https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/world/middleeast/iran-cyberattack-us.html
By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes
The New York Times
September 23, 2019
WASHINGTON -- After spending billions of dollars to assemble the world’s
most potent arsenal of cyberweapons and plant them in networks around the
world, United States Cyber Command -- and the new era of warfighting it
has come to represent -- may face a critical test in the coming weeks.
President Trump is considering a range of options to punish Iran for this
month’s attack on Saudi oil facilities, and has toughened sanctions on
Iran and ordered the deployment of additional troops to the region. But a
second cyberstrike -- after one launched against Iran just three months
ago -- has emerged as the most appealing course of action for Mr. Trump,
who is reluctant to widen the conflict in a region he has said the United
States should leave, according to senior American officials.
But even as the Pentagon considers specific targets -- an attempt to shut
down Iran’s oil fields and refineries has been one of the “proportionate
responses” under review -- a broader debate is taking place inside and
outside the administration over whether a cyberattack alone will be enough
to alter Iran’s calculations, and what kind of retaliation a particularly
damaging cyberstrike might provoke.
“The president talked about our use of those previously, but I’m certainly
not going to forecast what we’ll do as we move forward,” Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” when asked
whether a cyberattack might be an artful, non-escalatory response to this
month’s drone or missile strikes on two of Saudi Arabia’s most important
facilities. “This was Iran true and true, and the United States will
respond in a way that reflects that act of war by this Iranian
revolutionary regime.”
[...]
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