HUAN M.

PHAM
UWRT1102
Professor Padgett
May 8th, 2015

One step ahead of the opponents in Cyber Warfare

For as long as we can remember, war and fights broke out and happened physically.
Every war since the first recorded was about killing or destroying properties physically.
However, a new battle field was created. This battle is not physical anymore, in fact, it is a Cyber
Warfare. This battle field is a result of increased usage and popularity of technologies in todays
world. Cyber Warfare or Cyber Terror is defined as the intimidation of civilian enterprise
through the use of high technology to bring about political, religious, or ideological aims, actions
that result in disabling or deleting critical infrastructure data or information by Dr. Tafoya, a
retired Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent. Cyber Warfare is relied entirely on
technologies and Cyber officers of the United States Armed Forces. It widely varies from
hacking private systems to stealing top military secret of a nation through internet. This type of
warfare doesnt sound or look dangerous at all, yet, it is a very important battle field that the
United States Department of Defense (DoD) need to pay a great deal of attention to. This battle
field can and will determine the fate of a nation if a war actually break out. Cyber Warfare will
have a huge impact on the decision of losing or winning a war.

The United States government and Department of Defense had been very successful in
protecting their servers from being attack. However, some international hackers still find a way
to steal information from our government and industrials. Since the technologies were born,
there have been many cyber wars fought. There are many nations tried, but most unsuccessful, to
attack the great nation of United States. Such as China, Iran, Russia, former Soviet and many
more
The past few years, Cyber Warfare and Cyber Terror had become one of the greatest
concerns among the international community of United Nations (UN) along with terrorism and
pirates issues. Cyber warfare are mostly launched by hackers privately or under the instruction of
their respected militarys instructions. They hacked and sent worms or computer viruses,
spywares to others to steal information, documents and to vandalize the page. Beside these
common cyber terror acts, there are many more ways that people use to terrorize the international
community. Currently, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a popular terrorist group, launched
their social media campaigns to make themselves even more popular and to recruit citizens of
various nation to join their fighting force. This is considered as an act of cyber terrorism and
needed to be stop. This incident was studied by the Brookings Institution. The study shows that
between September of 2014 and December of the same year, at least forty six thousand Twitter
accounts were active to serve the purpose of spreading the news and recruiting fighters for
Islamic States of Iraq and Syria terrorist group. They took advantage of the brand new cyber
warfare in order to grow to become much more powerful. The lack of understanding about
Islamic States of Iraq and Syrias online strategy has caused the lack of necessary reactions from
the governments and it has helped their social media campaign succeed. The government has to

be much stricter in controlling and cooperate with social media company in retaining the spread
of terrorism.
In the recent decades, the Chinese and Russian hackers have been a very large threat to
the United States Department of Defense. The Chinese are widely known for hacking then
copying the blue prints of large nations. From these stolen documents, they create something
similar and claim it to be their own. There have been many articles and newspaper mentioned
about this problem. For instance, Fortune, a well know web- article, had reported that the
Chinese installed spyware and stole documents of tested products from an unnamed biomedical
company. This problem was noticed when the American biomedical company took five long
years to create and test a product before put it up for sale in the market. In the other side of the
planet, the Chinese competitor company have somehow put up for sale in the market the same
exact product within eighteen months of self- created and tested. This happened with every
industry in America. It varies from the smallest and simplest objects as head phones to the big,
expensive and top secret projects of the United States Air Force like F-35 Lightning II and F-22
Raptor and dozens of others. The United States government and Department of Defense need to
work together to find a solution for this issue. They need to accept that Cyber Warfare is a new
battle field front that they need to be much concern about. They need to recruit more Cyber
military officers and top civilian hackers if necessary in order to stay ahead of the opponents,
China and Russia
Currently, the United States government has roughly 5400 Cyberspace operation officers,
civilian, and contracted privates (white and black hat hackers). This number seems like a lot but
it is actually nowhere near enough to establish the security to prevent attacks from the enemies in
this new battle frontline. The Department of Defense needs to create more jobs and opportunity

in cyberspace related. They need to host more competition to find more talents to fill up the front
lines in this new battle field. One of the problem causing short of talents and man power in the
government is that they did not offer enough appealing deals to recruit and keep the talents in
this field. A lot of the talents that the United States Armed Forces got leave the military as soon
as their contract expires to work in the civilian world due to higher pay, benefits and bonuses.
As long there are technologies, the cyber warfare will still go on. This warfare is a very
dangerous battle field. For example, China stole top secret information and weapons, aircrafts,
ships designs from United States, in particular, will give them a great access to advanced
weaponries without spending a dime in order to test it because the products designs are often
already been tested for years and ready to commission into service. Also, it will allow the
Chinese to accelerate the development of their own technologies and that will weaken our
government and armed forces in future conflicts. Even though, there are so many legitimate
proofs that the Chinese government and private hackers had been attacking and steal top secret
from the United States. Yet, China keep on going with the denial of guilt. The U. S officials have
not make this a big deal to confront them. The government have to start setting the standard in
cutting off supplies to any country that try to doing anything that will do harm for the United
States. We dont have to use deadly forces against these nation, but will do if necessary. A
peaceful response like this will not make is appears as a weak nation, but a non- response one
will.
Trillions of dollars had been paid out in order to find and create new effective forces to
protect United States from international Cyber Terror. Yet, it is at minimum effective. We have
been spending so much money to do close to almost nothing about the cyber warfare to ensure
our nation secret be kept. However, these past few years had turned the table for our

government. Recently, a Russian cyber security firm had just confirmed that the United States
Department of Defense has found a way to successfully embed surveillance and sabotage tools in
computers and network of Iran, Russia, Pakistan and China. This is the first step in preventing
any future cyber terror from foreign nations.
The United States government and armed forces policies and ways of defending our
country against Cyber Warfare have been somewhat effective. The only thing that holding us
back is that there are not enough man power in the work forces. Most of the military talented
cyber officers have discharged to work in the civilian work force for better pay. The government
need to consider of ways to lure in and keep these talented officers working to protect us from
Cyber Terror. Such as, they can give out more bonuses and benefits in this field of work. These
awards will, for sure, get the cyberspace operations size up and definitely protect us much better.
The United States Department of Defense have to recruit more young cyberspace officers and
civilian hackers in order to win this new type of warfare.

Cited page

Tafoya, William. "Cyber Terror." FBI. 10 Nov. 2011. Web. 9 May 2015.
<http://leb.fbi.gov/2011/november/cyber-terror>.
Summers, DJ. "Fighting in the Cyber trenches." Fortune Fighting in the Cybertrenches Comments. 13
Oct. 2014. Web. 9 May 2015.
Walker, Lauren. "Inside the ISIS Social Media Campaign." 6 Mar. 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.
<http://www.newsweek.com/inside-isis-social-media-campaign-312062>.
Nakashima, Ellen. "Confidential Report Lists U.S. Weapons System Designs Compromised by Chinese
Cyberspies." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 27 May 2013. Web. 9 May 2015.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/confidential-report-lists-us-weaponssystem-designs-compromised-by-chinese-cyberspies/2013/05/27/a42c3e1c-c2dd-11e2-8c3b0b5e9247e8ca_story.html> .
Pawlyk, Oriana. "Cyber: The Safest Job in the Air Force?" Air Force Times, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 May
2015. <http://archive.airforcetimes.com/article/20140220/CAREERS/302200015/Cyber-safestjob-Air-Force->.