Obama Also Has a Cyber Kill List

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) "can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging".

It 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".

  UK Guardian

I suppose Angela Merkel is okay with that, too.

The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

How unfortunate.

Asked about the stepping up of US offensive capabilities outlined in the directive, a senior administration official said: "Once humans develop the capacity to build boats, we build navies. Once you build airplanes, we build air forces."

In a nutshell.

That article also quotes an anonymous source “familiar with” the NSA programs. It’s left to us to wonder whether that is Edward Snowden, or if someone else is now speaking up.

[...]

The creation of a new world order enforced by a global military hegemon in service of international finance capital requires the dismantling of the legal norms and structures of the old order. [...] No longer capable of harnessing the wealth of the world to its own advantage, yet still the unchallenged military colossus, the gasping and grasping empire seeks to thwart the material and social progress of the entire planet: it becomes the enemy of all.

Armed to the teeth, yet palsied to the core and incapable of competing in a world governed by law, the U.S. abolishes the ancient notion of national sovereignty.

[...]

Leaders of sovereign states are indicted by his kangaroo “international” courts, or murdered following unprovoked invasions, or prevented from flying while in imperial disfavor. American hit squads roam the globe.

[...]

Almost exactly a year ago, Obama signed an executive order allowing him to seize control of all U.S. electronic media, including the Internet, under “conditions of emerging threats, crisis or emergency,” i.e., any time he wants to.

  Black Agenda Report/Glen Ford

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.