President Obama Given Authority for Pre-emptive Cyber War: What's America's Cyber Death Star?

After a secret legal review on the offensive use of America's cyberarsenal, President Obama has been given the power to order pre-emtive cyber attacks if the United States believes the aggressor poses a credible threat.

Responding to the new online arms race, the military has been codifying its rules on defense and retaliation against cyberattack. New policies will govern how intelligence agencies can hack foreign computer networks and possibly attack those networks with malicious code if the President approves.

These rules are going to be highly classified, meaning very little transparency over how cyberthreats are assessed and how cyberattacks are approved and carried out, other than the caveat leaked today to The New York Times, which states that the President will have to personally authorize an American cyberattack in most cases.

This comes the week after The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and the Wall Street Journal all reported that they were victims of hacking, which traced back to China. Later in the week, Twitter announced that 250,000 of their users' accounts were exposed by similar sophisticated means. Responsibility for investigating and defending domestic attacks like those will still sit with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

The U.S. military's cyber-capability would only become involved in the case of major attacks, signified somewhat vaguely by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's description of a "cyber 9/11."

President Obama has used cyberweapons only once before, that we know of, when he ordered the Stuxnet virus to be used in an effort to stall Iranian nuclear enrichment activities. That sophisticated virus quietly wreaked havoc on Iran's uranium centrifuges, tampering with the timing mechanisms, resulting in useless outcomes for the Iranians.

Apparently, as far as the U.S. offensive cyber-capability, Stuxnet barely scratches the surface."There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done," an anonymous official told The New York Times.