McDonald 2015
China Disadvantage
1NC Shell
The current state of domestic security is shaky but will stabilize – cyber security is key
Conte 2015 [Andrew Conte, “Military Branches Assemble to Break Ground on National Cybersecurity Strategy” Government Technology June 24, 2015. http://www.govtech.com/security/Military-Branches-Assemble-to-Break-Ground-on-National-Cybersecurity-Strategy.html]{MEM}
U.S. military discussions about cyber capabilities have been taking place for more than a decade, but have focused primarily on the country's offensive capabilities rather than defenses, said Anthony Shaffer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a New York-based think-tank.¶ “We don't do (planning) to the level necessary now to understand that if we can do this to somebody else, for goodness sake, they're going to do it to us,” Shaffer said.¶ The first phase of the War College's cybersecurity focus in February laid out policy recommendations that included increasing the Defense Department's participation in cyber-response planning at the federal, state and local levels, as well as increased private-sector accountability for critical infrastructure such as power grids.¶ The War College events break down barriers that prevent groups from communicating about the cyber threat and what to do about it, said Thomas Arminio, a homeland security professor at Penn State University in Harrisburg.¶ “We have to avoid any notion of ‘my turf versus your turf,' ” Arminio said, “because the problem is only going to be solved by collaboration.”
And, curtailing domestic surveillance makes the U.S. vulnerable to cyber attacks from China
Griffiths 2015 [James Griffiths, reporter for South China Morning Post. “US panel warned of economic and national security threat posed by Chinese hackers” South China Morning Post, June 16, 2015 http://www.scmp.com/tech/social-gadgets/article/1822795/us-panel-warned-economic-and-national-security-threat-posed]{MEM}
Cyberespionage by hackers linked to China poses a severe threat to companies in the United States, as well as a risk to national security, a US congressional panel heard on Monday.¶ Speaking at a hearing called by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, experts outlined to lawmakers how Chinese hackers have targeted US companies to steal intellectual property and trade secrets. ¶ "The Chinese government has engaged in a systematic programme of commercial cyber espionage designed to advance [its] economic and industrial goals," said Paul Tiao, a partner at Washington DC-based law firm Hunton and Williams who specialises in cybersecurity issues. ¶ Hacking groups tied to China’s People's Liberation Army are "systematically stealing vast stores of intellectual property, business sensitive information, and personal information from US companies,” he added. In May 2014, the US Department of Justice officially indicted five senior PLA officials on charges of commercial cyberespionage. It accused them of hacking into a number of American companies, including nuclear power company Westinghouse and renewable energy firm SolarWorld. ¶ The targeting of companies focusing on nuclear and renewables is common, one witness told the panel, as China seeks to diversify its energy supply and reduce its reliance on coal in a bid to tackle endemic pollution issues.
U.S.-Sino cyber conflicts would escalate to a multinational conflict
Renda, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies, 2013
[Andrea Renda, Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, May 3, 2013, http://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global_memos/p32414]
Cybersecurity is now a leading concern for major economies. Reports indicate that hackers can target the U.S. Department of Justice or Iranian nuclear facilities just as easily as they can mine credit card data. Threats have risen as the Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the global economy, with thousands of operations migrating onto it. For example, the innocuous practice of bring-your-own-device to work presents mounting dangers due to malware attacks--software intended to corrupt computers.¶ Between April and December 2012, the types of threats detected on the Google Android platform increased by more than thirty times from 11,000 to 350,000, and are expected to reach one million in 2003, according to security company Trend Micro (See Figure 1).¶ Put simply, as the global economy relies more on the Internet, the latter becomes increasingly insidious. There is no doubt that the Internet is efficient. But it now needs a more concerted global effort to preserve its best aspects and guard against abuses.¶ The rise of the digital cold war¶ Cyber threats and cyberattacks also reveal an escalating digital cold war. For years the United States government has claimed that cyberattacks are mainly state-sponsored, initiated predominantly by China, Iran, and Russia. The penetration of the U.S. Internet technology market by corporations such as Huawei, subsidized by the Chinese government, has led to more fears that sensitive information is vulnerable. After an explicit exchange of views between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping in February 2013, the United States passed a new spending law that included a cyber espionage review process limiting U.S. government procurement of Chinese hardware.¶ U.S. suspicions intensified when Mandiant, a private information security firm, released a report detailing cyber espionage by a covert Chinese military unit against 100 U.S. companies and organizations. In March 2013, the U.S. government announced the creation of thirteen new teams of computer experts capable to retaliate if the United States were hit by a major attack.¶ On the other hand, Chinese experts claim to be the primary target of state-sponsored attacks, largely originating from the United States. But in reality the situation is more complex. Table 1 shows that cyberattacks in March 2013 were most frequently launched from Russia and Germany, followed by Taiwan and the United States.¶ What is happening to the Internet?¶ Created as a decentralized network, the Internet has been a difficult place for policymakers seeking to enforce the laws of the real world. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks—consisting of virus infected systems (Botnet) targeting a single website leading to a Denial of Service for the end user—became a harsh reality by 2000, when companies such as Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! had been affected. These costs stem from the direct financial damage caused by loss of revenue during an attack, disaster recovery costs associated with restoring a company's services, a loss of customers following an attack, and compensation payments to customers in the event of a violation of their service level agreements.¶ As the Internet permeates everyday life, the stakes are becoming even higher. In a few years, society could delegate every aspect of life to information technology imagine driverless cars, machine-to-machine communications, and other trends that will lead to the interconnection of buildings to trains, and dishwashers to smartphones. This could open up these societies to previously unimaginable disruptive cyber events. What is as concerning is that in cyberspace, attacks seem to have a structural lead over defense capabilities: it can be prohibitively difficult to foresee where, how, and when attackers will strike.¶ Confronted with this challenge, the global community faces a dilemma. The neutrality of the Internet has proven to be a formidable ally of democracy, but the cost of protecting users' freedom is skyrocketing. Critical services, such as e-commerce or e-health, might never develop if users are not able to operate in a more secure environment. Moreover, some governments simply do not like ideas to circulate freely.¶ Besides the "giant cage" built by China to insulate its Internet users, countries like Pakistan have created national firewalls to monitor and filter the flow of information on the network. And even the Obama administration, which has most recently championed Internet freedom initiatives abroad, is said to be cooperating with private telecoms operators on Internet surveillance, and Congress is discussing a new law imposing information sharing between companies and government on end-user behavior, which violates user privacy.¶ The question becomes more urgent every day: Should the Internet remain an end-to-end, neutral environment, or should we sacrifice Internet freedom on the altar of enhanced security? The answer requires a brief explanation of how the Internet is governed, and what might change.¶ The end of the Web as we know it?¶ Since its early days, the Internet has been largely unregulated by public authorities, becoming a matter for private self-regulation by engineers and experts, who for years have taken major decisions through unstructured procedures. No doubt, this has worked in the past. But as cyberspace started to expand, the stakes began to rise.¶ Informal bodies such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—a private, U.S.-based multi-stakeholder association that rules on domain names and other major aspects of the Internet have been increasingly put under the spotlight. Recent ICANN rulings have exacerbated the debate over the need for more government involvement in Internet governance, either through a dedicated United Nations agency or through the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an existing UN body that ensures international communication and facilitates deployment of telecom infrastructure. But many experts fear that if a multi-stakeholder model is abandoned, the World Wide Web would cease to exist as we know it.¶ Last year's World Conference on International Telecommunications, held in Dubai, hosted a heated debate on the future of cyberspace. Every stakeholder was looking for a different outcome. The ITU looked to expand its authority over the Internet; European telecoms operators wanted to secure more revenues by changing the rules for exchanging information between networks; China, Russia, and India wanted stronger government control over the Internet; the United States and Europe stood to protect the multi-stakeholder model of ICANN; and a group of smaller countries sought to have Internet access declared a human right.¶ When a new treaty was finally put to vote, unsurprisingly, as many as fifty-five countries (including the United States and many EU member states) decided not to sign. Since then, the question on how the Internet will be governed remains unresolved.
