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"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited circumstances—cou

by strags 14y ago

"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited circumstances—could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks. “We discussed the irony, more than once,” one of his aides said." "Irony" is the wrong word. It's "hypocrisy".

freshhawk 14y ago
Not when you honestly believe in American Exceptionalism
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Countries or terrorist groups rarely justify military action (even if it's cyberwarfare). At best, they explain it.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    On the contrary--they often go to great lengths to justify it. The German invasions of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands were deemed protective occupations, in order to prevent the Allies from invading them. The Gulf War was justified by a UN resolution. You can find some attempt, however feeble, to justify any recent military action.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      That's the point. Each and every military action creates an attempt to justify it. It usually fails at both justifying it and explaining the actual reasons behind it.
- waqf 14y ago
  On the contrary, hypocrisy is all about believing that "when I do it it's not wrong". Decrying something when you are ashamed that you secretly do it yourself is not hypocrisy, because it doesn't involve a double standard.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  In a 2009 interview, Obama said, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." That is pretty mild support for American Exceptionalism, as defined by the GOP.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Isn't exceptionalism just a code word for hypocrisy?
  - marshray 14y ago
    Perhaps, but it's still useful as a distinct term because it refers to the body of argument used to justify it.
baddox 14y ago
Hypocrisy is deliberately lying about your values. This may be that, but it may also just be a compromising of values. An alcoholic saying that alcohol abuse is bad isn't hypocrisy is the alcoholic truly believes it.
jbooth 14y ago
Welcome to politics. Syria, currently best known for massacring their own citizens, chaired the UN human rights council a few years ago. International politics is always going to consist of covert actions on one hand coupled with righteous moral statements on the other. See, for example, the USSR talking about protecting the eastern bloc from western imperialist exploitation by, well, dominating and exploiting their countries. Meanwhile, I'm sure we'll hear from Republicans that this is a case of Obama's flawed moral leadership, in between insisting that we bomb Iran immediately. At the end of the day, it's about results. The people who released stuxnet presumably think it makes a war less likely by postponing a confrontation with a nuclear Iran. They might be wrong but they were doing what they thought would lead to the best outcome.
- cdi 14y ago
  >exploiting their countries. any evidence for that? In my understanding the USSR was dominating eastern bloc countries, hindering their democratic economic development by enforcing archaic hierarchical undemocratic regime. Exploiting? I haven't heard about that. Countries were pretty autonomous in all things unrelated to ideology/politics.
  - marshray 14y ago
    I think dominating a country militarily and installing puppet governments and banning their religion and forcing their children to learn your native language is bad enough. If nothing else, the Eastern Bloc was being exploited for the purpose of providing a land buffer zone against military invasion. I.e., the risk of being a front line battlefield was being exported. If you're looking for a shipping manifest for raw materials from an EB country to the USSR at prices below free market rates I imagine you could find that too. But to me that's not the primary point.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    I find it disturbing that so many people are so very willing to ignore or defend the atrocities of communism in the 20th century. Just after the end of WWII the Soviets adopted a "plunder" policy with regard to occupied Eastern European countries. Forcing them to produce huge quantities of raw materials and industrial goods to be used within the USSR, extracting as much wealth from the beleaguered post-war economies as the US and allies pumped into Western Europe with the Marshall plan. They also set up "state owned" Eastern Block companies such that the USSR maintained majority ownership (up through the mid-1950s). This pattern continued through the 1950s as the Soviets retained near direct control over Eastern Bloc economies and morphed in the 1960s into COMECON which merely provided political cover for the same sort of plunder policies up until industrial production in Eastern Europe started to become significant in the 1970s. In October of 1956 the Hungarian people rose up and threw off their violent totalitarian government. One day later Soviet tanks were in the country's capital (in direct violation of the terms of the Warsaw Pact), within the next month 2500 Hungarians were killed and ten times as many were arrested, hundreds of which were deported to gulags in siberia or executed. In January of 1968 Czechoslovakia elected a reformist government, which instituted many liberalizing reforms. In August Soviet tanks and forces from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations invaded, toppled the government, and killed any Czechs or Slovaks who stood in their way (though few were foolhardy enough to throw themselves against an army of 2,000 tanks and 200,000 soldiers). The formalization of Eastern Bloc countries as effective satellite states of the USSR came about with the codification of the Brezhnev Doctrine in the 1960s, though it only legalized the status quo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_economies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_economies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_revolution_of_1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_revolution_of_1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine
