Rosa Miriam Elizalde: Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident

The news is spreading fast around the globe. The Obama administration is ready to premiere a new cyber-space army. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times report that the goal of this cyber command is to secure military computer networks in the United States, networks now threatened by intrusive hackers linked to countries such as China and Russia.

Public opinion is forced to swallow in a single capsule the pretext for killing the specter of a foreign enemy, as well as the details of the murder weapon (a cyber command that will watch over the planet to eventually launch into action). As Tom Burghardt finds in Global Research , the United States is using the subterfuge of cyber security as a pretext for a cyber war, a project initiated well before September 11th 2001. It began to jell by 2003, with a leaked secret document signed by Donald Rumsfeld, ex Secretary of Defense, ordering the creation of this special command.

Since then, the military arsenal has been preparing to intervene servers, commit network espionage, bribe cybernetic mercenaries, criminalize navigators in the name of war, bend the arms of telecommunication companies and even launch an electronic bomb in March of 2003 in Iraq: a bomb capable of incapacitating all targeted electronic systems at once.

The creation of this cyber-military is not without precedent; what is new is that the functions of this electronic war, which previously were split among ten Pentagon operations and other centers of intelligence, including the Air Force, are now under a single umbrella, thus expanding the area of operations of Bush’s ‘holy war’ - “you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”. The enemy is not limited to certain countries, but extends to corporations, groups and individuals, that are to be hunted down like rabbits within the tentacles of globalization.

For reasons that have yet to be revealed, the new cyber-command is within the structure of the National Security Agency. However, in 2003 the cyber-command was introduced under the Air Force’s umbrella. It was to be given autonomy in October 2008, with an operational budget of $2,000 million for its first year.

The Air Force’s General Robert Elder , who at the time was in charge of the cyber-command, explained in November of 2006 during a press conference the reason for the expansion into cyberspace: “the cultural change lies in that we will treat the Internet as a war zone, we will concentrate on this area and will prioritize actions in cyber space”.

It is evident that there is nothing new either in the cyber-command, or in the self-advertising by new Pentagon Chief who is simply following the path of his predecessors from the Bush administration. There is also nothing new in its use as offensive-weapons. The United States has employed repression and subversion for decades. It is now simply readjusting its strategy to the new information era, with the Internet as its spinal column.

In March 2007, USA Today reported on one of cyber-war’s favorite strategies: pirate attacks on Internet sites critical of the Bush administration. The Air Force’s Investigation Laboratory had $40 million at its disposal to address this issue. But the key to this offensive was the creation of websites and cyber-dissidents that would echo the rhetoric favored by U.S. troops and reinforce their military interventions.

A year later, that same publication revealed that the Pentagon “is creating a global network of websites in foreign languages, including a website in Arabic for Iraqis; they hire local journalists to write on any daily event that promotes US interests, and to spread a message against insurgents” .

The daily added that “news websites are part of the Pentagon’s initiative to expand ‘information operations’ on the Internet”. USA Today reported that some of the sites created by the Pentagon include the Iraqi site www.mawtani.com, the Balkan site www.setimes.com, and the Maghrebi site www.magharebia.com.

And of course, they are all maintained with the utmost discretion in order to conceal the website hosts and domain registries, as well as the money trail that pays for translators, journalists and technical personnel. USA Today revealed the preparation for the launch of similar sites aimed at Latin America, and in particular a website managed by the Southern Command, whose name and characteristics remain secret.

A simple exercise in comparison of the domains belonging to the websites discovered by USA Today, and which garnered a great deal of publicity during the first few months of 2008 yields the following results:

Although not mentioned by USA Today, another common element is that their domains are registered with the corporation GoDaddy, which provides for anonymous registrations. The corporation charges a premium for this, of course. The owner and only shareholder of this corporation is Bob Parsons, ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran. Parsons is wealthy and known to have an appetite for advocating extreme methods of interrogation for prisoners at Guantanamo .

GoDaddy has an extensive track record of closing down its clients’ sites without notification, and like other north American companies dedicated to the registry of domains, it may not offer its services to individuals or companies linked to countries blacklisted by the Department of Treasury’s OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control). Cuba is a sanctioned country, according to OFAC.

The United States government forbids electronic commerce with any of the countries or entities on the blacklist. In fact, in March 2007, the United States’ Government, ordered through OFAC the shutdown of 80 websites, belonging to a tourism operator who lives in Spain and does business in the United Kingdom. Without prior notice, the program Enom blocked 80 domain names belonging to him, including some websites exclusively dedicated to cultural exchanges, such as www.cuba-hemingway.com.

