by Marc Ambinder

After years of downplaying offensive U.S. cyber capabilities and fretting about Chinese cyber weapons, a major assumption has been turned on its head: America has now conceded that it conducted the most sophisticated state-sponsored cyber attack in the history of civilization.

This history-making development was reported by the Times' David Sanger in his new book Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. We now know that the United States has spent billions, hidden in non-public budgets, to develop a capacity to attack the infrastructure of Iran.

This has gone on even as the State Department and the White House have been desperately seeking a series of treaties and agreements to regulate and reign in such activities by others. When President Obama declared, on May 29, 2009, that America's "digital infrastructure" was a "national strategic asset" and would be protected as such, he defined what was largely seen as a defensive policy on cyber attack: We won't do anything to you unless you do something to us.

Read more.

Source: The Atlantic