ABSTRACT
The state-run Syrian Electronic Army and comparable Iranian cyber operations, mostly focused on defacing Israeli government and military web pages, illustrate how cyber warfare is spreading. The Pentagon has developed an operational system and "rules of engagement" to carry out cyber warfare. The Plan X program seeks to build an end-to-end system that enables the military to understand, plan, and manage cyber warfare in real-time, large-scale, and dynamic network environments. Cyber warfare is a fact of life, but it is warfare without thresholds, so no one knows for sure how to respond to cyber attacks. The Estonian attacks, and the damage caused, were intended to demonstrate the ire of the Russians toward the actions of the Estonian government, and to show Estonia's leaders that the Russians could cause havoc even without resort to military force. The Russians have been willing to leverage NATO countries, figuring that NATO was weak, indecisive, and divided.
