Beijing Defiant After Ruling on S. China Sea Claims

Posted on July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

Hague Court Strikes Down Beijing’s South China Sea Claims

In a victory for the Philippines, an international tribunal ruled China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal, setting the stage for more tension in one of the world’s flashpoints.

US Navy Base Japan

ForeignPolicy: An international tribunal delivered a stinging rebuke to China on Tuesday, ruling unanimously that Beijing has no historic title to the huge swathe of the South China Sea that it claims.

The decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague represents the first explicit, legal repudiation of China’s claims to the waters of the South China Sea, a territorial land grab that has in recent years soured relations between Beijing and many of its neighbors, especially the Philippines. China refused to recognize the tribunal and has repeatedly said that it will ignore the decision, which is binding and not subject to appeal.

Related reading: Ramifications of Hague Decision

The much-awaited decision will almost certainly further inflame tensions in the South China Sea, which has seen frequent clashes between Chinese coast guard ships and fishermen and vessels from other countries. The United States has over the past year sought to uphold international law and freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest waterways by dispatching navy ships to sail through waters that Beijing has tried to fence off.

As expected, Beijing dismissed the ruling. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the “law-abusing tribunal” had handed down an”ill-founded award.”

China’s defense ministry said its troops would “unswervingly safeguard state sovereignty, security, maritime rights and interests,” according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Read the full statement of China’s Defense Minister here.

Wary of China’s reaction to the verdict, the Philippines called for “restraint.”

“Our experts are studying this award with the care and thoroughness that this significant arbitral outcome deserves,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told reporters.

“We call on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety. The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision,” he said.

In the wake of the ruling by the panel, which China has spent months trying to discredit, experts said Beijing could respond in a variety of ways. It could send more fighter jets to bases it is building on the disputed islets, or it could declare an air defense identification zone in part of the South China Sea, much as it did in 2013 in the East China Sea.

China could also ratchet up the fight with the Philippines by carrying out dredging and reclamation work at Scarborough Shoal, one of the features close to the Philippine coast and a reef at the center of the spat between the two countries. Or China could even try to blockade Philippine marines currently stationed at one of the tiny atolls, potentially threatening a showdown with the United States, which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila.

“The only person who knows what China’s response will be is Xi Jinping. It’s going to be his decision and nobody else’s,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and an expert on the South China Sea disputes.

The ruling, capstone to a 2013 complaint brought by the Philippines, considered three broad issues. Does China, as it maintains through its proclamation of a so-called “nine dash line,” have “historic rights” to the waters around the Spratly Islands, hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast? Do those tiny reefs and rocks actually amount to islands, which would give their owner exclusive claim to the economic resources nearby? And has China, in its rush to dredge coral atolls to build artificial islands and fence off the area from the Philippines, violated the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea?

The panel found that while Chinese fishermen have in the past plied the waters around the Spratlys, that does not amount to any sort of legal claim to the resources there today.

“There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources,” the panel ruled, “within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’.”

The tribunal also determined that none of the features in the Spratly Islands — with names like Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef — amount to actual islands. That means that, regardless of which country has sovereignty over those rocks and atolls (a question the Hague panel did not consider), they do not grant any legal entitlement to a 200-mile wide exclusive economic zone in the surrounding waters.

Finally, the panel found that China had violated the Philippines’ rights in the waters off its coast, by, for example, interfering with Manila’s ability to drill for oil or fish in seas that by law belong to the Philippines.

“The Tribunal therefore concluded that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights with respect to its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf,” the panel noted in its nearly-500 page ruling.

The tribunal also determined that China had violated environmental provisions of the international law of the sea by tearing up coral reefs to build artificial islands. And the panel also found in the past three years China has aggravated the dispute with the Philippines due to its land reclamation campaign and aggressive and illegal behavior by Chinese ships.

The panel concluded that both countries, since they ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, are bound to comply with Tuesday’s decision.

Due to Sanctions, North Korea Declares Act of War

Posted on July 7, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Counter North Korean ThreatsPress Release 07.08.16

Media Contact 202-225-5021

Washington, D.C. – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) released the following statement regarding the joint South Korea-U.S. decision to deploy the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) to defend against North Korean threats:

“The North Korean regime’s continued belligerence is a threat to South Korea and the entire Pacific region. The deployment of the THAAD defensive missile system will help protect against Kim Jong Un’s illicit weapons programs. Along with new sanctions mandated by my North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, this action demonstrates the strong resolve of the U.S. and South Korea to promote peace, stability, and respect for human rights.”

