Ramping Up on Cyberwarfare Could Mean Reexamining Rules of War

As intense as the debate over unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones) has been recently, that’s not the only context in which policymakers are struggling to define (or redefine) the rules concerning whether we are at war and if so, how to wage it.

The Washington Times is reporting today that the Department of Defense is going on offense to take on the numerous forms of cyberwarfare being waged against the United States by a range of actors:

The Defense Department is building “offensive” teams to counter increasing threats by hackers, criminals and foreign agents to the nation’s computer networks, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command told a Senate panel Tuesday.

Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander said his command is creating 13 teams to “defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace.”

“We’re also creating 27 teams that would support combatant commands in their planning process for offensive cyber capabilities,” Gen. Alexander told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And then we have a series of teams that would defend our networks in cyberspace.”

That cyber cadre will be developed over the next several years, he said. The first third of those teams will be ready for operations by September, he said. A second set will be ready by September 2014, and the third set by September 2015.

Gen. Alexander noted that cyberattacks have been increasing in frequency for some time now.

“We’ve seen the attacks on Wall Street over the last six months grow significantly, over 140 of those attacks over the [last] six months,” he said. “And if you look at industry, especially the anti-virus community and others, they believe it’s going to grow more in 2013.”

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In advance of the hearing described above, The Washington Post explored some legal issues surrounding how to wage cyberwarfare.  From that piece:

A century ago, when one nation’s army massed at another’s border, imminence was clearer. An attack seemed about to happen. Most acknowledged the threatened nation had a right to defend itself.

But today, technology and terrorism have confused the application of old rules. In cyberspace, where attacks can launch in milliseconds, a nation might not have enough time to detect an attack and mount a defense.

In fact, the last clear “window of opportunity” to counter a threat may be hours or days or months before it is launched. That broader concept of imminence was advanced, to some lawmakers’ concern, in a recently leaked Justice Department white paper outlining the rationale for lethal drone strikes against certain al-Qaeda operational leaders.

Potentially further complicating matters is the question of the extent to which the private sector should be empowered to go on offense in this fight as well, a question that Politico explores today here.