This story has been picked up and is receiving wide MSM coverage. Complements this and this.
Turning Tide: Lawmakers Look to Pentagon for Budget Cuts
Then there’s the same ol’, same ol’ expansion, in this case of “cybersecurity.” I have a feeling that even though the tide may indeed be turning, we’re going to have to be highly aware for a very long time of the enormous momentum that drives the forces of expanding aggression. Not just the banksters and the CEOs are benefitting from war and the threat of war, but millions of people’s jobs depend on it, in one way or another. Transformation takes time.
Pentagon’s new massive expansion of ‘cyber-security’ unit is about everything except defense
Cyber-threats are the new pretext to justify expansion of power and profit for the public-private National Security State
January 28, 2012
by Glenn Greenwald
As the US government depicts the Defense Department as shrinking due to budgetary constraints, the Washington Post this morning announces “a major expansion of [the Pentagon’s] cybersecurity force over the next several years, increasing its size more than fivefold.” Specifically, saysthe New York Times this morning, “the expansion would increase the Defense Department’s Cyber Command by more than 4,000 people, up from the current 900.” The Post describes this expansion as “part of an effort to turn an organization that has focused largely on defensive measures into the equivalent of an Internet-era fighting force.” This Cyber Command Unit operates under the command of Gen. Keith Alexander, who also happens to be the head of the National Security Agency, the highly secretive government network that spies on the communications of foreign nationals – and American citizens.
The Pentagon’s rhetorical justification for this expansion is deeply misleading. Beyond that, these activities pose a wide array of serious threats to internet freedom, privacy, and international law that, as usual, will be conducted with full-scale secrecy and with little to no oversight and accountability. And, as always, there is a small army of private-sector corporations who will benefit most from this expansion.
Disguising aggression as “defense”
Let’s begin with the way this so-called “cyber-security” expansion has been marketed. It is part of a sustained campaign which, quite typically, relies on blatant fear-mongering.
