Former Bush NSA director calls for ‘digital Blackwater’

[Ed Jewett]

Former Bush NSA director calls for digital Blackwater'
Posted on 07.30.11
By David Edwards
Categories: Featured, Nation

The man who headed the NSA and CIA under President George W. Bush suggested Friday that mercenaries were needed to deal with growing cyber threats.

Gen. Michael Hayden told the Aspen Security Forum that in the near future, the Department of Defense may have to allow the creation of a "digital Blackwater."

Private sector offense "might be one of those big new ideas in terms of how we have to conduct ourselves in this new cyber domain," Hayden explained. "You think back long enough in history and there are times when the private sector was responsible for its own defense."

"We may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector and what is permitted there is something that we would never let the private sector do in physical space… Let me really throw out a bumper sticker for you. How about a digital Blackwater?" he suggested.

"I mean, we have privatized certain defense activities even in physical space and now you've got a new domain in which we don't have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is we expect the government or will allow the government to do. In the past when that has happened, private sector expands to fill the empty space. I'm not quite an advocate for that, but these are the kinds of things that are going to be put into play here very, very soon."

Watch the entire [?] Aspen Security Forum on cyber security here: http://youtu.be/yoWkAVXmSs0 (1:13:40)

Watch this video [embedded@link] from the Aspen Institute, broadcast July 29, 2011.

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/0...lackwater/

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List of Speakers at the Aspen Security Forum 2011

http://cryptome.org/0005/terror-gorgons.pdf

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http://cyber-mercenaries.com/

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condottieri


Rhymes with CONDOTTIERE

actuary, adversary, airy-fairy, ancillary, antiquary, apiary, arbitrary, aviary, axillary, bacillary, beriberi, bestiary, biliary, black r...

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The online guild, game, forum... http://thecond.com/


Another: http://condottierigame.net/

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Opportunity Information:
Title: Information Warfare: Offensive and Defensive Counterinformation
Solicitation #: BAA-06-12-IFKA
Post Date: 2/8/2006
Response Date:
Document Type: Presolicitation Notice
NAICS Code: 541710 -- Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences

Description:
ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial announcement.
FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: BAA 06-12-IFKA
CFDA Number: 12.800

DATES: It is recommended white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY 06 by 10 Mar 06; FY 07 by 1 May 06; FY 08 by 1 May 07 and, FY 09 by 1 May 08. White papers will be accepted until 2:00 p.m. Eastern time on 31 December 2009, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME. See Section IV of this announcement for further details.

I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION:

AFRL/IF is soliciting white papers to identify and develop technologies to enable a distributed information infrastructure that provides all the mechanisms and services required to allow the warfighters to craft their C4I information environments, including ability to establish distributed virtual staffs, to share a common consistent perception of the battlespace, and construct distributed task teams among sensors, shooters, movers, and command posts. These technologies will be applied across the full spectrum of cyber operations, in support of Air Force mission requirements. Specific technologies include, but are not limited to: network protocols, information adaptation, network management, routing technologies, adaptive interfaces, distributed information environments, multimedia services, adaptive security services, global resource management, architectures, computer and network risk assessment/management, vulnerability assessment, assurance techniques, detection of intrusions and misuse, network security, wireless information assurance, assessment of information damage, cyber forensics, recovery of information systems and computer networks to operational levels, and a full spectrum of active response and computer network attack techniques.

Information superiority is an integral part of air and space superiority, an Air Force doctrine. This gives the commander freedom from attack, the freedom to maneuver and the freedom to attack. Information superiority is that degree of information advantage of one force over another that permits the conduct of operations at a given time and place without prohibitive opposition. Information operations are not focused exclusively on information superiority and information operations alone is not sufficient to achieve information superiority. AFRL/IF has developed a responsive R&D technology program to help the US achieve information superiority. The technology research in this BAA will be focused in the following areas of information operations: influence operations, network warfare operations and electronic warfare operations.

Influence Operations: Focused on affecting the perceptions and behaviors of leaders, groups, or entire populations. Influence operations employ capabilities to affect behaviors, protect operations, communicate commander's intent and project accurate information to achieve desired effects across the cognitive domain. These effects should result in differing objectives. The military capabilities of influence operations are psychological operations, military deception, operations security, counterintelligence operations, counterpropoganda operations and public affairs operations.

Network Warfare Operations: The integrated planning, employment, and assessment of military capabilities to achieve desired effects across the interconnected analog and digital network portion of the battle space. Network warfare operations are conducted in the information domain through the combination of hardware, software, data and human interaction. The operational activities of network warfare operations are network attack, network defense and network warfare support...

http://spacetimecurves.blogspot.com/2007...ra-by.html

[Magda Hassan]

Beat me to it Ed! :thumbsup:
What the world does not need is more jackals and dogs of war. They all need to be spayed and house trained.

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.itproportal.com/2011/08/01/fo...erwarfare/


Hayden's comments should not be taken lightly because of his
background as the Director of the CIA and also the National Security
Agency under George W. Bush; both agencies have either been hacked or
been heavily involved in cyber warfare. ...

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/new...m-hut.html

Hack shack
Lad, 18, is accused of cyber attack
on the CIA and Sony...from this hut

[Bernice Moore]

Former CIA Counter-Terror Chief: Al Qaeda Will Go Cyber

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-counte...d=14224256

[Ed Jewett]

[Ed's comment: We need more Blackwaters in the cyber world, huh? Isn't Cofer Black on the board there? Shades of Chertoff and the TSA scanners... or worse.]


Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com

Cofer Black, veteran CIA spook and former vice chairman of the mercenary outfit Blackwater, sees parallels between the terrorism threat that emerged before the September 11 attacks nearly ten years ago and the emerging cyber threat we supposedly confront now, according to Reuters.



Black worked nearly 30 years for the Directorate of Operations at the CIA, now known as the National Clandestine Service. As former CIA employee John Stockwell noted, the unit has "engineered covert action operations in virtually every corner of the globe," resulting in violent coups and countless people killed. In 2007, it was revealed that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms.

Black mounted the stage at a Black Hat conference in Las Vegas to make his prediction. "Your world, which everyone thought was college pranks … has morphed into physical destruction," he told the nearly 6,000 hackers and security professionals at the conference, reports theWall Street Journal. "Guess what: It is your turn whether you know it or not."

Black's comments fall on the heels of a suggestion by former CIA and NSA boss Michael Hayden that a "digital Blackwater" may be required to combat the threat of cyber terrorism.

"We may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector and what is permitted there is something that we would never let the private sector do in physical space," Hayden said. "Let me really throw out a bumper sticker for you: how about a digital Blackwater?"

Cofer Black also said the cave-dwelling terror group al-Qaeda will go cyber. "They will enter the cyber world because it's comparatively remote, comparatively safer than strapping on a bomb," he said.

Black's prediction follows a reportissued by the British Home Office claiming al-Qaeda has launched a "cyber jihad."

Last month, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III said it was "clear" terror groups were "intent on acquiring, refining, and expanding their cyber capabilities."

Black cited the Stuxnet virus during his speech to Black Hat Linux geeks. "The Stuxnet attack is the Rubicon of our future… Your world, which people thought was college pranks cubed and squared, has now morphed into physical destruction… from the victim's view, of a national resource. This is huge."

Stuxnet shut down centrifuges critical to Iran's uranium processing. The now infamous malware described as the world's first cyber weapon was jointly developed by the United States and Israel. Unnamed sources at Israel's Dimona nuclear complex admitted earlier this year that the sophisticated malware was developed in Israel over the last two years as part of a joint US-Israeli operation designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

In April of 2001, Black told a class at a military college that "something big" would happen in the United States. He later told a congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks that during the spring and summer of that year he "became convinced that al-Qaeda was going to strike hard."



http://www.bobtuskin.com/2011/08/04/form...cyber-911/

[Ed Jewett]

See the ad in the sidebar of the above article for OODA Group? http://www.ooda.org/