- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- China
is seeking to unseat the United States as the dominant power in cyberspace,
a U.S. Air Force general leading a new push in this area said Wednesday.
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- "They're the only nation that has been quite that
blatant about saying, 'We're looking to do that,"' 8th Air Force Commander
Lt. Gen. Robert Elder told reporters.
-
- Elder is to head a new three-star cyber command being
set up at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, already home to about
25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare
to network defense.
-
- The command's focus is to control the cyber domain, critical
to everything from communications to surveillance to infrastructure security.
-
- "We have peer competitors right now in terms of
doing computer network attack ... and I believe we're going to be able
to ratchet up our capability," Elder said. "We're going to go
way ahead."
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- The Defense Department said in its annual report on China's
military power last month that China regarded computer network operations
-- attacks, defense and exploitation -- as critical to achieving "electromagnetic
dominance" early in a conflict.
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- China's People's Liberation Army has established information
warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks,
the Pentagon said.
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- China also was investing in electronic countermeasures
and defenses against electronic attack, including infrared decoys, angle
reflectors and false-target generators, it said.
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- The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. report
as "brutal interference" in China's internal affairs and insisted
Beijing's military preparations were purely defensive.
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- Elder described the bulk of current alleged Chinese cyber-operations
as industrial espionage aimed at stealing trade secrets to save years of
high-tech development.
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- He attributed the espionage to a mix of criminals, hackers
and "nation-state" forces. Virtually all potential U.S. foes
also were scanning U.S. networks for trade and defense secrets, he added.
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- "Everyone but North Korea," he said. "We've
concluded that there must be only one laptop in all of North Korea -- and
that guy's not allowed to scan" overseas networks, Elder said.
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- In October, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff defined cyberspace
as "characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic
spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and
associated physical infrastructures."
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- The definition is broad enough to cover far more than
merely defending or attacking computer networks. Other concerns include
remotely detonated roadside bombs in Iraq, interference with Global Positioning
Satellites and satellite communications, Internet financial transactions
by adversaries, and radar and navigational jamming.
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