Is the U.S. still on top with cyber security?
WASHINGTON — After decades of being an overwhelming force in all global security matters, there seems to be growing evidence that at least in the cyber world, the United States is now facing a somewhat leveled playing field.
The news last week, which is expected to continue through this week and be part of the discussion at the confirmation hearing for retired Gen. James Mattis as secretary of Defense, has focused an enormous amount of attention on Russia’s attempts to influence the American presidential election. Alongside a dispute between what appears to be a unified U.S. intelligence community and President-elect Donald Trump, recent hearings have made it clear that the cyber threat from other state and non-state actors seeking to damage the United States is much wider than previously believed.
The United States has been a lone global military superpower since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but officials have noted that the new cyber war field is cheap to enter, relatively easy to work in and doesn’t necessarily favor the massive advantages the United States has maintained in conventional security.
As National Security Agency director Adm. Michael Rogers said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, “Those who would seek to harm our fellow Americans and our nation utilize the same internet, the same communication devices and the same social media platforms ... . We’re watching sophisticated adversaries.”
Later, he would add the U.S. need for “speed, speed, speed.” The cyber threat, like the rest of the cyber world, is “everevolving” and favors the agile. In that world, the advantages the United States has in outspending the rest of the world — by a wide margin — on defense becomes less important.
Consider that the primary cyber threats to the United States come from the same places that remain the primary non-cyber threats, what are known as “4+1,” or China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the Islamic State/al-Qaida. Combine the military spending of those four nations and the terrorist organizations, and the United States outspends them by more than 2 to 1.
The topic is expected to come up Thursday when Mattis, Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon, appears before the Armed Services Committee. While Mattis, a retired Marine general sometimes nicknamed “Warrior Monk,” hasn’t often addressed the cyber threat, he did when appearing before the committee in 2011. His comments at that time weren’t particularly revealing, though. “As we adapt to a thinking adversary,” he noted, then later asked for funding for “the flexibility to rapidly and proactively counter new, emerging and future threats.”
Jacqueline L. Hazelton, a security expert at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote in an email response to McClatchy’s questions that the cyber world might not make it possible for others to topple the United States, but smaller goals have become easier to reach.
“There are important ways in which cyber generally can level the playing field because it favors mind over mass and matter,” she wrote. “There are a lot of quite clever people in other states besides the United States who are devoting their lives to cyber.”