June 1st, 2012
Here’s the headline on the NYT’s big Stuxnet piece: “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran.”
The first half of the story is then an account of the bold President Obama using Stuxnet to cleverly cripple Iran’s uranium centrifuge operation. Our hero.
You have to read the second half to get to the other stuff: That Stuxnet was conceived by some random military guy and approved by some other president. This other president was skeptical that the plan could work, but he gave it the go-ahead anyway. Stuxnet was designed, tested, and sent into the field on his watch. When this other president left office, he personally asked President Barack Obama to let it continue, because he thought it would bear fruit.
So sure, technically Barack Hussein Obama didn’t come up with Stuxnet. And no, he didn’t, technically, oversee the successful build of the weapon. And sure, fine, he didn’t–again, technically–make the call to deploy it. But he didn’t pull the plug on it! So he’s the hero!
Do we really have to wait until 2017 to put him on Rushmore?
-
Frankly, Obama’s unMcGovernite record of continuing the defense SQ is the major underreported story of the past 3 years. He didn’t even try to replace Robert Gates or Muller…
-
If not Mt. Rushmore, perhaps Charles Mound (el. 1235 ft), Il.
-
There are too many inconsistencies with what I knew from before
— 1) Who initiated the whole program. Was it Bush or were it the Israelis?
http://busnet.bleublog.lematin.ch/tag/cyber-warfare+stuxnet+iran+nuclear+facility+virus+worm+computersIndustrial cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare is not a new concept.
In the late 90’s a computer specialist from Israel’s Shin Bet international security service hacked into the mainframe of the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of Tel Aviv. It was meant to be a routine test of safeguards, but according to one of the veterans of the Shin Bet exercise, “Once inside the Pi Glilot system, we suddenly realised that, aside from accessing secret data, we could [cause damage] just by programming a re-route of the pipelines”. Digital infiltration crossed the divide and entered the physical world of pipelines, power grids and industrial plants.— 2) where was stuxnet tested? The previous NYT article said it had been tested in Dimona
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
-3) Are the Americans now blaming the Israelis for the stuxnet spread?. I read that it was quite controlled and focused. It did damage only to the Iranian Siemens controllers.
-4) Is this article trying indirectly to help Obama’s chances in the elections?
-5) what about Flame?
-
You also have to give the Obama administration for leaking it like a sieve. That other President – the one who launched it – that guy never even talked about what he had done. It took THIS President to confirm the rumors and speculation about it.
-
You mean Obama didn’t program it himself personally?
Galley Friend J.E. June 1, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Wow, so Clinton conceived of Stuxnet. He misheard it as “sucks” and immediately said yes.