May 16, 2021

"It may be true that the Biden administration concluded we are defenseless to cyber terrorism despite years of ransomware attacks and hundreds of billions of dollars in cyber security programs."

"If that is the case, the public should be informed. The failure of Congress and our government to defend against such terror attacks is a national security failure of breathtaking proportions. The Colonial Pipeline attack was the cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. In both cases, we were caught unprepared and unable to deal with a threat we knew was coming. Yet, President Roosevelt did not issue a 'no comment' on the critical facts after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Back then, we believed FDR when he stated in his first inauguration that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' What the Biden administration seems to fear most is public recognition that it is afraid — afraid of the vulnerability of our infrastructure, afraid that the public will learn what cyber terrorists already know."

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Why the White House won't define pipeline attack as terrorism" (The Hill).

One way to fight — fake fight — terrorism is to withhold the label "terrorism" from the things you can't (or won't) fight. But it might be that the administration is doing what it can to fight what it realizes is terrorism, and what it's saying to us is simply propaganda. There's nothing we can do to help, and our fear of these attacks only makes matters worse. In that light, "no comment" is the mildest possible propaganda. There's nothing even to be deluded by. 

Why does Turley bring up the ancient propaganda "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?! Calling something that we can't fight "terrorism" would be an effort to increase fear. It's simply wrong to say the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and it always was. If quelling fear is the only problem, then "no comment" is an admirable response.

2 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Ron writes

“Perhaps the Biden Administration is not calling the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack terrorism is because it isn't? It's a ransomware attack, not the unlawful use of violence for political ends. As it turns out, I have a Masters in Information Assurance and Industry certifications in regards to computer security, and have been working in the IT field for 30+ years. I can assure you that the issue is that computer security does not generate revenue, and therefore the smallest amount of resources as possible are expended on it. In addition, security equals inconvenience, and people will do their utmost to circumvent inconveniences. Therefore, it is not surprising that opportunists will do their best to take advantage of the situation which is that most small to medium size businesses have abysmal computer security. And large businesses aren't necessarily much better. What is worrying is that a critical infrastructure such as a pipeline could be brought down by a cyber attack because that is actually easily prevented. Don't attach hardware that controls a pipeline to the internet. Air gap it. I'm sure that this wasn't done because it would have cost money and be inconvenient. But, they had pipelines before the internet and they were able to control them. I'm not a big fan of government regulation, but in the case of critical infrastructure the government should have stepped in years ago.”

Ann Althouse said...

Brian emails:

My view is that Biden and the people around him are very unlikely to make good judgments on how to respond to terrorism.

I just heard Scott Adams say the appropriate response to the hacking is to threaten to kill the hackers. He did not say we should necessarily kill them, but threaten to kill them in order to coerce a very favorable deal and deter future terrorism.

Adams also said that if we knew the hackers were Russian, then we should shut down the electronic grid wherever Putin was located to motivate him to take care of his Russian hackers.

I don't know if these are good ideas, but the kill threat has appeal to me. It also is something that Biden is unlikely to do.

The grid cut off of Putin is probably a bad idea due to the risk of unintended consequences.