US Cyber Command becomes 'fully operational'

The US military's new Cyber Command has formally "achieved full operational capability", according to the Department of Defense (DoD). “I am confident in the great service members and civilians we have here at US Cyber Command. Cyberspace is essential to our way of life and US Cyber Command synchronizes our efforts in the …

[Ian Stephenson]

Operation Screaming Fist is go!

EOM

[Rogerborg]

The World Has Not Ended

But we'll need a 15% budget increase next year to keep it that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

And to think the US military got praised for its management practices.

Too bad the head cheese thinks in terms of more snooping on email and other things. With that he's thinking with his dick as now he's got both the biggest buyer of computer gear AND the thing that's supposed to be offensive on the intarwebz to show off to his fellow wearers of stars. What he apparently isn't doing is figuring out what he should be doing --always a hard one before the handbook is writ-- and then do that instead.

Also note how that quote is full of what wikipedia would call weasel words, military flavour. Lots of on-going enduring, but what are they up to up there really, anyway? Total Information Awareness comes to mind. This is at least part of what that was to be. Though their main task to tick for the "FOC" buzz-tla was to setup another acronymic staff for the benefit of another n-star's tenure, as that back-to-norway reserve colonel recently observed elsewhere. Well I do believe congratulations are in order for that. As I say, huzzah and bis bis, fellow officers.

[FormerKowloonTonger]

Cber Command Becomes 'fully operational'....

....so what are you trying to tell us?

[Rob]

Skynet...

... became self aware on.... (you know the rest)

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now

Attention soldier, get ready, aim, ping,ping,ping,ping :D.

[gizmo23]

"Cyber" Command

Does anyone know how much cybernetics Cyber Command will be commanding for the defence of the virtual free world? S'pose that should be defense in this case.

[JaitcH]

I think the Pentagon is 'FOC'ed up

What a crazy bunch.

Guess they will have massive wall displays showing threats from around the world, as is usually depicted for NORAD's Boulder hideaway.

We should contribute to a prize fund to the first guys to knock their web site down.

[K. Adams]

Since you are reluctant to provide us with the source of the documents...

... I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on your home website of Wikileaks.

[Anonymous Coward]

They *Are* Indeed Useful

Israel recently atomized a Syrian facility without them even realizing something was going on in their airspace.

There are rumors exactly the same happened in the two Iraq/US wars recently. It is much more elegant to display the pictures of yesterday on an S-400 Radar instead of tackling it with a AGM88 HARM. Because it might turn out the S400 is more capable than the HARM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_(SAM)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM

Historically, the Anglosaxons had lots of problems, but anything information technology was not one of that. Japan and Germany learnt it the hard way.

[Anonymous Coward]

A Question ...

If they were to launch an attack on a network in another country, the attack would likely have to be routed through a number of uninvolved neutral countries, thereby implicating them in the attack. How do they propose to handle the diplomatic fallout that could arise? Apart from denying any involvement, that is.

[James Woods]

gotta love big government

The left always had their panties in an uproar when bush ventured anywhere near 'privacy' but this administration has taken a sledgehammer to all privacy and what they leave alone the nsa/government owned google picks up the slack.

We have a government that can't get anything right. We have been in 2 undeclared 'wars' for how many years now?

We have a broke postal service, broke amtrak, broke fannie mae/freddy mac, busted wall street because of wall street bailout.

Should I say anything about what this country has become trying to board an airline? Should I mention that the christmas underwear bomber, the mumbai attacks, and others all had ties right to the cia?

False flags anyone to turn this country into something 1984 never could of predicted anyone?

I know I feel safer knowing the government is taking control of the internet. Can they please do it with money they raise themselves instead of spending money on dreamcenters and cozy government jobs financed by joe shmoe making $9/hr in a cement factory.

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW

You go round there and they're all just sat around playing World of Warcraft.... great scam!

[Gill Bates]

So..

..they've put passwords on their admin accounts after all?

[Ken 16]

so why not

just roll a tank up to the door of Google's chocolate factory and tell them to do it for you?

[Ondrej Doubek]

counter productive...

Cyberwarfare is guerrilla warfare, no matter who is involved, and on what scale. And it will more often than not be answered with guerrilla tactics of some- probably more physical- kind. There are only so many morons out there willing to answer a cyber attack with an open war with conventional weapons- and most of those are situated right next of this institution in question.

Whats worse, the attacked party will be faced with a overwhelming but intangible opponent- only knowing roughly the "region" where to look. Rage mixed with helplessness and nothing to loose makes people easy to manipulate leads to desperate measures. And the world has god knows enough desperate and mislead individuals willing to go out with the literal bang.

I am afraid that if this cyberwarfare station will be used for anything else than to keep their own population in check it will create exactly the kind of problems used as alibi to build it in the first place.

Plus, it will stay completely ineffective in fending off government funded espionage, which I claim is the kind of threat a governmental agency should focus on.

The biggest cyber attacks are exploiting human flaws, not technological ones. The real problem here is a lack of awareness, something a "you don't need to know, hand over your civil rights and we will keep you save" attitude is not likely solve...

All in all things are getting worse, with the spiral having been turned downwards another circle more or two...