The United States Central Intelligence Agency was secretly authorized by the White House in 2018 to drastically expand its offensive cyber operation program —a development that some experts describe as a significant development for the secretive spy agency.
However, the move has reportedly not
pleased the Department of Defense, which sees itself as the primary
conduit of American offensive operations in cyberspace.
The two-year-old authorization was
disclosed by Yahoo News, which cited “former US officials with direct
knowledge of the matter” in its report. The website said the
authorization came in the form of a presidential finding. A presidential
finding, also known as a Memorandum of Notification, refers to a
directive, which is authored by the president of the US and is given to
the intelligence committees of Congress. Its purpose is to explain the
reasoning behind a covert operation that is to be carried out abroad.
Following that disclosure by the president, government funds can be
appropriated for use in that operation or series of operations.
According
to Yahoo News, the 2018 presidential finding provides the CIA with
“more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it
targets”, when it comes to covert action carried out online. The goal of
the White House was to enable the CIA to unleash a series of offensive
measures against “a handful of adversarial countries”, which include
North Korea, Iran, China and Russia, according to the report. Such
offensive operations differ substantially from those typically carried
out by CIA personnel on cyberspace, which focus on clandestine
information collection. In contrast, offensive operations aim to
disrupt, sabotage or even destroy targeted systems.
In addition to enhancing the scope of the
CIA’s cyber operations, the presidential directive is also believed to
make it easier for the agency to target non-state actors and agencies,
including financial intuitions, charities, news media, or businesses.
Such targets may be attacked when they are found to be operating on
behalf of adversarial intelligence agencies. Moreover, it makes it
easier for the spy agency to leak secret information about targeted
adversaries to media organizations, a tactic that Russian spy services
are believed to have utilized in the past.
The Yahoo News report notes that the
presidential directive is seen as a major victory for the CIA in its
long bureaucratic battle with the Department of Defense. The latter has
traditionally been entrusted by the US government with carrying out
offensive cyber operations. There are also questions
about potential operational overlap between the CIA and the Pentagon,
as the two actors may at times be attacking the same targets. This
brings up the issue of inter-agency coordination between two bodies,
which has not always been smooth in the past.
Yahoo News said it submitted “an
extensive list of questions” to the CIA, but the agency declined to
comment. The National Security Council, which oversaw the drafting of
the alleged presidential finding, did not respond to questions stemming
from the news report.
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