A New Kind of Cold War

For Americans, from almost as soon as World War II ended until around the end of the Reagan presidency, America experienced what is now known as the Cold War, a period in which Americans were in fear of nuclear threat from eastern Europe, specifically the former union of the USSR. Americans were fearful of Russia’s socialist and communist policies, as well as the fear that they could strike a nuclear attack; Russians despised Western values and democracy, and feared, too, a nuclear war. Thus, the Cold War, a war without soldiers, but threats of nuclear violence. My parents were born in the 1940s, and grew up during the Cold War, and I was born in time to see the end of the Cold War. However, a new kind of war has begun. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the internet began to boom as a communications vehicle, no longer just for education institutions, but for businesses and private persons. Chat rooms became widely popular, and instant messaging and email because common place.

I have been a federal employee, on and off for the last 25 years and have worked for four different agencies. When September 11, 2001 happened, all Federal Agencies scrambled to put together not only physical, but technological defenses. The federal government learned quickly that of the thousands of IT Specialists they had, none of them had standard knowledge. In any given agency, IT Specialists skills were stovepiped. By stovepiping their knowledge and responsibilities, when critical execution was required, there was no standard knowledge available. As a result, many agencies, specifically the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), began a program in 2002 with final implementation by 2010 that all IT Specialists, regardless of actual job duties, would be minimally qualified in CompTIA Security+. This gives every IT Specialists in the DoD and DHS the minimum knowledge to maintain their agencies critical infrastructure.

This is vitally important because, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been fighting a new type of war, a cyberwar. As a military spouse of an active duty Navy Chief, I have had to move across the country and back, and have worked on several military installations. As such, I have worked with and for military leaders for the past decade. I specifically and clearly remember one Marine Corps brief given where the Base General spoke; at that time, it was 2007, my husband had returned about 18 months before from one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, and we had begun in earnest the fight in Afghanistan. The General said, the United States was currently involved in three wars, the one in Iraq, the one in Afghanistan, and a Cyberwar. He said, if we didn’t believe it, the DoD was daily fending off attacks from the Chinese, and it was getting worse every day. In addition, al Qaeda terrorists had become more advanced and figured out how to hide messages in images and transmit information electronically. But the biggest cyber threat is Asia, and specifically China.

In a congressional report release on October 8, 2012, Chinese firms Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. pose significant threats to U.S. national security, have strong ties to the Chinese government and military and should be avoided by U.S. business for their information technology and telecommunications business.(Clayburn, 2012)

Huawei and ZTE have grown to be leaders in the Chinese market in telecommunications and Huawei is one of the leading providers in China of 4G technology. For the U.S. government, the exponential growth of Huawei to the largest producer of telecommunications components in the world, combined with the fact that “that neither company cooperated sufficiently with the investigation”(Clayburn, 2012) has led the United States government to fear “that the Chinese government could exploit Huawei's presence on U.S. networks to intercept high level communications, gather intelligence, wage cyber war, and shut down or disrupt critical services in times of national emergency.”(Kroft, 2012) China has recently been linked to cyber attacks on the Department of Energy which includes the National Nuclear Security Administration, as well as servers at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.(Gertz, 2013)

As a Department of Defense employee, I believe the threat is credible and reasonable. Spies who have been caught and convicted of espionage against the United States—an alarming number are spying on behalf of China. In today’s information technology age, it’s more than possible for the technology to be advanced enough for components to have embedded code that would permit remote spying and worse, theft of national secrets and the ability to take down the national infrastructure leaving us vulnerable. So, while the United States is founded on a free market system, the national interest trumps the free market; should Congress and the American people be worried, in my opinion, Yes.