China’s state media Xinhua published a news analysis on U.S. President Trump’s announcement to elevate the U.S. Cyber Command to a Unified Combatant Command. It said that the upgrade of the U.S. military cyber command to the U.S. military tenth joint operations headquarters, a status equivalent to the U.S. Central Command and other major combat commands, means that cyber space is officially listed as the U.S. military’s fifth battlefield along with marine, land, air, and outer space. Thus the worrying trend of the militarization of cyberspace has been further exacerbated.
The article quoted a statement that the Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, Michael Rogers, made at a Congressional hearing in May, “Every conflict in the world now has a conflict in the dimension of cyber space. … A cyber war is not a future concept or a film scene. It has a real existence.”
The article stated in conclusion, “At the beginning of the establishment of the U.S. military cyber command, Commander Keith Alexander asserted that it would not promote the militarization of space in the military. Since then, however, Britain, Germany, France, Japan and other countries have announced the formation of cyber forces. Now the upgrade of the U.S. military cyber command is likely to trigger other countries to follow suit, thus further intensifying the arms race in cyber space.”
Source: Xinhua, August 18, 2017
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2017-08/19/c_1121509545.htm