NKorea: US sanctions tantamount to act of war

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)— North Korea said Thursday that U.S. sanctions on leader Kim Jong Un and other top officials for human rights abuses are tantamount to declaring war.

The country’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency saying the announcement of sanctions on Kim and 10 other officials was “peppered with lies and fabrications” and demanding the sanctions be withdrawn.

“Now that the U.S. declared a war on the DPRK, any problem arising in the relations with the U.S. will be handled under the latter’s wartime law,” the statement says, using the initials of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea has already been sanctioned heavily because of its nuclear weapons program. However, Wednesday’s action by the Obama administration was the first time Kim has been personally targeted, and the first time that any North Korean official has been blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury in connection with reports of rights abuses.

The North Korean statement called the sanctions a “hideous crime.” It demanded that the sanctions be retracted or else “every lever and channel for diplomatic contact between the DPRK and the U.S. will be cut off at once.”

U.S. and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic relations, although they retain a channel of communication through the North’s diplomatic mission at the United Nations in New York.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the U.S. stands by its decision to impose the sanctions.

“We once again call on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that only further raise tensions in the region. I can’t see how this rhetoric does anything but that,” he told reporters in Washington when asked about the North Korean response.

North Korea frequently uses harsh rhetoric and denunciations of the United States, and threats of hostilities are not uncommon.

On Wednesday, the State Department also released a report, mandated by Congress, on human rights abuses in North Korea. Administration officials said it was intended to name and shame responsible officials in North Korea’s government, and send a message to lower and mid-ranking officials to think twice before engaging in acts of cruelty and oppression.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the new sanctions could cause North Korean officials to think twice before committing rights abuses.

“It is important,” he told reporters during a visit to Ukraine, “that all North Korean officials know and understand going forward that at all levels there are consequences for actions and they hopefully might consider the implications of those actions,” he said.

In addition to blacklisting Kim, the Treasury Department blacklisted officials at the Ministry of State Security — which it said administers political prison camps and is engaged in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees — and the Ministry of People‘s Security which operates a network of police stations, interrogation centers and labor camps.

The State Department said North Korean political prison camps hold between 80,000 to 120,000 prisoners, including children and other family members.

***** Mostly importantly from 6 months ago:

After Bomb Test, North Korea, Iran Continue Illicit Nuke Cooperation

After test explosion, lawmakers, experts warn of illicit nuclear axis

FreeBeacon: One day after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb, lawmakers and regional experts are warning that Pyongyang and Tehran are continuing an illicit clandestine partnership enabling the rogue nations to master nuclear technology.

Loopholes in the nuclear pact recently reached between Iran and the international community have allowed the Islamic Republic and North Korea to boost their nuclear cooperation, which includes the exchange of information and technology, according to material provided to Congress over the past year.

Iran is believed to be housing some of its key nuclear weapons-related technology in North Korea in order to avoid detection by international inspectors. Iranian dissidents once tied to the regime have disclosed that both countries have consulted on a nuclear warhead.

Following the test, however, the White House publicly denied that Iran and North Korea are working together, according to multiple statements issued by the administration on Wednesday.

Still, the Iranian-North Korean nuclear axis is coming under renewed scrutiny by lawmakers in light of Pyongyang’s most recent detonation, which is the fourth of its kind in recent years.

Congressional critics now warn that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to clamp down on North Korea given its recent efforts to appease Iran by dropping a new set of sanctions that were meant to target its illicit ballistic weapons program.

Iran, on the other hand, thinks that the bomb test will give it “media breathing space” by drawing attention away from its own nuclear pursuits, according to Persian-language reports carried by state-controlled media outlets closely aligned with the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“The entire world may well consider North Korea a failed state, but from the view point of the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps], North Korea is a success story and a role model: A state which remains true to its revolutionary beliefs and defies the Global Arrogance,” said Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the inner workings of the Iranian regime.

Prominent members of Congress are now warning that North Korea’s latest nuclear test is a sign of what could come from Iran, which they claim is closely following the North Korean nuclear playbook.

Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R, Fla.), chair of House’s foreign relations subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, described North Korea’s latest test as “a precursor to what we can expect from Iran in a few years.”