That causes great power wars
Gompert & Saunders 11
(David C. Gompert, bachelor's degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, where he once served on the faculty, and a master of public affairs degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Gompert most recently worked as a senior fellow at the RAND Corp, and Phillip C. Saunders, phD in IR from Princeton, Distinguished Research Fellow Director of Studies, Center for Strategic Research Director, Center for Study of Chinese Military Affairs, “The Paradox of Power Sino-American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability”, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/docuploaded/Paradox%20of%20Power.pdf)
Cyber war capabilities can contribute to crisis instability. Cyber attacks have little or no counterforce potential for either side, in the sense that the attacking side is no less vulnerable to cyber attacks for having conducted them. The advantage in striking first in cyberspace lies not in protecting oneself from retaliatory strikes but in degrading the opponent’s C 4 ISR and operations before one’s own are degraded. Conversely, exercising restraint with no expectation that the opponent will do likewise could be disadvantageous. In any case, if either side is inclined to use cyber war to degrade the capabilities and performance of the other’s military forces, there is logic in doing so early. Because striking early could be advantageous, there is the potential that a cyber attack could be the trigger that turns a confrontation into a conflict. The United States (or China) would likely interpret Chinese (or American) cyber attack as a prelude to physical attack. An improbable but extremely consequential danger is that an attack by either side on the other’s C4 ISR could be interpreted as intended to obstruct the ability to mobilize strategic nuclear forces. The separation of tactical and strategic C4 ISR is not a public matter. However, in the confusion of disrupted surveillance and command networks, the possibility cannot be excluded that strategic forces would at least be placed on higher alert, creating a risk of faulty calculation with incalculable results. The Chinese would be imprudent to think that the United States would respect firebreaks in cyberspace. Whether it acts preemptively or in retaliation, the United States would have an incentive to attack Chinese cyberspace broadly rather than narrowly on dedicated and protected Chinese military networks. Not only would this harm China’s economic activity, it could also degrade the ability of the leadership to direct Chinese operations and even to communicate with the population. U.S. attacks could isolate Chinese leadership and sow confusion in the population. Chinese cyber attacks could prompt the United States to retaliate without diminishing U.S. capability to do so. The Chinese have a lot to consider before beginning cyber war. Another feature of cyber warfare may aggravate this crisis instability: the option of subtle attacks or demonstrations. Before hostilities have begun, it might occur to one side that a mild cyber attack—a nonlethal display of one’s resolve—could warn and deter the other side and demonstrate its vulnerability. Knowing this, the side attacked might well opt to escalate in cyberspace. Even more dangerous is the potential that a cyber attack intended to show resolve could be interpreted as a prelude to general hostilities, thus triggering, instead of deterring, a conflict. It would be a gamble for either side to bet that cyber war could be controlled. Every network, whether military or dual-use, that could support military operations would likely be targeted. Networks that support intelligence collection and dissemination would be attacked, making both sides less certain about what was happening but by no means more passive in the conflict. Moreover, one side or the other might consider escalating cyber war to critical networks such as those supporting economic and financial functions, transportation, power, and state control. In sum, the existence of dual-use networks, the possibility of willful escalation, and the difficulty of controlling viruses, worms, and other infections, regardless of human plans, lead to a conclusion that limiting cyber war to the tactical military level would be hard.¶
Extensions
Uniqueness
Cyber capabilities key to prevent cyber war
Kramer et. al 12 (Franklin D. Kramer is a distinguished research fellow in the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. He served as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1996 to 2001. Stuart H. Starr is also a distinguished research fellow in the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. He concurrently serves as the president of the Barcroft Research Institute. Larry Wentz is a senior research fellow in the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University., “Cyberpower and National Security”, p. 318)