With all the leaks lately, the latest “top-secret” information reported is one more droplet in a flood. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, a list of targets including China, was released by the Guardian hours before President Obama’s conference with President Xi Jinping.
Though talks went well according to a href= http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/barack-obama-xi-jinping-dreams-fathers-205224120.html>TheTicket.com, with the men building on their similar family lives, it was no doubt unofficially strained. The list essentially indicates that Obama is willing to take the offensive on the lines of the cyber war and attack preemptively.
There have been other indicators of Obama’s new stance, writes the a href= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/obama-cyber-memo_n_3404916.html>HuffingtonPost.com. In one incident, Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the Pentagon's Cyber Command, told Congress earlier this year that he plans to create “an offensive team” of expert cyberattackers. As in Obama’s Directive 20, Alexander indicated that the team would target foreign countries that use destructive computer code on United States.
a href= http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/obamas-cyberwar-target-list-china-xi/66022/>TheAtlanticWire.com and others are calling cyberwarfare “all-but-officially the new Cold War,” although “common sense” might be another good moniker. The report shows that attacks would be carefully governmentally restrained.
Yet in light of the recent news of the NSA’s PRSIM program, even Americans will probably be leery of the President’s list, which reportedly includes targets within the U.S. See, for example, the side-by-side comparison image below.
The directive is available at a href= http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/07/obama-cyber-directive-full-text>Guardian.co.uk