enforcement agencies, the general added, the task force detects and monitors suspect aircraft and maritime vessels and then provides this information to international and interagency partners who have the authority to interdict illicit shipments and arrest members of transnational criminal organizations.

Task force members represent each U.S. military service and most federal law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Other members from the U.S. intelligence community represent the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency.

The task force staff includes liaison officers from 13 nations: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Spain and the United Kingdom.

"We made the decision in April 2008 to apply our collective wisdom and knowledge across the interagency, our international partners and the joint team here," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Daniel Lloyd, commander of Joint Interagency Task Force South, said during the ceremony opening the new operations center.

The aim, he said, was "to come up with a better way to be even more effective in countering the illicit traffickers."

The new command center, Lloyd added, "is the first of its kind anywhere, and represents the very best way we know how to conduct the fight against illicit traffickers."

(Lynn is seen in the above photo at the U.S. Southern Command's Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, Fla., April 18, 2011. DOD photo by Cherie Cullen).

In the center, intelligence and operations functions come together in a state-of-the-art command, control, communications and intelligence facility, officials said, where the task force coordinates the use of Navy and Coast Guard ships and aircraft, Air Force and U.S. Customs Service aircraft, and aircraft and ships from allied nations and law enforcement agencies.

"I think it's important at this moment to recognize how far we've come," Wechsler said. "Back in the 1980s, the mission set against which [the task force] was deployed was considered to be an unsolvable problem. There was a never-ending stream of air and maritime vessels headed right for our coast. It was a direct threat to U.S. sovereignty."

Today, he added, the problem has evolved, and so has the task force. "[It] is really, in my mind, a model -- perhaps one of the best models of coordination that exists in the U.S. government," he said.