Why the cyber security bill in Congress is getting big push from Pentagon

Yet it remains unclear how information that private companies share with the US government might be used, says says Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Are we going to start profiling terrorist suspects based on their Internet habits?" he asks. "There are all sorts of things you can do with this information.” 

Some say the threat of attacks on these plants may not be as great as some Pentagon officials seem to think.

“We’ve seen what a blackout looks like. It’s not fun,” says Dr. Brito, who also directs the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center. “But it’s not such a huge overwhelming concern that it’s an existential threat – I really haven’t seen any evidence of that.” 

Just how much of a role the Pentagon needs to play in defending these systems remains an open question, too, Brito adds. “I’m personally skeptical that we need legislation to solve these cybersecurity issues,” he says. “Why do we believe that the private sector doesn’t have an incentive to protect itself?”

While the threat is real, plant owners, too, have an interest in defending against it. “Folks who own a nuclear power plant invest billions into it – they don’t want to see that investment destroyed,” Brito says.

Disabling power plants and other critical infrastructure is difficult enough that terrorist groups, many of whom are luddites, aren’t capable of doing it, some argue. The only groups that currently have that capability are foreign militaries, such as China's, Brito says, and China and the US have enough economic links that a cyberattack on US infrastructure by China is not a very distinct possibility.

But the Pentagon is not dissuaded from sounding the alarm. At a recent hearing of the House Armed Services Emerging Threats subcommittee, a top official at the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon’s internal futuristic think tank, urged not only the expansion of America’s cyberdefenses, but also the development of offensive cyber capabilities as well – which could include, say, honing the ability of US forces to shut down the power grids and financial systems of other countries.

“Modern warfare demands the effective use of cyber, kinetic, and combined cyber and kinetic means,” Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel, deputy director of DARPA, recently told lawmakers. “We need cyber options that can be executed at the speed, scale, and pace of our military kinetic options,” he added. “We need approaches that match the diversity, dynamic range, and operational tempo of DOD activities.” In short, he said, “We need more options.”

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