You are here : World News Curator » North America, Science And Technology, The Internet, Top Stories » Cyber Threats More Dangerous Than Terrorism, Says US Intelligence

Cyber Threats More Dangerous Than Terrorism, Says US Intelligence

Published On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 By Dean Walsh. Under: North America, Science And Technology, The Internet, Top Stories. Tags: Al Qaeda, cyber threats, cyber war, intelligence, Terrorism, threat assessment, USA

United States intelligence chiefs have released a global threat briefing, in which they claim that cyber attacks and cyber espionage are now a bigger threat to the USA that terrorism.

Cyber Threats Now Number 1 Danger

Presenting the findings of the report before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the national intelligence director James Clapper noted that:

“In some cases, the world is applying digital technologies faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate potential risks.”

But despite the stark assessment that cyber threats have now become the biggest danger to the United States, the report played down the possibility of catastrophic attacks in the near term.

China has been blamed for widespread cyber attacks on US based organisations, and the total cost of cyber attacks is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars each year.

Al Qaeda Not Threatening US

In his speech to the Senate Intelligence Committee Clapper also claimed that Al Qaeda no longer posed a major threat to America. He claimed that the core of Al-Qaeda had been severely weakened, and that the terrorist group was unlikely to carry out “complex, large-scale attacks in the West.”

Al Qaeda is currently most active in Syria, where it is fighting alongside other rebels to overthrow the government of Bashar al Assad (with U.S. support). See: Al Qaeda’s Evolving Strategy for our own assessment of why Al Qaeda no longer poses a terrorist threat to the USA.

CIA Claims “al-Qaeda” No Longer A Threat, But There Is Ongoing Spook Build-Up In Places Like Iraq (therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com)
Spy agencies say cyber attacks top current threats against U.S. (news.terra.com)
Nate Kube Highlights Dire Need for Cybersecurity Standards (prweb.com)
Conflict Watch: Obama Gets Tough on Chinese Cyber-Attacks (normativenarratives.com)
Erratic North Korea poses serious threat (kfwbam.com)

http://twitter.com/JarnoLim Jarno Limnéll

“The era of terrorism” (after 9/11) in US Security policy have ended. This is a remarkable shift.

While it is true that the vast majority of cyber attacks have taken the form of criminal theft, not destruction, it is extremely unwise to downplay the potential for catastrophic attacks upon civilian targets.

While it is certainly not within China’s economic or political interests to deliver such a cyber attack on the U.S., there are other nation states and terrorist groups that already harbor the intent and are quickly scaling up their capabilities. The American public needs to be alive to the possibility for a cyber attack that could shut down the water or electricity supply in a major metropolis for a week or longer, or black out air traffic control at a major airport.

In turn, under the pressure of media and public scrutiny, it will be imperative that the federal government takes a strategic approach to cyber defenses, catastrophe scenario planning and the tightrope that is cyber warfare response. The stakes are simply too high for the first U.S. action to be a reaction.