Is the US Able to Catch Up With The Cyber Threat from China and Russia?

In his introductory remarks at his confirmation hearings,former  Senator Chuck  Hagel emphasized the growing import of Cyber warfare.  The”Stuxnet Worm” temporarily shut down Iran’s forced the temporary shutdown of thousands of centrifuges at a nuclear facility there in 2010.  Iran accused Israel and the United states of complicity in this and has since targeted US financial institutions, utilities and etc. as their superior abilities in this area grow. Huffpost

China has marshalled money and men and dedicated them to cyber warfare.  They may have been behind the recent attacks at the New York Times that focused on research being done on the finances of the Chinese Prime Minister [CNN on air].  But major US government websites have also been on their agenda.

With his support for the troops in the trenches and his grasp of the new technologies and strategies for warfare, Hagel is a superior candidate.  It is his reluctance to commit large numbers of ground troops in theatre that has many worried.

With important cyber attacks on the rise, traditional forms of defense seem to pale when considering that a single worm could close down our missles.  Our Government can no longer afford to be surprised by such attacks but to be prepared for them.  Cutbacks may be the order of the day for our military under a new budget but somewhere we do need to get monies to fund our own cyber force.l  China’s budget for cyber training and defense is growing while our cyber forces appear to be small and static.

So wherefore a US program of defense against cyber attack.? I say defense because that seems to be the operative term from rocket systems to all other forms of weaponry.  Stealth but not pro-active are in the military vocabulary.  OR this all may turn out to be a kind of cyber War of 1812:  neither side will gain much and all sides will break to plant and harvest crops.  Even this may prove overly positive with budgetary cutbacks.  The Pentagon may have to write a grant proposal.  That will put the Pentagon on a par with the rest of us.