To the Supreme Council of the Grand Ayatollahs
Col. Ken Allard (U.S. Army, ret.)


Author: Colonel Kenneth Allard (US ARmy, ret.)

Date Published: 2007-07-04


In this week’s intellectually challenging column, FSM Contributing Editor Col. Ken Allard (U.S. Army, ret.) employs his sophisticated, sardonic wit to deal with an all too realistic scenario involving a potential cyber “blitz” carried out on American electronic networks by Islamic terrorists.

 

To the Supreme Council of the Grand Ayatollahs

 

By Col. Ken Allard (U.S.Army, ret.)

 

 

Great Ones: last week I recounted how, years before Iran’s glorious victory in the First Cyber War of 2007, our intelligence services secretly acquired the software codes critical to the operations of certain American industries. We were especially interested in their banking, financial and communications corporations because here were the keys to the American economic treasure chest. And how many of these keys dangled on so few chains! Insert a secret password or a Trojan horse into the core logic of a single computer server and you might open many doors! Once again, the Almighty used American arrogance to help us!

 

Even when He sent Hurricane Katrina to the American coasts, we wondered how similar devastation might be spread using cyber-war techniques - from a single decadent and complacent American city to their entire heartland. Although seldom so foolish, our silent Russian partners almost gave the game away in late April 2007. When neighboring Estonia rashly removed the bronze statue of a Soviet-era soldier from a public park, their defiance triggered a revealing but unanticipated glimpse into what “cyber-blitz” is all about. The next morning, the Estonians awoke to find their cell phones dead as the outraged Russians launched a “data siege,” quickly overwhelming firewalls and using millions of computer “bots” to paralyze Estonian cellular and banking networks. And all this over a grotesque idol to a long-past war!

 

We smiled because what we had planned for the USA made the Estonian data siege look like a schoolboy soccer scrimmage. In the end, what hit the Americans was not the “electronic Pearl Harbor” their defense experts had often prophesied: it was an Electronic Tsunami. Their electronic defenses proved every bit as porous as their southern borders – even more so because there are no defenses in a well-planned cyber-war.

 

System administrators in the largest cellular companies actually sensed our onslaught: but there was no time to raise the alarm before their networks were taken down by wave after wave of “spam on steroids.” Most Americans knew only that their cell-phones had suddenly failed: but when they picked up their office phones to report the problem, those lines were dead as well. A few quick-thinking citizens withdrew petty cash from their neighborhood banks, which found their ATMs and financial links had inexplicably stopped working.

 

With nervous laughter, infidels all across America confidently reassured each other that nothing was seriously wrong: this was precisely the instant when the power began going off. We had planned this part carefully, understanding the enemy’s electric grid was surprisingly delicate - prone to power outages when no adversaries were anywhere in sight. But knowing the gaps in his linkages and control mechanisms made the actual attack child’s play. For good measure and dramatic effect, we contracted-out some symbolic acts of sabotage to Hamas death squads. I especially liked their truck bombing of the Hoover Dam power generation facility. 

 

With the power going in and out – but mostly out – banks and other businesses struggled mightily. But when they were finally able to activate their computers, they found the bots had been joined by a new species of viruses built to crash data bases as voraciously as flesh-eating bacteria devours the body. Turn off your computers, you lose. Turn on your computers, you lose everything.

 

As America lurched to a halt, their highly sophisticated armed forces slowed too. Ninety percent of the Pentagon’s elaborate communications and logistics systems piggy-backed on civilian networks: when they failed, its armies in the field halted like race-cars running out of gas.

 

Even these steps were not enough, though some Americans wailed loudly for an end to the madness. But when we began manipulating their remotely operated, computer-controlled industrial mechanisms - releasing floodgates, reversing sewage flows and even opening control valves on oil reservoirs – America promptly sued for peace.

 

Great Ones: systematically deprived of both warrior spirit and spiritual values, American culture was also weakened by gluttonous diets of materialism and “infotainment.” Yet now, after the cyber-blitz, these are gone as well! Could the Almighty in His wisdom have made our victory any more complete?

 

Story originally ran in the MySA.com.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Colonel Kenneth Allard (U.S. Army, ret.) is an executive-in-residence at UTSA and the author of "Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War." and San Antonio Express-News. Email: Warheads6@aol.com

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