US Cyber Warriors

By Micah Halpern

I've Been Thinking:

In a Senate hearing last week, the US Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff laid out an usually clear and detailed description of what the United States is doing to disrupt and attack ISIS through cyber attacks.

The objective is to disrupt ISIS' chain of communication and prevent them from moving money and even to block them out of access to their money. The US Cyber Command Center, headquartered in Tampa, FL, is spoofing ISIS and disturbing the very heart of the Islamic State.

The US cyber team is trying to isolate ISIS.

According to Ash Carter, the US Secretary of Defense, "The objectives there are to interrupt ISIL command and control, interrupt its ability to move money around, interrupt its ability to tyrannize and control population, interrupt its ability to recruit externally."

And, of course, -- "All of that it does in a cyber-enabled way."

One of the 27 US Cyber teams is dedicated exclusively to ISIS. It is made up of many Arabic speakers and hackers. US Cyber teams are a combination of military and civilian contractors specializing in hacking. Eventually there will be 133 different teams - each team composed of 45-60 people. In the end this division will to have 6,187 people hacking. We can call them cyber warriors.

They are coordinating their cyber attacks with their ground strikes.

Part of the US objective in cyber attacking ISIS is to take away their method of communication - including their hand held devices.

The United States can shut the devices down, but tapping them and tracking them leads to better results. (This is something the US defense leaders did not say in their testimony).

For some time now, ISIS has preferring using handheld phones and texting as opposed to internet.
And of course, the US Cyber team is also attacking recruiters and other ISIS sources in Europe and throughout the rest of the world.

Most dangerous of all is that ISIS has contracted outside freelance hackers to do their bidding. According to the Senate testimony the US Cyber team has been monitoring and dealing with them, too.

Micah@MicahHalpern.com 

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