Iran, Ros-Lehtinen told the Washington Free Beacon, “is following the North Korea playbook” and “stands to be the main beneficiary of Pyongyang’s continued nuclear progress.”

“Iran and North Korea have a history of collaboration on military programs and have long been suspected of collaborating on nuclear related programs,” she said, noting that the Iran deal provides the Islamic Republic with the cash necessary to purchase advanced nuclear technology.

“Iran won’t even need to make any progress on its domestic nuclear program—once it perfects its ballistic missiles it could purchase a weapon from North Korea and all of the conditions and monitoring in the [nuclear deal] would be ineffective in detecting or stopping that,” she said.

“Let’s not forget, Iranians have reportedly been present at each of North Korea’s previous nuclear tests,” Sen. David Perdue (R., Ga.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to ongoing ties between North Korea and Iran. President Obama must act now to stop these rogue nations from supporting each other’s nuclear weapons efforts aimed at harming America and our allies.”

Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.) expressed concern that Iran is following in North Korea’s footsteps, and that the nuclear deal will collapse just as Bill Clinton’s agreement with North Korea did in the mid-1990s.

“This test is just the latest sign that North Korea is a regime hell-bent on building and developing a sophisticated nuclear program,” Meehan said. “The passage of the 1995 nuclear deal with [North Korea] came with it promises from the Clinton administration of accountability and transparency for Kim’s regime.”

“Those same sort of assurances are echoed today by the Obama White House as it seeks to assure us that its own deal with Iran will be more successful,” Meehan said. “The Iran deal and the North Korean deal were sold with the same promises, the same assurances, to the American people, sometimes even word-for-word.”

“When you put the rhetoric of the 90’s and the North next to the rhetoric of today and Iran, it’s hard to tell the difference,” he added.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), a chief advocate for increased economic sanctions on Iran, highlighted what he called North Korea’s “alarming record” of “cooperating on missile development with Iran.”

With Iran set to receive billions of dollars in sanctions relief later this month, regional experts have informed Congress that the nuclear deal “creates conditions and incentives that are highly likely to result in the expansion” of Iran and North Korea’s illicit nuclear exchange, according to testimony submitted last year by Claudia Rossett, an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The deal fails to “cut off the pathways between Iran and nuclear-proliferating North Korea” and even has made “it safer for Iran to cheat,” according to Rossett’s testimony.

Additionally, sanctions relief gives Iran a chance to “go shopping in North Korea,” she said.

The Obama administration denied the ties between Iran and North Korea, telling reporters on Wednesday that “they’re entirely two different issues altogether.”

“We consider the Iran deal as a completely separate issue handled in a completely different manner than were the—than was the Agreed Framework with North Korea,” said John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, echoing similar remarks issued by the White House.

The administration’s hesitance to link the two nuclear issues has angered some critics of the Iran deal.

“This is exactly the kind of dishonest incoherence that the Iran nuclear deal forces its advocates to defend,” said Omri Ceren, the managing director of press and strategy at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that works with journalists on Middle East issues.

“The Obama administration can’t admit that the [deal] provided the Iranians with hundreds of billions of dollars, some of which they’re going to invest in nuclear research beyond their borders, allowing them to get sanctions relief while advancing their program anyway,” Ceren said. “So instead they have to deny that there are links between Iran and North Korea’s nuclear program, even though that’s laughable.”

Chinese Govt Makes Millions of Fake Social Media Posts

Posted on June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Sounds just like Russia…and China has an army that is assigned to keep up the espionage against the West.

Red astroturf: Chinese government makes millions of fake social media posts

“50-cent” posters aim to distract from dissent rather than confront it.

arsT: Data scientists at Harvard University have found that the government of the People’s Republic of China generates an estimated 448 million fake social media posts per year. The posts are an effort to shape online conversations by citizens and to distract them from sensitive topics “and change the subject”—largely through “cheerleading” posts promoting the Chinese Communist Party and the government.

The research, conducted by Harvard professor Gary King and former Harvard graduate students Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts and supported by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Science, made use of a goldmine of propaganda content. This included a leaked archive of e-mails sent to the Zhanggong District Internet Propaganda Office from 2013 to 2014 that showed government workers’ documentation of completion of fake post work, including screen shots. The research also analyzed social media posts on Chinese websites from 2010 to 2015.

