When All Else Fails During a Cyber Attack, Shoot Down a Satellite

Everybody in the United States government seems basically horrified about the destructive possibilities of a major cyber attack hitting our infrastructure. President Obama is describing apocalyptic outcomes involving toxic sludge and poisoned drinking water. The Pentagon is scrambling to recruit grey-hat hackers with enough skills to stand up against cyber nightmares like the People's Liberation Army in China. Anonymous is just laughing at everybody (as usual). But really, pranking, recruiting and fear-mongering aside, what do we do if we get hit with one of these scary attacks and can't defend ourselves? We cut the cord, of course.

At least of the guys who plays a role in building our cyber security strategy from the ground up says that when all else fails, the US may start shooting down satellites to stem the flow of toxic code onto American networks. Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force intelligence officer and current chairman of the international law department at the U.S. Naval College, sat down for an interview withNew Scientist this week and spoke frankly about the worst case scenario:

If, say, the US needs to take a satellite out to defend itself, it may. If we're in the midst of an armed conflict then we have to apply what is called the rule of proportionality and ask whether the harm to civilians will exceed the military advantage of taking the satellite out. But, yes, it is likely that cyber defence will move into orbit.

This sounds really serious for a couple of reasons. Satellites are unspeakably important to our infrastructure. Depending on which satellites might get taken out, it's not unreasonable to believe that the self defense technique would also bear a lot of negative economic and political consequences. Plus, isn't it hard to shoot a satellite out of orbit? They're not very big and zipping around the Earth at pretty high speeds.

It might be difficult, but it's not impossible. It is however, very expensive. In 2008, the Navy made a big splash when it shot down a dying spy satellite that could've spewed toxic gas into the air if it fell from orbit on its own and its nearly full fuel tank exploded. So Navy gunners loaded up a modified Standard Missile-3 (least intimidating name of a weapon ever, by the way) and had a window of just ten seconds to get the shot off. They hit the satellite's fuel tank, and the debris burned up in the atmosphere. All things told, the effort cost about $60 million.

Besides the challenge and the expense of shooting down a satellite, there's also the diplomatic implications. Not everybody was thrilled that the US was shooting missiles at space back in 2008. China criticized the US for doing so, which was slightly hypocritical considering China shot down one of its own satellites the year before. Don't worry, the U.S. protested that action, too. In the near future, there will be more satellites that need to be shot down, whether because its failed or because it's beaming a cyber attack into US networks. And that diplomatic issue is important to keep in mind.

Think about it this way: When cyber attacks lead to missile launches, a virtual war can become a real war real fast. So yah, let's keep the satellite exploding to a minimum for now.

@adamclarkestes