In Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire, the Soviet Union has a weapon that will destroy the world in case of a U.S. nuclear strike. The deterrent should make war pointless -- but Soviet leaders have not yet told the United States about it. "Having a secret plan as to how we will respond isn't the point I'm trying to get at," King told Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and U.S. Cyber Command chief Adm. Michael S. Rogers. "The deal is, they have to know how we will respond and therefore not attack in the first place." With the United States now vulnerable to overseas attackers who wield digital weapons, lawmakers are pushing military leaders to publicize some capabilities to deter raids on U.S. databases.
There is a precedent for that approach: The Cold War-era doctrine of mutually assured destruction kept the United States and the Soviet Union from blowing each other up. But officials and analysts warn that deterrence in cyberspace -- where networks are broadly vulnerable, attacks can go undetected and the perpetrator might never be known -- is far more complicated. "Deterrence is still a useful concept," said a senior Obama administration official who asked not to be named. "But I don't think we are going to have a theory of cyber deterrence the way we had a theory of nuclear destruction."
The United States has never publicly acknowledged attacking another nation's computer systems. But it is widely believed to have authored (or co-authored with Israel) Stuxnet, the sophisticated computer worm that reportedly compromised Iranian networks, collected information on its nuclear program and destroyed its centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Clapper referred obliquely during the hearing to the nation's abilities. "Of course, we too practice cyber espionage," he told the senators. "We're not bad at it." But officials say the open nature of the Internet leaves the United States especially vulnerable to hackers. In authoritarian countries, where governments have stricter control, breaching networks is more difficult.
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