phaus 14y ago
At one point special warfare was also considered taboo, now it is the U.S.'s bread and butter. Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. When it comes to international conflict, right and wrong are often subjective. Of course someone who is hostile towards the west is going to feel justified about his actions. If he didn't feel justified, he wouldn't maintain those beliefs. Unfortunately for him, feeling justified doesn't make you correct. While many countries dislike some of the United States' actions (often rightfully), almost the entire world hates everything about violent extremists. If the President thinks that a cyber-attack will prevent a war, (that would be far more costly to both sides than the ones we are already in) it would be immoral for him not to take action. I don't like many of the things that Obama does, (or any politician) but he strikes me as a person who really does want to do the right thing and prevent the needless loss of life.
- marshray 14y ago
  > Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. Out of curiosity, what makes you say this?
  - phaus 14y ago
    If there's one good example that our military underestimated the importance of cyber-security until recently, it is that the U.S. Army Cyber Command was just established in 2009. Before this happened, there was definitely work being done by the Army in this field, but it wasn't the large-scale, coordinated effort that such an important threat demands. In the years leading up to the creation of the Cyber Command, there were many field grade officers who expressed the need for such a unit. These officers suggested that the military needed some sort of presence in cyberspace, mostly to ensure the safety of U.S. networks and partly to enable us to effectively respond to cyber-attacks around the world. This article has a lot of good information about CYBERCOM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command
afterburner 14y ago
I don't think irony and hypocrisy need to enter into it; really there is just a concern of escalation, or even a sort of "arms race" (although it would differ from a real arms race in many key respects).
theorique 14y ago
"Hypocrisy" is the wrong word. It's "(geo)politics". Every nation does it.
espeed 14y ago
It's what Chomsky calls "asserting the opposite," a psychological method to counter opposition. Essentially if "you assert opposite, it eliminates mountains of evidence" toward your own actions.
dkarl 14y ago
It isn't necessarily hypocrisy. It makes sense for them to be leery of acting without first talking about the limits they believe should be applied to cyberwarfare. A single act may be consistent with many different interpretations, and the United States could easily be blamed if one of their allies committed some heinous act and justified it using a doctrine they extrapolated from Stuxnet and other acts condoned or committed by the United States. As an analogous example, parents, knowing that many people think in crude categories such as "drugs" and "illegal," would not simply pot in front of their children without explanation. They would not want to discover later that their kids were doing meth or shoplifting and hear, "What are you angry about? You smoked illegal drugs right in front of me. How is this different?" The parents would likely find themselves accused of hypocrisy, by their kids and by others who honestly or disingenuously failed to understand the distinctions the parents drew between smoking pot and doing meth, or smoking pot and shoplifting. I don't know if the United States has an official stance on the acceptable use of cyberwarfare, but the fact that they chose to leak their involvement in Stuxnet rather than openly admit it and justify it suggests that they have no official policy to cite (though it may also be that they don't want to officially acknowledge responsibility for Stuxnet's collateral damage.) If there is no official articulation of policy, we really are setting unpredictable precedents that are likely to implicate us in future disasters.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Also I am not at all sure that terrorists are going to care whether the US says they have used weapons like this. I would suggest that "we are worried about cybersecurity" is a much larger green light than "we are using cyberweapons." I am not aware of the last time a terrorist attacked us with an F-15 or a B-2..... The much larger issue though is that by releasing Stuxnet, the government had to release tools that terrorists could use into the wild. These can then be reverse compiled, hacked, and turned against us. That's bad news. It would be like leaving behind a large number of Predators or something in terrorist hands. Actually it is worse than that. With actual airplanes, you have maintenance issues and costs, and the fact is that you have limited quantity and little ability to produce more. With Stuxnet, these limits are not there.
eswangren 14y ago
Ok, fine, it's hypocritical. There are worse things in the world than hypocrisy. I smoke cigarettes, yet I would advise others not to. I may be a hypocrit, but I'm not wrong. The two are not mutually exclusive.
ucee054 14y ago
BlackAdder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCx-xiz1F0#t=9m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCx-xiz1F0#t=9m28s

