Saturday, July 11, 2009

Did you know that...

…over the Fourth of July weekend, North Korea launched a “cyber attack” against U.S. government computer networks, and according to the AP it was “powerful” and “overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean agencies for days.”

The targets included the White House, Pentagon, National Security Agency, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security. We have learned that private networks were also targeted, including the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and The Washington Post.

The targeted networks were affected to varying degrees, and it is not clear to me which ones fared better and which ones fared worse. However, reading between the lines tells me that the government’s networks were less successful at fighting off the attack than the private ones.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what this means. It is known that the North Koreans are developing nuclear weapons, and some believe they already have them. They have said they will use nuclear weapons against other nations, and explicitly said the U.S. is one of those nations. The only responsible conclusion for us to draw from their cyber attack is that they are trying to learn how to disable our ability to detect and respond to a military attack.

This is an enormous and undeniable threat to our national security that should be reported and talked abut constantly, so that people will be aware of it and know who our enemies are. But the MSM has downplayed it by continuing to devote much more ink and air time to Michael Jackson, even though his death happenned more than a week earlier.

And on a similar note, did you know that the Government Accountability Office just reported that teams of investigators testing security at federal buildings were able to carry explosives into multiple sites without being detected?

It is in this environment that our president and ruling party are cutting military spending even as they raise spending on everything else. Doesn’t that make you feel good?

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