As worries mount about Russian hacking and cyber-crimes, leaders in Washington - including Virginia Senator Mark Warner - are taking new steps to fight a virtual war online. Michael Pope has the story.
Senator Mark Warner is part of a bipartisan group pushing lawmakers to upgrade the U.S. Cyber Command. That’s the organization created in 2009 to work against foreign espionage and criminal hacking.
This week, Congress voted to give the organization a more prominent role at the Pentagon. Here’s Admiral Michael Rogers making the case earlier this year for moving U.S. Cyber Command out from under the thumb of the U.S. Strategic Command.
“I just am one input. I realize that this a much broader decision than just Admiral Rogers, and there’s many opinions that will be factored in," Rogers said. "My input to the process has been the combatant commander designation would allow us to be faster, which would generate better mission outcomes.”
Jamil Jaffer is a professor at the George Mason Law School and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He says this is not just a simple bump on the organizational chart.
“It means that the Department of Defense and, frankly, the U.S. government writ large has recognized the importance of this command and its role in modern warfare and the fact that cyber is a new domain of warfare like air, land and sea.”
Warner praised the move, which was part of the Defense Authorization Act.