by strags 14y ago

freshhawk 14y ago

Not when you honestly believe in American Exceptionalism

rbanffy 14y ago
Countries or terrorist groups rarely justify military action (even if it's cyberwarfare). At best, they explain it.
- philwelch 14y ago
  On the contrary--they often go to great lengths to justify it. The German invasions of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands were deemed protective occupations, in order to prevent the Allies from invading them. The Gulf War was justified by a UN resolution. You can find some attempt, however feeble, to justify any recent military action.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    That's the point. Each and every military action creates an attempt to justify it. It usually fails at both justifying it and explaining the actual reasons behind it.
waqf 14y ago
On the contrary, hypocrisy is all about believing that "when I do it it's not wrong". Decrying something when you are ashamed that you secretly do it yourself is not hypocrisy, because it doesn't involve a double standard.
cpeterso 14y ago
In a 2009 interview, Obama said, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." That is pretty mild support for American Exceptionalism, as defined by the GOP.
MartinCron 14y ago
Isn't exceptionalism just a code word for hypocrisy?
- marshray 14y ago
  Perhaps, but it's still useful as a distinct term because it refers to the body of argument used to justify it.

baddox 14y ago

Hypocrisy is deliberately lying about your values. This may be that, but it may also just be a compromising of values. An alcoholic saying that alcohol abuse is bad isn't hypocrisy is the alcoholic truly believes it.

jbooth 14y ago

Welcome to politics. Syria, currently best known for massacring their own citizens, chaired the UN human rights council a few years ago. International politics is always going to consist of covert actions on one hand coupled with righteous moral statements on the other. See, for example, the USSR talking about protecting the eastern bloc from western imperialist exploitation by, well, dominating and exploiting their countries. Meanwhile, I'm sure we'll hear from Republicans that this is a case of Obama's flawed moral leadership, in between insisting that we bomb Iran immediately. At the end of the day, it's about results. The people who released stuxnet presumably think it makes a war less likely by postponing a confrontation with a nuclear Iran. They might be wrong but they were doing what they thought would lead to the best outcome.

cdi 14y ago
>exploiting their countries. any evidence for that? In my understanding the USSR was dominating eastern bloc countries, hindering their democratic economic development by enforcing archaic hierarchical undemocratic regime. Exploiting? I haven't heard about that. Countries were pretty autonomous in all things unrelated to ideology/politics.
- marshray 14y ago
  I think dominating a country militarily and installing puppet governments and banning their religion and forcing their children to learn your native language is bad enough. If nothing else, the Eastern Bloc was being exploited for the purpose of providing a land buffer zone against military invasion. I.e., the risk of being a front line battlefield was being exported. If you're looking for a shipping manifest for raw materials from an EB country to the USSR at prices below free market rates I imagine you could find that too. But to me that's not the primary point.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I find it disturbing that so many people are so very willing to ignore or defend the atrocities of communism in the 20th century. Just after the end of WWII the Soviets adopted a "plunder" policy with regard to occupied Eastern European countries. Forcing them to produce huge quantities of raw materials and industrial goods to be used within the USSR, extracting as much wealth from the beleaguered post-war economies as the US and allies pumped into Western Europe with the Marshall plan. They also set up "state owned" Eastern Block companies such that the USSR maintained majority ownership (up through the mid-1950s). This pattern continued through the 1950s as the Soviets retained near direct control over Eastern Bloc economies and morphed in the 1960s into COMECON which merely provided political cover for the same sort of plunder policies up until industrial production in Eastern Europe started to become significant in the 1970s. In October of 1956 the Hungarian people rose up and threw off their violent totalitarian government. One day later Soviet tanks were in the country's capital (in direct violation of the terms of the Warsaw Pact), within the next month 2500 Hungarians were killed and ten times as many were arrested, hundreds of which were deported to gulags in siberia or executed. In January of 1968 Czechoslovakia elected a reformist government, which instituted many liberalizing reforms. In August Soviet tanks and forces from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations invaded, toppled the government, and killed any Czechs or Slovaks who stood in their way (though few were foolhardy enough to throw themselves against an army of 2,000 tanks and 200,000 soldiers). The formalization of Eastern Bloc countries as effective satellite states of the USSR came about with the codification of the Brezhnev Doctrine in the 1960s, though it only legalized the status quo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_economies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_economies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_revolution_of_1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_revolution_of_1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine

