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Writer's pictureEdward M. Roche

2016 - The Year of Cyber War 0.7

Originally published on cyberarmscontrolblog.com January 3, 2017


IS INTERFERENCE IN CAMPAIGNS “CYBER WAR”?


2016 was the year of cyber war, and we will call it “cyber war 0.7” because it not a complete cyber war in the proper sense of the word. The most incredible event was the role of WikiLeaks in the election for the president of the United States. WikiLeaks was able to publish a large number of emails from the Democratic National Committee. These emails indicated a certain level of untoward behavior on the part of the leadership of the Democratic committee. As a result of this, there were various personnel changes in the Democratic National Committee.


The emails seem to indicate a number of activities that were considered by the opposition to be improper. Although these activities or not reported upon widely in the mainstream media, nevertheless, they seemed to have a decisive effect on the election. The connection between the leak of these emails and the election found it’s nexus in the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In particular, only about one week before the vote, the FBI announced that it was re-opening its investigation of the Clinton emails. According to most commentators on the Democratic side, this specific action by the FBI was responsible primarily for the loss of Hillary Clinton in the election. The opposition claimed however that the real reason why she lost the election had to do with her policies regarding industrialization and foreign trade policy for the United States. It is difficult to know what all of the reasons were, but this discussion regarding the role of WikiLeaks, and the role of cyber warfare in the election has continued.


US RETALIATION AGAINST RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS


After the election for the president but before the inauguration of the new administration, President Obama announced that the United States would be taking retaliatory action against the Russian Federation. This retaliation involves the expiration of 35 diplomats and their families from the United States within 72 hours. That’s at the same time, the Russians or forced to abandon two facilities that they have been operating for more than a quarter of a century. And additional hardship imposed upon the Russians was that this expulsion came only a few days before the New Year’s celebration which in Russia, like in so many other countries, is a major celebration. The representative of the Russian Federation in San Francisco stated that the cook for the New Year’s festivities had been expelled from the United States. He lamented publicly on television that because of this it would not be possible for the consulate to invite the large number of American guest as was customary.

This time, it still is not clear exactly what role the Russian Federation had in the release of the Clinton emails. For example, Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, as stated on numerous occasions, including today in a live interview on the Fox news Channel, that the Russian Federation government had absolutely no connection to the release of the emails. In spite of these numerous denials, many still argue that it was the intervention of the Russian government in the presidential election that was responsible for the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States.


During this past week, there also was a report that malicious code from the Russian Federation had been injected into the electrical supply control mechanism for the state of New Hampshire. This news item turned out to be false.


THE CHINESE OFFICE OF PERSONNEL HACK


There were many other significant events involving cyber warfare or cyber espionage during the year 2016. One of the most significant incidents was when a group operating from the People’s Republic of China managed to hack into the personnel records of more than 2 million employees of the federal government. They took a large amount of extremely confidential information including background investigation and security information regarding these government employees. What is peculiar about this incident is that the Obama administration did not take the type of harsh countermeasures that it has taken in the case of the legend Russian hacking of the US election.


TERRORISTS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA


A third major theme of cyber warfare during the year 2016 involved the role of I S I S in it’s propaganda efforts to recruit terrorists around the world. These recruitment efforts have been very successful, particularly in Europe. During this year, Europe has seen a dramatic increase in terrorism and has lost a large number of people. In general, the situation seems to be getting much worse in Europe. In spite of this rise in the number of deaths originating in terrorism, Europe still seems to be refusing to place any controls on the propaganda coming from the Middle East. Placing controls on information is very difficult because it is a direct contravention of the international law regarding freedom of speech and freedom of communication. These principles were incorporated into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, we can see that international declarations are not to the same as international law.


We can say confidently that the year 2016 was one in which all aspects of the cyber issue came to the forefront in the international news. We can also say that during the coming year we should continue to see an escalation of problems in the cyber domain.

This blog continues to maintain the position that until there is a very significant outage or Internet crisis which affects a number of countries at the same time there will not be any recognition of the need for an international agreement to limit the proliferation and development of cyber weapons.

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