Trump inherits a secret Obama-era cyberwar against North Korean missiles
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Three years ago, President Barack Obama ordered Pentagon officials to step up their cyber and electronic strikes against North Korea’s missile program in hopes of sabotaging test launches in their opening seconds.
Soon, a large number of the North’s military rockets began to explode, veer off course, disintegrate and plunge into the sea. Advocates of such efforts say they believe targeted attacks have given U.S. antimissile defenses a new edge and delayed the day when North Korea will be able to threaten U.S. cities with nuclear weapons launched atop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But other experts have grown skeptical of the new approach, arguing that manufacturing errors, disgruntled insiders and sheer incompetence can also send missiles awry. Over the past eight months, the North has managed to successfully launch three medium-range rockets. And Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, claims his country is in “the final stage in preparations” for the inaugural test of his intercontinental missiles — perhaps a bluff, perhaps not.
An examination of the Pentagon’s disruption effort, based on interviews with officials of the Obama and Trump administrations as well as a review of extensive but obscure public records, found that the United States still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs. Those threats are far more resilient than many experts thought, The New York Times’ reporting found, and pose such a danger that Mr. Obama warned President Donald Trump they were likely to be the most urgent problem he would confront.
Mr. Trump has signaled his preference to respond aggressively against the North Korean threat. Yet like Mr. Obama before him, Mr. Trump is quickly discovering he must choose from highly imperfect options.
He could order the escalation of the Pentagon’s cyber and electronic warfare effort, but that carries no guarantees. He could open negotiations with the North to freeze its nuclear and missile programs, but that would leave a looming threat. He could prepare for missile strikes on the launch sites, which Mr. Obama considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target. He could press the Chinese to cut off trade and support, but Beijing has always stopped short of steps that could lead to the regime’s collapse.
In two meetings of Mr. Trump’s national security deputies, all those options were discussed, along with the possibility of reintroducing nuclear weapons to South Korea as a dramatic warning. Administration officials say those issues will soon go to Mr. Trump and his aides.
The decision to intensify the cyber and electronic strikes came after Mr. Obama concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional antimissile systems had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States. Flight tests of interceptors based in Alaska and California had an overall failure rate of 56 percent, under near-perfect conditions. Privately, experts warned the system would fare worse in real combat.
So the Obama administration searched for a better way to destroy missiles. It reached for techniques the Pentagon had long been experimenting with under the rubric of “left of launch,” because the attacks begin before the missiles ever reach the launchpad, or just as they lift off. For years, the Pentagon’s most senior officers and officials have publicly advocated these kinds of sophisticated attacks.
The approach taken in targeting the North Korean missiles has echoes of the U.S.and Israeli-led sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program, the most sophisticated known use of a cyberweapon meant to cripple a nuclear threat. In North Korea, the target is more challenging. Missiles are fired from multiple launch sites and moved about on mobile launchers in an elaborate shell game meant to deceive adversaries.
Advocates of the effort to manipulate data inside North Korea’s missile systems argue the United States has no alternative because the effort to stop the North from learning the secrets of making nuclear weapons has failed. The only hope now is stopping the country from developing an intercontinental missile and demonstrating that threat to the world.