What Is Gained By Playing War Games? President Wesley Clark declared a state of emergency after 700 people were killed in the crash landings of two planes – one at Washington Dulles, the other at and Chicago O’Hare. In the run-up to that twin disaster, computer glitches had shut down electricity in many regions of the country, shut down Wall Street and crippled air traffic at the major hubs. Clark -- as in the retired general -- played the part of the president during a war game held on Monday at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The exercise began with Israel coming under coordinated cyber and terrorist attacks. Five hours later, the organizers called it off… because the U.S. and Russia were on the brink of a shooting war in the Middle East. “If we hadn’t stopped when we did, the entire region could have been engulfed in flames,” said Israeli Defense Ministry consultant Haim Assa, who designed the exercise. Mr. Assa missed his calling writing spy novels; his exercise had at least as many unexpected plot twists as a good thriller. The Israelis taking part in the exercise assumed the initial attack had been launched by Hezbollah, in league with the Iranians. Wrong: It was actually the work of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri calculated correctly that the attacks would goad the Israelis into blaming and attacking Hezbollah. Here’s the genius of Mr. Assa’s scenario: In real life, Hezbollah is allied with the Assad regime in Syria. Many of the rebels fighting Assad in the Syrian civil war are al-Qaida types. “In the simulation,” says Gen. Clark, “we realized how difficult, if not impossible, it is to ascertain the source of attack.” That was one lesson of the exercise. Here are some others as gathered by Defense News, which observed the exercise on Monday… “When confronted with this new cyber situation, our responses simply weren’t good enough,” said Maj. Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a former commander in the Israeli Air Force who played the part of the Israeli defense minister “In contrast to the accepted concept in conventional war that posts that the best defense is offense, in the cyber domain, the best defense is defense,” said Erez Kreiner, a former Shin Bet official, who played the part of the U.S. defense secretary “Defenses must include all civilian infrastructure: hospitals, electricity, water, transportation, etc., since everything connected to computers can become a target for cybernetic attack,” said retired Maj. Gen. Itzik Ben-Israel, who once ran the research-and-development arm of Israel’s defense ministry. Cyberattacks are quickly surpassing terrorist attacks as the major threat on the U.S. governments radar. An attack on the scale of Sept. 11 is “more likely now to be overseas than it is in the homeland,” said Rand Beers, the acting Homeland Security secretary, during a Senate hearing yesterday. As such, new FBI director James Comey said over the next decade, Resources devoted to cyber-based threats will equal -- or even eclipse -- the resources devoted to noncyber-based terrorist threats. “That’s where the bad guys will go. There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].” “We intend to build more bridges to the private sector in the cyber security realm, Comey added. Private-sector companies are the primary victims of cyber-intrusions, and they also possess the information, the expertise and the knowledge to address cyber-intrusions.” We’re fairly sure that executives at companies specializing in cyber security were hearing the cash registers ring at that moment. Be Inspired, Every Day, In Every Way, Ray Bove Coaching Through Inspiration
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 22:07:06 +0000
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