Several
reports in both American and Israeli media have recently been
circulating the claim that Iran is increasingly likely to respond to
draconian U.S.-imposed sanctions by conducting “cyberattacks”
against the United States. According to this narrative, “Iranian
hackers have laid the groundwork to carry out extensive cyberattacks
on U.S. and European infrastructure and on private companies,”
prompting the U.S. to consider launching a preemptive “counterattack”
in response.
Quoting
anonymous U.S. government officials, think tanks and “experts,”
these articles assert that the sanctions the U.S. re-imposed on Iran
this Tuesday are “likely to push that country to intensify
state-sponsored cyber-threat activities,” activities that one
expert called “the most consequential, costly and aggressive in the
history of the internet, more so than Russia.”
However,
upon closer examination, it is clear that these warnings of an
imminent Iranian cyberattack are dubious at best — aimed at ending
the U.S.’ isolation on the issue through dishonest intelligence,
while also justifying a U.S. “preemptive counterattack” on Iran’s
infrastructure in a bid to further destabilize the nation, in service
to the Trump administration’s overall goal of regime change in
Iran.
Most
of these articles, in introducing the “threat” posed by Iranian
state-sponsored hackers, state that they originated with
“cybersecurity and intelligence experts.” However, just sentences
later, when these experts are quoted they specifically state that no
evidence of such a threat even exists.
For
instance, an Associated Press story, which begins with the statement
that “the United States is bracing for cyberattacks Iran could
launch in retaliation for the re-imposition of sanctions,”
quotes Priscilla Moriuchi — director of strategic threat
development at Recorded Future, a cyber-threat intelligence company —
as saying the following just two sentences later: “While we have
no specific threats, we have seen an increase in chatter related to
Iranian threat activity over the past several weeks.”
In
saying so, Moriuchi essentially admits that there is no threat from
Iranian hackers, merely stating that there has been a jump in
“chatter” related to Iranian threat activity. Notably, the
“chatter” is not attributed, meaning that this increase could be
a result of U.S. or Israeli intelligence hyping the possibility of a
threat, not necessarily Iranians or their allies threatening a
cyberattack.
Furthermore,
Moriuchi is hardly unbiased, as her company, Recorded Future, counts
among its clients several U.S. weapons manufacturers like Raytheon,
and also regularly collaborates with the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security as well as technology companies that double as U.S. military
contractors, such as Google and Palantir. Notably, Recorded Future
was initially funded by both Google and In-Q-Tel, the
venture-capitalist arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In
addition, this report and others rely on the analysis of equally
flawed “experts” to make their case. For instance, NBC cites
“Iran expert” Behnam Ben Taleblu, who states that “Iran
has a penchant for using such tools against the West.”
However, Taleblu is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies (FDD), the hawkish neo-conservative think tank that has
long championed preemptive bombings against Iran.
The
FDD is so stacked with notorious neo-conservatives that it has long
been called the successor to the now-defunct think tank Project for a
New American Century (PNAC), which was instrumental in promoting the
invasion of Iraq under false pretenses. The FDD is also closely
associated with National Security Adviser John Bolton, who promised
just last year that the Iranian government would be toppled before
2019. However, NBC left out this important context, merely
calling the FDD “a conservative think tank in Washington.”
Full
report:
Comments
Post a Comment