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Obama Admin Enacts Right for Preemptive Cyber-Attacks

HeadlineFeb 04, 2013

The Obama administration has granted itself the right to launch a preemptive cybermilitary strike on foreign targets. The New York Times reports the cyber-attacks would be carried out should the White House deem it necessary to preempt an imminent and highly dangerous computer attack from abroad. The authorization was approved as part of a pending set of rules for U.S. cyberwarfare similar to those for drone strikes. It would fall under the operations of the Pentagon’s recently created Cyber Command. The Obama administration’s lone publicly known cyber-attack to date was “Olympic Games,” which sabotaged computer systems at Iran’s nuclear facilities and accidentally unleashed a global computer worm known as Stuxnet.

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