The US military needs to create a Cyber Force

Two disturbing incidents roiled the cyber seas last week, one foreign and one domestic. They both strengthen the case — which was already convincing, and which I have been making for almost a decade now — for the creation of a U.S. Cyber Force.

The first incident was yet another cyberattack on a NATO member, Albania, by Iran. It was part of an ongoing Iranian campaign to attack Albania, a small Muslim nation of only about three million in the Balkans. The attacks have included zeroing out personal bank accounts, unmasking government and police informants, and degrading commandand-control networks. Iran conducts the attacks because Albania is not prosecuting an anti-iranian group, the Mujahedeen Khaleq, that has a large presence in Albania.

The attack has raised the issue of whether to invoke NATO’S Article 5, which says that an attack on one nation will be regarded as an attack on all. Because the NATO treaty was drafted many decades ago, it does not say whether a cyberattack activates Article 5. But given the evolution in warfare and expansion of cyber operations, such attacks should now fall into that category.

The second incident involved a ransomware attack on the U.S. Marshals Service. A huge amount of sensitive data was compromised, including information on fugitives, high-security individuals and law-enforcement operations. The attack has been designated a “major incident” requiring significant interagency investigation and remediation.

Ironically, last week was also when Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity