Quote Originally Posted by Strickland View Post
Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the difference between cyber warfare, cyber terrorism, cyber espionage, and cyber crime? When a sovereign state attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities with a computer virus/worm - was this an act or war, terrorism, covert ops? When the Russian, Chinese, or North Korean governments hack into USG websites and databases, is this a criminal act, act of subversion, or act of war?
Exactly.

My take on this is that the closer it comes to being an individual conducting the action, regardless of the character of the act, it is a criminal act if outside the law.

The closer it comes to being a state, or a state-like organization with political purpose, the closer it comes to being an act of war.

It is the character of the actor and purpose of the act much more so than the character of the act itself that matters.

If it is determined that an act of war has been perpetrated against the US thorugh the Cyber domain, then we respond just as we would to any act of war in any of the other domains (land, sea, air, space, etc). If it is a criminal act we should treat as we do any other criminal act.

The cyber domain is very democratic, in that criminal individuals can wreck havoc to the same degree as war waging states and organizations. That scares the heck out of states. It should.

But that does not make this of necessity a military function.


For the majority of the military I believe there are two broad missions that must be covered:
1. Be able to maximize the cyber domain to conduct one's core operations and activities.

2. Be able to continue to conduct one's core operations and activities even if the cyber domain is severely degraded or denied.

DOD has it's own cyber vulnerablities to address, and similarly has not fully explored how this domain can be maximized. We need to focus on that first. Let Bank of America, Florida Power and Light, thousands of other important institutions figure out, fund and address their own vulnerabilities. What works to stop acts of crime and vandalism will stop acts of war as well.