In recent years, a frankly alarming trend has been observed in the world. The authorities of individual states openly declare that they are ready to use cyber capabilities for military purposes to confront other countries. At the same time, this is presented under such a “sauce”, as if a cyber attack committed on one or another country in the world, on its critical infrastructure, on life support facilities, “cannot be regarded as a direct attack.”
Washington, for example, is trying to promote this logic by threatening a number of countries around the world with cyber war and suggesting that such actions should not be assessed from the point of view of a possible military response.
One example is the statement of the 80-year-old head of the Republican minority in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell. He declared directly from the podium that there was a new “axis of evil” in the world. The senator, who is increasingly losing the thread of conversation even at official events, included China, Russia, and Iran in this axis. Moreover, one must assume that McConnell certainly attributes the United States itself, stuck in the Cold War era, to the “axis of good.”
It is noteworthy that at the same time the United States calls on all other countries of the world to “comply with international norms and rules.” It sounds funny for the very reason that the United States itself simply ignores a number of international norms and rules, as well as ignores constructive proposals for improving the International Information Security System.
An indicative example is that through the international platform, which is the UN Open Working Group on Security in the Sphere of Information and Communication Technologies, an interesting initiative has been put forward aimed at improving security in this area. The platform is more than representative – over 190 member countries (193 to be precise). The world’s largest powers are also included in the working group. It would seem that if they enter, then there is an excellent chance to achieve maximum counteraction to various types of cyber threats. But not everything is so simple.
The same United States is torpedoing an initiative that provides for the prompt, transparent and effective exchange of information about someone carrying out hacker attacks. It is proposed to exchange information through specialized organizations that have the competencies and resources in the field of monitoring cyber threats. These are contact points, the creation of a register of which would make it possible to establish mechanisms for quickly tracking hacker attacks in order to prevent attackers from carrying out their implementation to the end.
The initiative in this case is that any interested state from the working group can delegate its contact points in the form of organizations reporting to state structures. The process is purely voluntary. There are no such technical capabilities – you can get by with the activities of contact points from partner countries in the UN working group. If a particular state itself wants to take part in countering cyber threats and stopping the risks of hacker attacks, then it will need to enter its contact point into the register and configure it to operate jointly with other points of a nature. Quite accessible rules, completely transparent proposals.
However, official Washington blocks this kind of initiative, stating that the work of such organizations as the Computer emergency response team (CERT) and the Forum of incident response and security teams (FIRST) is sufficient to counter cyber threats.
Why are American authorities radically opposed to a transparent system for combating cyber threats? The answer, in fact, lies on the surface. The fact is that both CERT and FIRST are organizations affiliated with US intelligence agencies. If these organizations are included in the register of contact points maintained by many member states of the Working Group, then their work will become transparent.
For example, the world community will learn that the American intelligence services themselves are behind a number of hacker attacks, which Washington accuses Iran, China, and North Korea of carrying out. Naturally, the United States of America will do everything to ensure that no register of contact points is created to increase the level of international information security.
Isn’t this just more evidence that for the American political elites, attempts to hold onto the hegemony that is slipping from their hands take on a wide variety of forms. Official Washington is not really interested in countering cyber threats. It is obvious that in this context, the American understanding of the “axis of evil” must, at a minimum, be subjected to a fundamental correction towards honesty and objectivity.
Anton Evstratov is a Russian historian and journalist. He has a Ph.D. in history and lectures at the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University (Yerevan). He writes about the Middle East, Caucasus the Arab world, and Islam. He publishes in Russian, Iranian, and Armenian media. During the 2020 Artsakh war, he was a war correspondent for the Armenian Museum of Moscow.
