The Online Threat, Seymour Hersh

Some interesting perspectives about U.S. Cyber Command....


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...1fa_fact_hersh

Hersh once told me that if the US fought Iran, we'd probably lose a carrier.

I'm never sure what to make of Hersh these days. He publishes some absolutely great stuff, and the article above is certainly very interesting.

On the other hand, some (although certainly not all) of the things he's written in my areas of expertise are flat wrong, and I suspect he is being led by his sources.

Given the nature of the topics he writes on, of course, it is always hard to tell whether it is a starling revelation, or a startling mistake. :D

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Originally Posted by Rex Brynen

I'm never sure what to make of Hersh these days. He publishes some absolutely great stuff, and the article above is certainly very interesting.

On the other hand, some (although certainly not all) of the things he's written in my areas of expertise are flat wrong, and I suspect he is being led by his sources.

Given the nature of the topics he writes on, of course, it is always hard to tell whether it is a starling revelation, or a startling mistake. :D

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That would make him the Doug MacArthur of journalism...:D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rex Brynen

Given the nature of the topics he writes on, of course, it is always hard to tell whether it is a starling revelation, or a startling mistake. :D

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That is, of course, a STARTLING revelation.

The "starling revelation" is classified way too highly to discuss here. :D

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...MjWLfVJDnMClU=

that... ;)

Some of the things Mr. Hersh said are fairly interesting. We've known about most of them for a long time. I do think that we confuse espionage with warfare and the two though clearly related are totally separate entities. Somebody once told me that a reconnaissance in force was actually a patrol that you could deny (I may be mangling the quote). Most of the depth into the cyber world has people scratching their heads because it simply isn't simple it is simply not simple. Or, something like that. To whit, chipping or supply chain hacking isn't even really discussed but it is a real threat that has been mitigated on several occasions. Direct network threats are rare, but hybridized threats are relatively common. Polarization of attack strategies lead to false actualization of the different vectors. Lots of good meat to talk about, but few are interested.

How about the threat to national security by Hersh himself - he's a jack-hole.

It seems to me that Hersh is a journalist who collects information, maybe some from open sources, this latest article clearly relies mainly on "off the record" encounters and a fair degree of lobbying for 'X' via Hersh himself. His art is in assembling this in a readable chunk.

Now who are the intended target readership? I am sure his editor primarily considers the target readership to be those who subscribe to the paper. Hersh may consider the target to be somewhat wider, maybe even those who actually make the decisions in this policy area.

Hardly worth vilifying him or more. As for being a threat to national security I doubt he is even in the 'Top 100'; a threat IMHO to vested interests? Yes. national security is not the same as political and institutional embarrassment.

Cyber war will occur sometime, and our boys are practicing like it'll start tomorrow. That DDOS attack on Wikileaks? Your tax dollars at work. Even managed to piss off Amazon.com.