Previously, posts like these were believed to be the work of what observers have called the “50-cent Party”—named for what some believed the posters are paid by the state for their propaganda work. As it turns out, the posts analyzed by King and his co-researchers were likely mostly written for free as an extra duty of government employees.

And while the “50c” posts had long been assumed to be focused on attacking critics of the government and the Party, the researchers found instead that “the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We infer that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to regularly distract the public and change the subject, as most of these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime.” In essence, the fake posts are a government-sponsored “astro-turfing” campaign—an attempt to create the impression of a grassroots groundswell of support for the Party and the government.

The term “astro-turfing” first became widely used to online public relations efforts by Microsoft as the company was fighting a government anti-trust case through the Microsoft-funded group Americans for Technology Leadership, though the term had been used in the past to describe off-line fake grassroots efforts. It has become a common (but unethical) political and marketing practice—particularly as companies try to shape online reviews and comments about their products and services. But none has engaged in this practice on the scale of the Chinese government’s campaign, which used government workers to spread happy talk about the Party and state. Of the posts analyzed from the Zhanggong archive, the researchers found 99.3 percent were contributed by one of more than 200 government agencies. Twenty percent of those posts were posted directly by employees of the Zhanggong Internet Propaganda Office, with smaller percentages coming from other regional and municipal government agencies.

As for the allegation that these astroturfers get paid by the government for their posts, the researchers noted, “no evidence exists that the authors of 50c posts are even paid extra for this work. We cannot be sure of current practices in the absence of evidence but, given that they already hold government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) jobs, we would guess this activity is a requirement of their existing job or at least rewarded in performance reviews.”

Yup, there is more….

Defence forces on alert after Chinese cyber attack

TheNewIndianExpress: An alert has been issued to the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force that a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group called Suckfly, based in Chengdu region, is targeting Indian organisations. India’s defence establishment is its prime target.

Suckfly is involved in carrying out cyber espionage activities by sending out a malware called Nidiran.

According to the alert, Suckfly has stolen certificates from legitimate software developing firms in South Korea and is using them to camouflage its attacks. “Sensitive information from targeting computers and networks is exfiltrated, and this information is being used to undermine the national security and economic capabilities,” the alert issued from the Ministry of Defence states.

APT is a network attack in which an unauthorised person gains access and stays there undetected for a long period of time. The intention of an APT attack is to steal data instead of causing damage to the network or organisation.

“It has successfully carried out cyber espionage by infecting computers of both government and commercial houses of India involved in e-commerce, finance, healthcare, shipping and technology. Targeting of military personnel cannot be ruled out, keeping in mind the sensitive nature of data being handled by them,” the alert adds.

What is alarming for security agencies is that the cyber attack was carried out from the headquarters of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Chengdu Military Command is in charge of security along India’s eastern sector in the Tibet region, including Arunachal Pradesh. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had visited Chengdu Military Command during his visit to Beijing in April.

When and How do Preezy Candidates Get Briefings?

Posted on June 2, 2016June 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

MICHAEL MORELL
FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CIA

Once the Democratic and Republican parties officially nominate their Presidential candidates at their political conventions this summer, the nominees will be offered intelligence briefings before the general election. We asked Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, to explain how these briefings work.

The Cipher Brief: Can you tell us why the sitting President offers those briefings to the nominee from each party?

Michael Morell: There is a great deal of confusion about these briefings in the media. After a candidate has been formally nominated by her/his national convention, she/he is offered a one-time intelligence briefing (sometimes over multiple days if there are time constraints or if a candidate wants to go deeper on a particular topic). They do not receive a daily briefing. They do not receive regular update briefings during the campaign. They do not receive the President’s Daily Briefing. Those only come for the president-elect, after the election in November.

There is also confusion in the media as to why every post-war president has offered these one-time, post-convention briefings to the candidates. The objective is not to start preparing the candidate to deal with the myriad national security issues that they will face six months down the road, if they win the election. The objective is to protect national security during the campaign by giving the candidates a deep sense of the national security landscape. Let me explain: both our adversaries and our allies and partners will be listening closely, extremely closely, to what the candidates say about the issues during the campaign, and saying the wrong thing could damage our national security. The briefings are meant to help prevent that.

Let me be clear, though: during the initial, one-time briefing, the candidates are not advised on what to say or what not to say about national security issues on the campaign trail. The hope is that by simply giving them an objective, unbiased understanding of the issues, the dialogue on those issues during the campaign will be carried out in a way that does not undermine U.S. interests.

