May 16, 2017 - Steve Pieczenik
06:39
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, this is Dr. Steve Pachanek, and this is Steve Talks. and this is Steve Talks. | |
| and Mrs. | |
| America. | |
| This is Dr. | |
| Steve Pechenek. | |
| I would like to address the issue of cyber attack that happened on Friday. | |
| My suspicion is, I'm talking now to you on Sunday, that tomorrow, on Monday, you will have a second follow-up attack. | |
| The reason for that is that the attack was basically done by a worm, which means it embeds into the software of multiple, multiple outlets. | |
| About 45,000 targets were hit, perhaps over 100 countries. | |
| Britain's healthcare system was affected. | |
| Germany's railroad system was affected. | |
| FedEx was affected. | |
| Russia's systems were affected. | |
| So basically what happened is the malware, which is called WannaCry, sounds a little silly, but that's what it is. | |
| WannaCry malware was embedded in In all of the computers around the world and those that particularly had the Microsoft software. | |
| Now, what does this really mean? | |
| Who did it? | |
| I'm not clear. | |
| It could be any one of the top five countries. | |
| The United States is number one in cyber capacity. | |
| China is number two. | |
| Russia is number three. | |
| Israel is number four. | |
| The United Kingdom is number five. | |
| But on that list of hackers, which is a little bit different, you have Hungary, you have Bulgaria, you have an unusual country, and that is Turkey. | |
| That comes right behind the United States, China, and Turkey is number three in the number of hackers that they have that can affect the world. | |
| So this is all speculation. | |
| What is important and is not a speculation is that this is our Pearl Harbor for cyber warfare. | |
| I wrote about this concern over 20 years ago when I created the NetForce series, or we put it under the Tom Clancy franchise NetForce series in the book version and in the television four-hour miniseries. | |
| What I was concerned about was the fact that the nation-state and the world institutions were no longer viable in the 21st century when one and zero constitutes the reality of cyber nations, cyber terrorism, and cyber command. | |
| What I'm really concerned about is that the United States for the past 20 to 30 years has been fighting wars that are of no value to our country, which have nothing to do with national security, which has cost us trillions and trillions of dollars. | |
| And it's forced our soldiers all over the world into 222 countries on a 760 bases, when in fact the major, major concern for the 21st century is not ISIS, it's not Al-Qaeda, it's not North Korea, it's not China, it's not Russia, and it's not our internal dissidents. | |
| It happens to be cyber warfare. | |
| When we had a cyber command, which was integrated with the National Security Agency, we were in the beginning of cyber warfare. | |
| And seven years ago, the Israelis in the United States created a stop-net virus, a worm, S-T-U-X-N-E-T. That was the beginning of the outbreak of what we would call cyber warfare. | |
| However, our intelligence organization has repeatedly tried to explain to the American public and to our political leaders that we need to have an open discussion with regard to what cyber warfare is and is not, very much along the lines that we had concerning nuclear warfare and strategic systems during the Cold War. | |
| Well, we need to have that now. | |
| And we need to reorient our 16 or 17 intelligence units into a system which is unified, does not have any stovepipes, meaning that every system has its own complete cyber command system without having any integration. | |
| The DNI, Director of National Intelligence, has to be eliminated. | |
| We don't need it. | |
| It's an outgrowth of 9-11. | |
| It's antiquated. | |
| Sixteen different intelligence units are antiquated. | |
| What we need is the continuation or the beginning of a complete Cyber Command unit, which is independent of any other unit. | |
| What does that mean? | |
| That means in the White House, as a cabinet officer and a senior cabinet officer, probably more important than the Secretary of Defense would be the head of Cyber Command. | |
| There was such a gentleman whom I've worked with and I respect and his name is General Keith Alexander. | |
| He was head of the NSA and at the same time Cyber Command. | |
| At that time we had a capability of monitoring and exporting all kinds of malware and detecting malware. | |
| Now, we are losing that capability because the government, although it's put in trillions of dollars into this issue, has not really been up to par with the private companies that we have and that exist all over the world. | |
| The Israelis refuse to have an integrated system, even though they have a very efficient unit in the IDF called 8100. | |
| And the reason for that is because every unit of the Israeli military wants to have an independent cyber control. | |
| I understand that. | |
| But for the United States, we can't afford to have independent units when we can't coordinate all 16 of these units. | |
| Again, I warn the American public and our leaders, both the military and political leaders and the intelligence leaders, unify, strip away what we no longer need in the 21st century, and let's address ourselves to cyber warfare, cyber terrorism, and cyber nation. | |
| As a science fiction writer said, 15 years ago, I thought we were 15 years behind Cyber Command. | |
| Today, I realize we're 20 years behind Cyber Command, and Cyber Command has been extant. |
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