Cyber War Central

California Farm Country Wants to Be Cyber War Central

By Kevin Poulsen August 29, 2007 | 3:02:57 PMCategories: Cybarmageddon!

Politicos in California's rural Central Valley are lobbying to bring the Air Force's elite Cyber Command to nearby Beale Air Force Base, where it will boost the local economy with its environmentally-friendly form of war.

The 25,000-person Cyber Command is currently headquartered at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, but it's looking for a new home. Candidates include Offutt AFB, near Omaha, Nebraska, and Lackland AFB outside San Antonio, Texas.

( I VOTE FOR MICHIGAN )

But politicians and community leaders in and around Yuba County, California say the sunshine state is the logical place to locate the Future of Warfare ... in part because cyber war is "green." From the Sacramento Bee:

John Nicoletti, Yuba County supervisor, said Beale's pitch is especially attractive because the Cyber Command won't create pollution on the scale of more traditional military operations.

"This is a green industry," Nicoletti said. "We're not talking about airplanes and solvents."

This is, of course, appalling. A quick check of the cyberwar doomsday map reveals that Beale AFB is just 140 miles northeast of THREAT LEVEL headquarters in San Francisco. In other words, California managed to navigate the entire cold war without hosting a single nuclear missile silo on its fertile soil, and now Yuba wants to position Cyber Ground Zero upwind from the second most populous city on the west coast.

Thanks guys. We'll see how "green" you think cyber war is when your organic farms and windmill fields are slammed with deadly DDoS packets in a ruthless Chinese first strike -- the impact of which will be as bad as the worst natural disaster in U.S. history (two years ago this week). From the same article:

Sami Saydjari, executive director of the nonprofit Cyber Defense Agency said the Cyber Command is being created to protect U.S. government and business networks from the type of attack Estonia suffered earlier this year.

Over three weeks, an onslaught of "denial-of-service" messages -- originating from Russian computers -- crippled electronic networks used by the Estonian government, banking industry and media. Saydjari said a successful attack against the United States could cause devastation on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.

That means over 1,600 dead, thousands more displaced and homeless. Take it from a "nonprofit" Wisconsin computer security consultancy whose corporate logo is crafted to look like a U.S. military seal.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/california-farm.html