Security News > 2011 > February > Cyberwar Issues Likely to Be Addressed Only After a Catastrophe
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/cyberwar-issues-likely-to-be-addressed-only-after-a-catastrophe/ By Kim Zetter Threat Level Wired.com February 17, 2011 When it comes to developing cyberwarfare policy, the United States will likely wait for a catastrophic event and then overreact, rather than plan ahead, said former intelligence chief Mike McConnell at the RSA Conference on Wednesday. McConnell was pessimistic that Congress and the public would get its act together in time to debate and sort out all the questions that need to be answered about what constitutes cyberwar and how the government and private sector should respond when faced with incidents that fit the definition. McConnell, former director of national intelligence and former director of the National Security Agency, was speaking on a panel that included former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Bruce Schneier chief technology security officer at BT, and James Lewis, director and senior fellow of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. When it comes to defining cyberwar, Chertoff and McConnell say espionage and information theft donât qualify, but destruction of data or systems do. Designating the latter as an act of war, however, would still depend on the scale and genesis of the attack. [...]