United States Cyber Command
Fort Meade, Maryland
The years since the war in the South China Sea had not been kind to the United States Cyber Command. As was normal in the global defense community, once you did something clever, everyone immediately attempted to copy you. That meant that cyber warfare as a means to achieve political goals had exploded in the years since the USA’s successful cyber attack on China became public. Meetings like this one between the commanding general of Cyber Command, their CIA liaison and the National Security Advisor were generally tense.
Of course, the Chinese had been investing in this area for years before the war, but now investments in cyber war were exploding everywhere. When generative AI became a thing, it accelerated even more.
The general at the table was his usual cranky self. “Goddamn it, if we can’t keep track of what the Israelis are doing, how will we know what the fuck is going on over there? Did they attack Iran last week or what?”
The CIA deputy director was calmer. Clinical, even bookish, he was in charge of analysis and tended to focus on the long game. “We know an attack occurred, the Israelis are the likely source, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we captured the code.”
The general wasn’t mollified. “I don’t care about the code, I care about the attack.”
The deputy director sighed. “If you have the code, you don’t need anything else. We put it into our red team system and our AI hackers are pulling it apart line by line. We know exactly what it can do, how it did it and we have a pretty good guess about who wrote it. These things are like fingerprints.”
The national security advisor was a politician, of course, so he was only worried about how things looked and how it might affect the administration. “It’s important to ensure that the USA is not blamed. We need to reduce the temperature between the Shia and Sunni factions in the region.”
The deputy director nodded, fully aware of the administration’s goal of appearing to “do something” about the middle east but also aware that actually getting something meaningful done wasn’t the goal of the administration. Working in Washington was strange sometimes but it helped to understand the motivations of the players. It made them more predictable. He opened a file folder. “More important, I think, is the activity we see within US military systems. The PLA has been stepping up their efforts to compromise nuclear command and control systems.”
“We cannot let that get out. Classify the anti-hacking investigation top secret and get one of your black teams on it.”
The deputy director smiled. It also made them easy to manipulate. The People’s Liberation Army (People’s Republic of China) had been hacking on the US military for years. No news there. However, the CIA had been trying to get more funding for their “black teams” recently and this PLA activity was a good excuse to do that. “We will need additional staffing to make that happen. As we discussed, those teams are at max capacity at the moment. Perhaps we should refer this to DIA or the FBI?”
The national security advisor shook his head. “The Defense Intelligence Agency isn’t set up for this kind of thing and there is no way I’m going to let the FBI wander around those systems. No, it has to be outside of the DOD but secure. That means your black teams.”
The deputy director hid his pleasure. “Certainly, we’ll get right on it. The emergency funding request will be on your desk in the morning.”
“I’ll make sure the president signs it.”