[Infowarrior] - LTG Alexander, Obama's Cyber-Czar?

[Richard Forno]

Obama administration to form new cyber war doctrine
John Stokes
Monday, 22nd December 2008

http://www.spectator.co.uk/americano/3186321/obama-administration-to-form-new-cyber-war-doctrine.thtml

The Obama administration is set to appoint General Keith Alexander  
(pictured), the current Director of the National Security Agency, to  
be the new Cyber Czar.

In a major departure from the past, Alexander, who will receive his  
fourth general’s star, will have an initial budget of around $8  
billion and will control how it is spent within NSA, the Department of  
Homeland Security and the Pentagon. In effect, this will mean that the  
new head of NSA will report to him instead of to the Secretary of  
Defense on a huge area of business.

In the past five years, President Bush has had five Cyber Czars, all  
of whom failed miserably to get to grips with the cyber security  
challenge, in part because they had no money to dispense. Absent that  
carrot, no amount of sticks will make the slightest difference in the  
Washington bureaucracy.

The result of the Bush administration’s indolence has been the  
wholesale pillaging of economic and military secrets by foreign  
nations such as China, Israel, Iran and Russia and the phenomenal  
growth of cyber organized crime which is now a multi-billion dollar a  
year illegal business that involves almost no risk.

The raising of the power and influence of the cyber czar along with  
his huge budget will have a significant global impact. America will be  
developing and implementing a new doctrine for war in cyberspace which  
will include clear offensive capabilities and when and how they will  
be used. For that doctrine to be effective, there will have to be  
extensive discussions with allies and potential enemies and the Obama  
administration will be seeking to develop a new Cyber Treaty along the  
lines of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to codify this new realm  
of warfare.

Although exactly who Alexander will report to has not been decided, he  
will likely sit in the office of the Director of National Intelligence  
which will be run by Admiral Denny Blair, whose appointment was  
announced last week. Alexander has a reputation as a hard-charging  
technology innovator who took over NSA from Mike Hayden, the current  
head of CIA, in 2005. The handover was a frosty one as Alexander  
loathes Hayden who he considers to be an incompetent blowhard and the  
men rarely speak.

Alexander is, in some ways, a classic geek as he holds five different  
degrees, including one in electronic warfare and another in physics.  
However, he is also amusing and congenial company. He had a rough  
start at NSA which had a very poor record of innovation under Hayden.  
Within weeks of starting he embarked on a very ambitious technology  
program codenamed Turbulence which grew to include other programs such  
as Traffic Thief and Turmoil at a cost of more than $500m a year.  
Collectively, these highly classified programs have enabled NSA to  
collect, process and deliver real time analysis of the millions of  
communications that are intercepted worldwide by NSA every minute. For  
now, Turbulence only operates in limited geographical areas such as  
parts of Asia but it is expected that Alexander will use some of his  
new budget to ensure the program’s expansion to other regions.

It is unlikely that Alexander will face the confirmation challenges  
that confront many others who served in the national security arena  
during the Bush years. It was Hayden, not Alexander, who encouraged  
and implanted the widespread and illegal bugging of Americans in an  
operation codenamed Stellar Wind. And Alexander’s fingerprints are not  
on any of the kidnappings, torture or assassinations that have formed  
part of the Bush foreign policy.