 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
During last spring's conflict with Yugoslavia, the Pentagon considered hacking into Serbian computer networks to disrupt military operations and basic civilian services.
But it refrained from doing so, according to senior defense officials, because of uncertainties and limitations surrounding the emerging field of cyber warfare.
``We went through the drill of figuring out how we would do some of these cyber things if we were to do them,'' said a senior military officer. ``But we never went ahead with any.''
As computers revolutionize many aspects of life, military officials have stepped up development of cyber weapons and spoken ominously of their potential to change the nature of war. Instead of risking planes to bomb power grids, telephone exchanges or rail lines, for example, Pentagon planners envision soldiers at computer terminals silently invading foreign networks to shut down electrical facilities, interrupt phone service, crash trains and disrupt financial systems.
But such attacks, officials say, pose nettlesome legal, ethical and practical problems.
Midway through the war with Yugoslavia, the Defense Department's top legal office issued guidelines warning that misuse of computer network attacks could subject U.S. authorities to war crimes charges. It advised commanders to apply the same ``law of war'' principles to computer attack that they do to the use of bombs and missiles. These call for hitting targets that are of military necessity only, minimizing collateral damage and avoiding indiscriminate attacks.
Military officials said concern about legalities was only one of the reasons U.S. authorities resisted the temptation to, say, raid the bank accounts of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Other reasons included the untested or embryonic state of the U.S. cyber arsenal and the rudimentary or decentralized nature of some Yugoslav systems, which officials said did not lend themselves to computer assault.
U.S. forces did attack some computers that controlled the Yugoslav air defense system, the officials said. But the attacks were launched from electronic jamming aircraft rather than over computer networks.
No plan for an electronic attack on Yugoslav computer networks ever reached the stage of a formal legal assessment, according to several defense officials familiar with the planning. And the 50 pages of guidelines, prepared by the Pentagon general counsel's office, were not drafted with the Yugoslav operation specifically in mind.
But officials said the document, which has received little publicity, reflected the collective thinking of Defense Department lawyers about cyber warfare and marked the U.S. government's first formal attempt to set legal boundaries for the military's involvement in computer attack operations.
It told commanders to remain wary of targeting institutions that are essentially civilian, such as banking systems, stock exchanges and universities, even though cyber weapons might provide the ability to do so.
In wartime, the document advised, computer attacks and other forms of what the military calls ``information operations'' should be conducted only by members of the armed forces, not civilian agents. It also stated that before launching any assaults, commanders must carefully gauge potential damage beyond the intended target, much as the Pentagon now estimates the number of likely casualties from bombings.
While computer attacks may appear to be a cleaner means of destroying targets -- with less prospect for physical destruction or loss of life than bombs -- Pentagon officials say such views are deceiving. By penetrating computer systems that control communications, transportation, energy and other basic services in a foreign country, cyber weapons can have serious cascading effects, disrupting not only military operations but civilian life, officials say.
The full extent of the U.S. computer arsenal is among the most tightly held national security secrets. But reports point to a broad range of weapons under development, including use of computer viruses, or ``logic bombs,'' to disrupt enemy networks; the feeding of false information to sow confusion; and the morphing of video images onto foreign television stations to deceive. Last month, the Pentagon announced it was consolidating plans for offensive as well as defensive computerized operations under a four-star general who heads the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo.
In their guidelines document, titled ``An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations,'' the Pentagon's lawyers warned of such unintended effects of computer attacks as opening the floodgates of a dam, causing an oil refinery in a populated area to explode or triggering the release of radioactivity. They mentioned the possibility of computer attacks spilling over into neutral or friendly nations and noted the legal limits on deceptive actions.
``It may seem attractive for a combatant vessel or aircraft to avoid being attacked by broadcasting the agreed identification signals for a medical vessel or aircraft, but such actions would be a war crime,'' said the document, which was first reported last week by the Washington Post's online service.