Despite OFAC’s clear prohibitions relating to Cuba linked domains, GoDaddy maintains an allegedly Cuban website. It belongs to a rock group called ‘Porno para Ricardo’, an openly anti-government website, that encourages users to send money to its musicians, so that they can “purchase musical instruments.” Porno para Ricardo calls itself a Cuban website. But much like many other websites set up to spread propaganda against the Cuban government on the Internet, it is not administered on the island, its servers are not in Cuban territory, it does not use national domains, its owners do not seem to be anywhere in the Caribbean, and the sophisticated administrative tools of the web -like a paying Gateway, or the provision of an electronic system of money transfer made by credit cards- could not possibly be administered by a truly independent Cuban journalist without the support and financing of the United States government.

Add to this the overwhelming publicity campaign made on behalf of this and other Cuban “dissident” sites, especially through the Internet’s search engines. Such a campaign could not be launched and managed from Cuba, since the United States blockade against the island prevents Google from allowing it. In other words, if the United States prevents Cubans on the island from using credit cards to pay for a marketing campaign through Google’s Adwords, will the directors of the famous search engine help track the money trail that circulates through the Internet, promoting these websites and the sudden stars of global cyber dissidence?

Military academicians are another important variable in the information war waged through the Internet. In order to try to turn fiction into fact, information is personalized, with images and other ‘evidence’ that proves that the person who makes the statement is effectively where she says she is.

Military Review , the Pentagon’s official journal, has extensively analyzed the strategic importance of blogs and cyber dissidents. They put a human face on the political rhetoric designed by the U.S. military, particularly aimed at areas where the use of Internet is on the rise.

As they create websites, they also create a la carte cyber dissidents. A controversial case was that of Iraqi blogger Salam Pax, who mysteriously kept writing on his anti Saddam and anti Bush blog during the U.S. invasion or Irak. There is also evidence of suspicious cyber dissidents in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Iran, and Syria…

With regards to Cuba, it is worth mentioning the meteoric stardom of blogger Yoani Sanchez, who meets all the conditions required by Pentagon experts. The design of her blog is based upon several falsehoods: the name of the hosting website www.desdecuba.com suggests that her Internet connection originates in Cuba. Yet, the server is in Germany and registered to somebody named Josef Biechele. Who is this man and why does the blogger never mention this generous sponsor? The website itself enjoys resources that are not available to the average blogger, let alone to a Cuban blogger, who does not have the local administrative tools necessary to host a blog and also has to battle with an extremely slow network to connect to international sites like www.blogger.com and others.

The technical support provided by this particular website, which works almost exclusively for her blog, is custom-made and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The marketing strategy, through Google and other digital and traditional media, is also top of the line.

The blog´s content is manipulative. The blogger tries to organize mass mobilizations through www.twitter.com, social forums, and versions of the web 2.0 which are almost unknown in Cuba, a country with a severely limited bandwidth and extremely weak Internet facilities, since Internet connection on the island is via satellite. The United States blockade prohibits has prohibited Cuba from installing a much-needed underwater telecommunications cable, and Washington has banned for years electronic commerce and access to digital technology. Consequently, those who connect to the Internet in Cuba, at the average speed of 30-40 Kbps, can barely manage to check email, and other priorities that are light years away from Yantis negativism.

Who is this woman addressing then? It is obviously not a Cuban audience. Is she speaking to those outside Cuba, who are often bombarded with the type of biased discourse she favors? Is her objectivity guaranteed by the fact that she is in Cuba?

She also claims to be apolitical, not committed to any system, yet the tags used to identify her blog on the Internet say that www.desdecuba.com is a “political and independent review. It offers a different view than the one given by the Cuban government”. In her writings there are abundant references to the outdated political discourse used by the Department of State to justify including Cuba in its blacklist. Her notes are peppered with allusions to a 1950’s aesthetics, thus strengthening the stereotype of a ‘Havana in ruins’, a way to show Cuba in the worst possible light.

