From October 24 to 28, the United States staged a multinational cyberwar exercise code-named “Cyber Flag”, in participation of more than 20 countries including the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

This exercise has earned criticism from the international community as it involved the participation of the puppet group of south Korea for the first time.

It is a well-known fact that the U.S. has the largest cyber forces in the world.

It is already in early 1990s that the U.S. developed the concept of cyber war and organized cyber warfare units. In 2009, it set up the cyber-command in 2009 under the U.S. Strategic Command on a plea of “rapid increase in cyber threat”. In 2017, the cyber-command was elevated to Joint Operation Command which is at the same level as the major operation commands.

Moreover, the U.S. increased the number of command staff from the initial figures of 900 to 6,200 until the end of September 2018. And it has covertly carried out cyber-operations at different levels against its potential enemies and anti-U.S. independent countries. Through this, it has enriched its combat experiences.

More serious thing is that the U.S., which once advocated “defense” and “deterrence” in cyberspace, has switched to another strategy, the core of which is preemptive strike.

In the “National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace” which was made public in 2015, the U.S. Defense Department made it clear that it must have a capacity to carry out a cyber-operation to completely paralyze the functions of enemy’s communication, military targets, weapons and major infrastructure, once ordered by the President.

With such an enormous cyber forces and offensive cyber strategy in place, the U.S. has been running wild in its cyber war exercise on an annual basis from 2011 under the pretext of countering “cyber threat”. Then what is its overriding objective?

This is clearly aimed at gaining the upper hand over others in cyberspace in the name of ensuring “cyber security” and realizing with ease its strategy for world hegemony.

It is not accidental that the incumbent U.S. president said in July last year that the war against great powers will be unleashed by cyberattack and that the U.S. cyber commander asserted in April that DPRK, China, Russia and Iran are the states posing strategic challenge to the U.S. in cyberspace.

Recently, the U.S. has held the so-called 2 nd International Counter Ransomware Initiative Summit in Washington and made desperate attempts to turn black into white, describing our country, China and Russia as “malicious actors.”

The reality clearly proves that cyberspace, the common asset of mankind, is being reduced to a site of acute confrontation due to the U.S. policy of seeking hegemony and bloc-forming.

That is why the entire international community is now raising its voice, saying that the U.S. is the greatest threat to the global cyber security and every country should unite and reject hegemonic acts of the U.S. committed in cyberspace.

Each and every country should adamantly oppose and reject war exercise of the U.S. which invites confrontation and conflict in cyberspace.

Kim Kuk Myong

Member of Association for Countermeasures against International Cybercrimes