The Internet as Weaponry for the US

Since the beginning of the year, the U.S. has been discussing the issue of foreign hacker attacks, once again dragging the Chinese into this never-ending problem. James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, has even declared that terrorism has replaced network threats as the biggest threat to the U.S. Subsequently, Keith Alexander, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, has announced 40 new network forces and an addition of 13 attack forces, which will allow the U.S. to defend its networks and, at the same time, allow it to infiltrate other national borders and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

With over two billion Internet users, the virtual world has become an integral part of how society is changing as a whole. The CIA recently found that training agents through the Internet is much easier than sending them to a target country where the culture of the locals may not agree with American values. The Internet even played an important role in the unrest in Iran in 2009, according to one U.S. intelligence officer.

In 2009, the situation in Tehran suddenly changed after the election. CIA agents stationed in the Middle East were caught off guard, and after the incident, it became impossible for them to infiltrate local areas. It was under these circumstances that Twitter, Facebook and other new social networking tools helped influence the situation there, allowing the CIA a taste of victory. The CIA actually conducted tests in Cuba two years ago to study the influence of the Internet on the country’s people.

The power of any type of media can only reveal itself in the communications field when it meets a certain reach and audience. According to American scholars, media has to be able to reach at least 20 percent of the country’s population before it can be considered a part of mass media. The Internet has integrated — and nearly eliminated —  all previously existing media and managed to bring together netizens in most of the world’s countries. In a very short period of time, its influence has reached far more than 20 percent of the world’s population. The Internet is truly a form of mass media, and it has also become a very important political and diplomatic intelligence tool for the U.S.

Features of the Internet, like instant sharing and interactivity, combined with the 13 root servers supporting the Internet in the U.S. have allowed it to become a huge strategic advantage for the country. It has become a tool for selling American values and even interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. In early 2010, the U.S. government used a Google event to launch an attack on China by broadcasting Hillary Clinton’s free Internet speech in late January. The U.S. Congress then approved a grant of $30 million to fight Internet censorship in China, Iran and other countries. A year later, in 2011, in her second free Internet speech, Hillary Clinton discussed the social networking roles Twitter and Facebook played in the events in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt, arguing for strengthening the U.S.’s leadership role by promoting Internet freedom, thus expanding online global U.S. interests.

Defining and emphasizing “Internet freedom” is really a way for the U.S. to exercise its dominance in cyberspace in a less traditional manner. Looking at recent years, it is not hard to find examples of U.S.-led revolutions in other countries via the Internet. The U.S. is really using the Internet to make hostile and inflammatory remarks, creating a field of political unrest.

Su Hong, Ph.D.; Ho Yat Cheng, Taiwanese doctoral student at Fudan University, KMT Central Committee