USA: IT at the Service of Its Cyberwar

Havana, Mar 22. -New U.S. information and communications technology (ICT) at the service of its cyberwar was the subject of the Monday night Cuban television series "Las razones de Cuba" (Cuba´s Reasons).

Since the late 1990s, the United States began to develop studies on how to use the Internet and computers for warfare, said Carlos del Porto, an expert with the Computerization Office of the Cuban Ministry of Informatics and Communication.

Cyberwar is a concept in which information tools are used against the servers that control, for example, the aircrafts at an air base.

This was seen in Iraq during the first Persian Gulf War of 1990 and 1991, when printers purchased by the Iraqi government were subjected to a malicious program.

It was also revealed that a few days before George W. Bush´s inauguration in 2001, representatives of U.S. spy agencies such as CIA Director George Tenet stated that Cuba represented an asymmetric threat for U.S. national security.

It was claimed that Cuba had the capacity to unleash cyber attacks, but in June 1995, the U.S. National Defense University graduated its first 16 experts in information warfare. They were trained to use the benefits of communication technology as a war scenario.

The footage broadcast on the Monday night program showed how they were preparing new pretexts and spaces of confrontation to slander the Cuban Revolution and facilitate eventual military aggression against the island.

In 2009, this irregular warfare doctrine became official and the Pentagon´s Cyber Command was created, by approval of U.S. President Barack Obama.

That especial force received a budget of almost 90 billion USD in 2010. Its objective is to direct operations and defend specific information networks of the Pentagon, and to be ready to direct any kind of military operation in cyberspace in all domains. (Prensa Latina)