18 September 2019

GOP Sen. Sasse: US Lacks Cyber War Offense, Defense

By Eric Mack

The United States is "decades behind" in cyber security and the eventuality of modern warfare being carried out online and in space, according to Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

"I've been pushing Washington to get serious about these threats and to draft a badly needed cyber playbook, because we don't have either offensive or defensive doctrine," Sasse told "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y.

Sasse pointed to each of the leading U.S. adversaries, Russia, North, Iran, and China, telling host John Catsimatidis "we are well into the age of cyber war."

"We haven't done nearly enough planning for the asymmetric phases of war," he said. "And while we still lead China and Russia, our qualitative military edge is shrinking. And the amount of money China is investing in particular should keep all American policymakers up at night."

Sasse said China has prepared for massing preemptive destruction of satellite and GPS infrastructure against enemies – something he said "would be absolutely disastrous."

"It was never really an American military doctrine that you might just take out all the satellite architecture in the world," Sasse said. "U.S. weapons systems are dependent on GPS.

"China has envisioned a lot of game theory that has them sort of blowing up everything in the near-space early in a conflict, which would take away lots of things like GPS."

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