President Barack Obama has ordered top US officials to prepare a list of potential targets for US cyber-attacks abroad, a report says.
Britainâ„¢s daily The Guardian said on Friday it obtained a top secret presidential directive, issued last October but never made public, which states that the attacks, called Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO), “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world.”
The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20 says the government will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power.”
The document does not specify if the attacks are only carried out in reprisal for similar operations by another country and implies that the US can employ the tool in a first-use rule as long as it advances Washingtonâ„¢s national interests worldwide. It clarifies how both offensive and defensive cyber operations are instrumental in US strategy.
Security researchers have frequently warned that large-scale cyber attacks could lead to full-fledged military conflicts.
“When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force,” said Sean Lawson, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Utah.
The revelation could overshadow Obamaâ„¢s two-day summit with China’s President Xi Jinping on the weekend in Southern California where, according to US officials, the American president would bring up the alleged Chinese cyber-hacking of major US organizations, a claim Beijing has rejected.
An intelligence source told The Guardian that the US allegations against China regarding cyber-hacking are hypocritical. “We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world.”
The White House has also been put on the defensive by another revelation by the British paper which reported on Thursday that a top secret court order in the US allows the NSA to collect data on millions of Americans who are customers of Verizon Communications.
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This article originally appeared on: Press TV