TCB: Who is actually involved in the briefings?

MM: On the government side, the briefing teams are usually composed of senior leaders from the analytic arms of the Intelligence Community agencies, along with senior analysts who, on a day-to-day basis, cover the issues to be discussed. I played the former role in a number of briefings for candidates over the years.

On the candidate’s side, they are permitted to bring their closest national security aides. In my experience, that has ranged from just one person to two-to-three people. But there is no just showing up. The IC (Intelligence Community) must approve in advance all of the attendees.

TCB: Are there any limits to what the nominees can be told? For instance, will they be provided with classified information or details of ongoing operations? Are the candidates in essence given security clearances?

MM: Absolutely, there are limits on what candidates are told. The briefings are classified Top Secret, but the candidates are only provided the analytic judgments of the IC and the information used to support those judgments. They are not provided with the details of how that information was collected-what the IC calls sources and methods. They are not provided with any information on any ongoing covert actions programs related to the issue being discussed. They are not provided with any operational information. Those only come after a candidate wins the election.

TCB: How does the IC prepare for the briefings? Will the briefings be the same for each candidate? What issues would you emphasize in the briefings?

MM: The leadership of the IC, most likely the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), will decide on the topics, perhaps to be approved by the White House. If I were putting the list together, I would include the threat to the U.S. Homeland and to U.S. interests abroad posed by ISIS and al Qaeda; the threat posed by a variety of actors in cyber space; the political and military situation in Iraq and Syria; the situation in Afghanistan; as well as national security issues related to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China.

The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.

TCB: Any personal observations about a nominee’s response to a briefing you provided? Without getting into names, has a nominee seemed surprised by the information? Has it altered a position on an issue or impacted how the nominee publically presented a view?

MM: In general, candidates who have not been involved in national security are surprised by the number of threats facing the U.S., by the seriousness of those threats, by the complexity of the threats, and by just how difficult they are to mitigate. They quickly realize that there are not simple solutions. They quickly realize that their sound bites on the campaign simply don’t fit realty. And, they quickly realize just how important intelligence is going to be keeping the country safe.

Not surprisingly, the briefing team will get a sense of a candidate. Does the candidate know what they don’t know, are they trying to understand the issue, do they want to learn, are they open-minded, are they able to grasp complexity, do they ask good questions? Or do they try to convince the analysts of their point of view, are they just trying to find facts to fit their world view or their policy views, do they look at the issues through the lens of national security or through the lens of politics?

The IC knows the Secretary well, and its expectation will be that she will fall into the first category because that is what she demonstrated as Secretary of State. I’m sure the analysts will be very interested to see where Donald Trump falls – largely because they will want to know what he would be like if he were to become their “First Customer,” as some analysts at CIA like to call the president. And they will be interested simply because of the nature of the campaign so far, the nature of the candidate so far.

How the Military is Defeating Hackers

Posted on May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Here’s how the US military is beating hackers at their own game

Paul Szoldra

US Soldiers Iraq Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall/USAF

TechInsiders: There’s an unseen world war that has been fought for years with no clear battle lines, few rules of engagement, and no end in sight.

But it’s not a shooting war; not a war where combatants have been killed or wounded — at least not yet.

It’s a war that pits nations against each other for dominance in cyberspace, and the United States, like other nations employing professional hackers as “cyber soldiers,” sees it as a battlefield just like any other.

“It’s like an operational domain: Sea, land, air, space, and cyber,” Charlie Stadtlander, chief spokesperson for US Army Cyber Command, told Tech Insider. “It’s a place where our presence exists. Cyber is a normal part of military operations and needs to be considered as such.”

As US military leaders warn of the growing progress of Russia, China, and North Korea in cyberspace, the Pentagon has ramped up its own efforts in what it calls the “cyber domain” after the release of a new cyber strategy in April 2015.

“This ephemeral space that’s all around us, literally, is a space where operations can be performed against us,” Frank Pound, a program manager who leads DARPA’s “Plan X” cyber warfare platform, told Tech Insider. “And how do we defend against that? How do we detect that?”

Building a cyber army

In its cyber strategy, the military proposed 133 teams for its “cyber mission force” by 2018, 27 of which were directed to support combat missions by “generating integrated cyberspace effects in support of … operations.” (Effects is a common military term used for artillery and aircraft targeting, and soldiers proclaim “good effect on target” to communicate a direct hit).