Lately, the blogger does not even seem to hide her ultra-right wing excesses, something that must certainly bother her handlers, as this is not the role she has been asked to play. Her comments now are more akin to what a digital Luis Posada Carriles would say, than those of a pacifist blogger and likely candidate to the Nobel Peace Prize. For example, in a note about “the night of the long knives that will befall on the island”, she explicitly adheres to the ‘license to kill’ attitude often invoked from Miami:

People waiting, with a stick or a knife under the bed for a day they can use them. Entrenched hatred against those who betrayed them, denied them a better job, or made sure their youngest child couldn’t study at the university. There are so many waiting for possible chaos to give them the time necessary for revenge, that one would wish not to have been born in this age, when one can only be a victim or victimizer, when so many yearn for the night of the long knives. (Yoani Sanchez, 25th April 2009)

If we follow the logic of U.S. strategists, the face of today’s anti-Cuban discourse is the least important issue. Yoani and those will come afterwards are paving the way for the promotion of their point of view on the billion people who get their information through the Internet, including the thousands of Cuban youths and children who, thanks to the efforts to educate them in the latest digital technology, will enjoy increasing access to the Internet.

The strategy of using the Internet as a tool of political intervention has been developing for at least five years, experiencing a crescendo during the past months, culminating with the recent announcement made by the Obama administration. He inherited from Bush the idea of directing funds to subversive activities against Cuba through the telecommunications arena. The fact that this is nothing new is confirmed by the note published by Paul Ritcher on 7th May 2008 in Los Angeles Times:

Could part of these funds have been allocated to financing the disproportionate campaign of Cuban cyber dissidence? Which European institutions are receiving funding from the United States? Do the 15,000 euros given the Cuban blogger by the Spanish group Prisa come from there? Is it a coincidence that Prisa, Yoani’s main marketing agency in Europe, also owns Noticias 24, one of the most aggressive anti-Chávez blogs in Venezuela?

Whichever the answer, it will be more of the same. The cyber command is not new, neither are the prefabricated cyber-dissidents and their webs, nor their political collaboration designed to try and destroy our government.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist who lives and works in Cuba. She edits a Cuban publication called Cubadebate, writes frequently for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, and is the author of several books, including Chávez Nuestro. She has twice won the Juan Gualberto Gómez Prize, Cuba's most prestigious journalism award.

BURGHARDT, Tom (2009): “The Pentagon's Cyber Command: Formidable Infrastructure arrayed against the American People”. In Global Research, April 26, 2009. Available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13354

RUMSFELD, Donald (2003): Information Operations Roadmap, United-States National Security Archive, October 30, 2003. Available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf (PDF 2,3 Mb)

WOOD, Sara (2006) "New Air Force Command to Fight in Cyberspace". In: American Forces Press Service. U.S. Department of Defense, November 3, 2006.

MICHAELS, Jim (2007): “U.S. Military Beefs Up Internet Arsenal”. In: USA Today, March, 28, 2007.

EISLER, Peter (2008): "Pentagon launches foreign news websites". In USA Today, May 1, 2008

In June 2005, Parsons sparked controversy by writing in his blog that the methods used by the United States in Guantanamo were "incredibly soft. All detainees receive regular medical attention”. PARSONS, Bob (2005): "Close Gitmo? No Way", 19th June 2005. Available at

The so-called Torricelli Law or Law of Authorization and National Defense for the fiscal year 1992, allowed the island to connect to the Internet on the condition that every megabyte would have to be hired from north American companies or their subsidiaries, with express authorization from the Treasury Department. Connections would be limited and sanctions were established -$50,000 for each violation- for those who facilitate electronic commerce or any economic benefit to the island, whether within our outside the USA, This has been rigorously enforced, and the OFAC has been expanding the ‘blacklist’. In April 2004, the OFAC informed the Congress that while four of its 120 employees had been assigned to track Bin Laden’s finances, almost two dozen employees worked towards the enforcement of the embargo against Cuba. They admitted that they used the Internet as their fundamental source to track payments. By the way, in the recent announcement made by Obama, nothing has been mentioned about electronic financial transfers. In this sense, the embargo remains intact.

There are numerous examples in this publication that theorize about information wars and the use of new technologies. We recommend, for example, the article "Partnering with the Iraqi media" In: Military Review, july-august 2008. Available at http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/JulAug08/DeCarvalhoEngJulAug08.pdf

Luis Posada Carriles, Venezuelan citizen of Cuban origin. A self-confessed terrorist, responsible for blowing up a civilian plane, killing 73 people, and for the series of explosions in Cuban hotels during the 1990’s, which killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles lives in Miami.

RICHTER, Paul (2008): “Cuba USAID Program Gets Overhaul” In: Los Angeles Times. May 7, 2008. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/07/world/fg-uscuba7

When NATO Killed Journalists

More of the Same?

Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

When NATO Killed Journalists

More of the Same?

Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics Kevin Alexander Gray

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray