cyberwar ‘not just for a run around town’ ★ 20.10.11

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, NYT:

But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China, to carry out such offensives of their own, and questioning whether the attack could be mounted on such short notice. …

“We don’t want to be the ones who break the glass on this new kind of warfare,” said James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he specializes in technology and national security. …

“These cybercapabilities are still like the Ferrari that you keep in the garage and only take out for the big race and not just for a run around town, unless nothing else can get you there,” said one Obama administration official briefed on the discussions. … 

Some officials also expressed concern about revealing American technological capabilities to potential enemies for what seemed like a relatively minor security threat to the United States.

Read: Cyber-attack capabilities are built up in the shadows, quantity and quality unknown, to be used only in conflicts on the ‘vital-interest’-level – or as yet another deterrence (the attribution problem aside).