The cyber mission force will comprise some 4,300 personnel. But only about 1,600 of those would be on a “combat mission team” that would likely be considered to be taking an offensive hacking role. They are up against China’s own “specialized military network warfare forces,” North Korea’s secretive Bureau 121 hacker unit, other nation-states, hacktivists like Anonymous, and criminal enterprises alike.

They have been further tasked with breaking into the networks of adversaries like ISIS, disrupting communications channels, stopping improvised explosive devices from being triggered through cellphones, or even, as one Marine general put it, just “trying to get inside the enemy’s [head].”

Online hacks can lead to offline outcomes, and the military has become keenly aware of that power. In 2009, the US and Israel reportedly infected Iranian computers with the Stuxnet malware that destroyed roughly one-fifth of the country’s nuclear centrifuges. And as recently as February, hackers were used against ISIS as others fought on the ground, quite possibly for the first time ever.

“These are strikes that are conducted in the war zone using cyber essentially as a weapon of war,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told NPR. “Just like we drop bombs, we’re dropping cyber bombs.”

As one Army officer said during a 2015 training exercise, the cyber war seems to just be getting started: “Future fights aren’t going to be guns and bullets. They’re going to be ones and zeroes.”

soldiers cyber command Brian Rodan/US ArmySoldiers work together during a training exercise in 2011.

‘Prepping the battlefield’

That the Pentagon would employ specialists to defend itself in cyberspace is not surprising, since government and military systems are attacked regularly by nations trying to read soldier’s email, or others who want to uncover personal details on millions who undergo background checks for security clearances.

But the defense of networks — while still an important function — has been supplanted in some cases by an offensive strategy. That is, soldiers hacking into computers overseas for intelligence or to disrupt the enemy on the battlefield — a kind of digital tit-for-tat.

“If there’s something that you can do to prep the battlefield before a kinetic attack or to disrupt defenses during kinetic attacks, why wouldn’t a combatant commander turn to that?” Stadtlander said.

Stadtlander couldn’t talk about ongoing operations that Army Cyber Command is involved in, mainly due to the unique nature of cyber warfare. An enemy who knows the US is developing a next-generation fighter jet might develop something in response that could take years, but with a cyberattack, a fix can be developed sometimes within days.

“The unique thing about cyber activity and defense is you’re talking about building a couple thousand lines of code or having a certain electronic device, or some sort of cyber capability. And just based on the nature of this space, a lot of times it can only be used once,” he said. “Once it’s known … it’s no longer a viable tool.”

Still, some insight into what the US military is capable of can be found within its own training manuals, presentations, and the few news stories by the military’s own writers. And it’s likely that hackers with Army Cyber Command, subordinate to US Cyber Command and NSA, benefit from top secret initiatives to infect “millions” of computers with malware in an effort aimed at “owning the net.”

“Denying the ability to coordinate, communicate, and assess,” Stadtlander said. “That’s an advantage that we might be able to leverage.”

Inside the Army’s cyber warfare ‘Bible’

Perhaps one of the most important publications on cyber warfare was released with little fanfare in Feb. 2014. Known as Army Field Manual 3-38 Cyber Electromagnetic Activities, it proclaimed itself as the “first doctrinal field manual of its kind,” unifying a number of other publications on network operations, electronic warfare, and intelligence into one 96-page document.

In FM 3-38, the Army defined offensive cyberspace operations as actions “intended to project power by the application of force in or through cyberspace,” while noting they are to be carried out in support of command objectives and within legal frameworks.

But what can soldiers do in cyberspace that can affect what happens on the battlefield? Quite a bit, according to the manual.

us army cyber soldier US Army

“A cyberspace attack may be employed in conjunction with” other methods of attack “to deceive, degrade, destroy, and disrupt a specific enemy integrated air defense system or enemy safe haven,” it says.

As an example, the manual offers an early warning radar site as a target which, if soldiers can get inside the network, could possibly be destroyed or degraded.

That’s just what students trained for during an exercise in March, according to the Fort Gordon Globe. Acting just as they would on the battlefield, cyber soldiers patrolled to their objective — a simulated enemy air defense control system — then searched for their target’s wireless network so it could be exploited or neutralized.

There’s little need for stealth coating on aircraft when a guy behind a computer can disable the radar site for you. The manual also offers other systems Army hackers may consider breaking into, such as enemy telephone networks, servers, and smartphones.

