U.S. ILL PREPARED FOR CYBER WARFARE

Cyber warfare expert Richard Clarke accuses Obama administration of “almost criminal negligence”

The next great war may not be fought by soldiers on the traditional battlefield. It will likely be fought by geeks sitting behind computers. It’s called cyber warfare. Experts believe that in the near future wars can be won and lost without firing a shot. An all-out cyber attack, it is predicted, can cripple a nation’s power grid, infrastructure and military capabilities, thereby bringing it to its knees.

On Sunday’s ABC This Week With George Stephanopoulos the subject of cyber warfare came up. Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism and advisor to four presidents, had some harsh things to say about the Obama administration, accusing it of “almost criminal negligence,”

Clarke said that the networks we rely on as a country to protect us against cyber warfare are very fragile and that instead of 50 or 60 government agencies being responsible for cyber security, we need to create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.

My suggestion is to do away with the worthless Department of Homeland Security and replace it with a Department of Cyber Security.

Here is a transcript of the interview with Richard Clarke:

STEPHANOPOULOS:Let's get more on this from cyber terror expert, Richard Clarke, key adviser to four presidents.

Welcome back, Richard.

We heard how worried about this OPM hack the FBI director was. You served four presidents, so your background likely looked at, as well.

Try to give a sense of how serious this breach was and what can be done with this information.

RICHARD CLARKE, CHAIRMAN & CEO, GOOD HARBOR RISK MANAGEMENT: Well, it's very serious because the -- the form that I had to shell out went on for almost 100 pages -- everything about my background. And they have that for 21 million Americans, date of birth, Social Security number, foreign contacts, foreign trips, any problems you've ever had medically or psychologically, any addiction problems you ever had.

They can use this information to blackmail people. They can use it to steal identities.

But, George, I don't blame the Chinese. This is what intelligence agencies do. This is what we, the United States, do. We steal this sort of information.

I blame the Obama administration for taking this issue not seriously enough.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But...

CLARKE: This is almost criminal negligence.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Criminal negligence, those are strong words, Richard. We just saw the incoming chair of the Joint Chiefs say that all options are on the table.

If there has been criminal negligence, what's the most important thing in the -- that needs to be done right now that's not being done?

CLARKE: We need to take the job of cyber security away from 50 or 60 small government agencies like OPM that clearly can't handle it and create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Also, you said this week, you know, we saw these glitches hit the same day -- the New York Stock Exchange, United Airlines, "The Wall Street Journal" Web page. Computer software problems blamed. Every official who came out said no, no, no, there's not -- this is not an act of cyber war.

But you sounded a note of skepticism.

CLARKE: Well, they all said it wasn't cyber war within hours of it happening. And to find out, it actually takes weeks of forensic activity to go through the log files and do the -- the good, detailed forensics.

We know two things. Coincidences do happen in the world a lot. But we also know that in cyber war, people do trial runs. And they try to make those trial runs look like something other than what they are. They try to make them look like normal computer failure.

Either way, what it proves is that the networks that we rely on as a country are very fragile. And if this happens without anybody doing malicious activity, think of what could happen if someone did to malicious activity.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is some point. Scary stuff.

OK, Richard Clarke, thanks very much.

In short, the U.S. is ill prepared against an all-out cyber attack. If our government doesn’t get its act together, in a war with China or Russia, we could conceivably be defeated without a shot being fired.

Obama may be gloating over the nuclear arms deal just reached with Iran, but in the not too distant future nuclear weapons could well be neutralized by cyber warfare.