Now that the Russian hacking narrative has been blown apart, with Democrat election losses in Georgia and CNN taking cover for its exposed fake news about Russian election meddling, leave it to NATO to find ways to keep Cold War tension with Russia at a dangerous level.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that the military alliance must beef up its defence against cyberattacks, declaring that a cyberattack can trigger their Article 5 mutual defence commitment.
On Wednesday, computer users around the world were rebooting their systems after a wave of ransomware cyberattacks spread from Ukraine and Russia, across to Europe and the US, before settling in to Asia.
The recent cyberattack was similar to the WannaCry ransomware attack which hit more than 200,000 users in more than 150 countries in May.
Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of a NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday…
“The attack in May[and this week just underlines the importance of strengthening our cyber defences and that is what we are doing.”
“We exercise more, we share best practices and technology and we also work more and more closely with all allies.”
Stoltenberg recalled that NATO leaders had agreed last year that a cyber attack could be considered a threat sufficiently serious to warrant invoking the alliance’s ‘all for one, one for all’ security guarantee.
They also made cyber a NATO domain — on a par with the traditional air, sea and land arms to become part of overall alliance planning and resource allocation.
NATO was also helping Ukraine, the country first hit by Tuesday’s cyberattack, with its online defences, Stoltenberg said.
In the NATO context, the greatest fear is that another state would attack an ally’s networks to undermine key industrial and civil society infrastructure without firing a shot.
In the event, however, it seems non-state actors may be able to cause just as much mayhem.
What do you think?
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