“Even if you think about the way that IEDs are triggered,” Stadtlander said, using the acronym for improvised explosive devices. “Or an adversary’s [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], a lot of these are done through electronics and with internet connections.”

Getting into the Army’s ‘hacker university’

Located just southwest of Augusta, Georgia is Fort Gordon, an Army installation that brings together most of the service’s cyber warriors under one roof. In 2013, the Army chose the site as the home base of its Cyber Command after the unit was established in 2010.

Also home to a 604,000 square foot operations center for the National Security Agency, Gordon is where cyber warriors are taught their craft at what the Army calls its Cyber Center of Excellence. But before they get to the military’s “hacker university,” enlisted soldiers need to score high technical scores on the military entrance exam, and sign on for five years of service, instead of the normal four-year tour.

army cyber command US ArmyInsider Fort Gordon’s Cyber Operations Center.

Due to the classified nature of their work, cyber training is often conducted in secure compartmented information facilities (SCIFs) where cell phones and other outside recording devices are not allowed, and all soldiers will have to obtain a Top Secret clearance prior to being assigned to their unit.

Soldiers go through a lengthy period of training after basic training: Six months spent at the Navy’s Center for Information Dominance in Pensacola, Florida followed by six months at Fort Gordon.

Army officers go through their own training program at the Georgia base, called Cyber Basic Officer Leader Course. The course takes nearly nine months to complete and is the longest officer training program in the Army.

Enlisted soldiers train with members of all military branches over six months at the Navy’s Cyber Analysis Course, according to Bloomberg. Since students can come from a variety of skill sets and backgrounds, the first two-thirds of classroom time focuses on basic programming, mathematics, and how networks and operating systems function. But later on they learn the steps to research and infiltrate targets, defend networks, and even hack a simulated network with Metasploit, a common tool hackers have used since its release in 2004.

Meanwhile, officers receive similar training, though their position merits other coursework in leading operations as opposed to carrying them out. Though a cyber officer can likely step in and be more than capable, given the certifications they obtain, to include Cisco’s Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and the independent Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential.

“They are really valuably trained after that [schooling],” Stadtlander said.

So valuable in fact that the Army is seeing a challenge in retaining its talent from heavyweights in Silicon Valley.

Is hacking considered an ‘act of war’?

Chinese Army Hackers via Flickr

“There is no international standing or framework that is binding over any one nation-state in terms of offensive cyber operations,” Bradley P. Moss, a national security lawyer, told Tech Insider. “It’s whatever rules we put in place for ourselves.”

In essence, the US, China, Russia, and others are operating in a sort-of “digital Wild West” with few overarching guidelines outside of the Law of War that predates our interconnected world.

Cyber warfare continues unabated because there is no governing body such as the United Nations telling nations not to hack one another. Not that that would necessarily make a difference, as a 2014 UN report criticized mass surveillance programs employed by NSA and others as violating privacy rights “guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions,” The Intercept reported.

Still, Moss explained that nations are less concerned with the legalities of hacking each other, and instead, worry about the potential diplomatic and political fallout should they be exposed.

“More or less, we all engage in some manner of warfare these days, we just don’t go to ‘war’ over it,” Moss said.

How foreign nations would likely respond to being hacked by the US is something that is considered before any offensive operation, according to a top secret presidential policy directive leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The document, made public in 2013, listed cyber attacks resulting in “loss of life, significant responsive actions against the United States, significant damage to property, serious adverse US foreign policy consequences, or serious economic impact” as requiring presidential approval.

And for US military hackers who may be on a battlefield in Iraq, Syria, or elsewhere, their self-imposed rules for cyber attacks are clear:

“Military attacks will be directed only at military targets,” reads the Pentagon’s cyberspace operations document.

us army cyber command US Army

But what of cyber attacks that have potentially devastating effects on foreign nations, such as US-made worms that cause nuclear centrifuges to fall apart, or alleged Russian-made malware that knocks out power and heat to people in the dead of winter?

Are these “acts of war”?

“From a strictly legal matter, you could designate the US Army hacking the Russian Army’s [computer] system as an act of war,” Moss said. “Just as much as if we were to have infiltrated and damaged a Russian bomber, that would be an act of war.”

But, he added: “There’s nothing that necessarily stops us, except the political and diplomatic ramifications.”