phaus 14y ago

At one point special warfare was also considered taboo, now it is the U.S.'s bread and butter. Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. When it comes to international conflict, right and wrong are often subjective. Of course someone who is hostile towards the west is going to feel justified about his actions. If he didn't feel justified, he wouldn't maintain those beliefs. Unfortunately for him, feeling justified doesn't make you correct. While many countries dislike some of the United States' actions (often rightfully), almost the entire world hates everything about violent extremists. If the President thinks that a cyber-attack will prevent a war, (that would be far more costly to both sides than the ones we are already in) it would be immoral for him not to take action. I don't like many of the things that Obama does, (or any politician) but he strikes me as a person who really does want to do the right thing and prevent the needless loss of life.

marshray 14y ago
> Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. Out of curiosity, what makes you say this?
- phaus 14y ago
  If there's one good example that our military underestimated the importance of cyber-security until recently, it is that the U.S. Army Cyber Command was just established in 2009. Before this happened, there was definitely work being done by the Army in this field, but it wasn't the large-scale, coordinated effort that such an important threat demands. In the years leading up to the creation of the Cyber Command, there were many field grade officers who expressed the need for such a unit. These officers suggested that the military needed some sort of presence in cyberspace, mostly to ensure the safety of U.S. networks and partly to enable us to effectively respond to cyber-attacks around the world. This article has a lot of good information about CYBERCOM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command

afterburner 14y ago

I don't think irony and hypocrisy need to enter into it; really there is just a concern of escalation, or even a sort of "arms race" (although it would differ from a real arms race in many key respects).

theorique 14y ago

"Hypocrisy" is the wrong word. It's "(geo)politics". Every nation does it.

espeed 14y ago

It's what Chomsky calls "asserting the opposite," a psychological method to counter opposition. Essentially if "you assert opposite, it eliminates mountains of evidence" toward your own actions.

dkarl 14y ago

It isn't necessarily hypocrisy. It makes sense for them to be leery of acting without first talking about the limits they believe should be applied to cyberwarfare. A single act may be consistent with many different interpretations, and the United States could easily be blamed if one of their allies committed some heinous act and justified it using a doctrine they extrapolated from Stuxnet and other acts condoned or committed by the United States. As an analogous example, parents, knowing that many people think in crude categories such as "drugs" and "illegal," would not simply pot in front of their children without explanation. They would not want to discover later that their kids were doing meth or shoplifting and hear, "What are you angry about? You smoked illegal drugs right in front of me. How is this different?" The parents would likely find themselves accused of hypocrisy, by their kids and by others who honestly or disingenuously failed to understand the distinctions the parents drew between smoking pot and doing meth, or smoking pot and shoplifting. I don't know if the United States has an official stance on the acceptable use of cyberwarfare, but the fact that they chose to leak their involvement in Stuxnet rather than openly admit it and justify it suggests that they have no official policy to cite (though it may also be that they don't want to officially acknowledge responsibility for Stuxnet's collateral damage.) If there is no official articulation of policy, we really are setting unpredictable precedents that are likely to implicate us in future disasters.

einhverfr 14y ago
Also I am not at all sure that terrorists are going to care whether the US says they have used weapons like this. I would suggest that "we are worried about cybersecurity" is a much larger green light than "we are using cyberweapons." I am not aware of the last time a terrorist attacked us with an F-15 or a B-2..... The much larger issue though is that by releasing Stuxnet, the government had to release tools that terrorists could use into the wild. These can then be reverse compiled, hacked, and turned against us. That's bad news. It would be like leaving behind a large number of Predators or something in terrorist hands. Actually it is worse than that. With actual airplanes, you have maintenance issues and costs, and the fact is that you have limited quantity and little ability to produce more. With Stuxnet, these limits are not there.

eswangren 14y ago

Ok, fine, it's hypocritical. There are worse things in the world than hypocrisy. I smoke cigarettes, yet I would advise others not to. I may be a hypocrit, but I'm not wrong. The two are not mutually exclusive.

ucee054 14y ago

BlackAdder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCx-xiz1F0#t=9m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCx-xiz1F0#t=9m28s