On the recordAugust 2, 2012
I rise to speak on the vote we will have in about 10 minutes. I am going to be real personal in my statement. This is one of those days when I fear for our country, and I am not proud of the Senate. We have a crisis, one we all acknowledge. It is not just that there is a theoretical or speculative threat of cyber attack against our country--it is real and happening now. Most people don't know it because a lot of people who are attacked don't want to announce it because they are embarrassed. A lot of companies are attacked that control critical cyber infrastructure and have, in fact, what I called yesterday secret cyber attack cells planted in their system to control the kind of systems we depend on for the quality of our life and, in some ways, for our lives. GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command at the Pentagon, said the other day that when it comes to cyber war, we are today where we were in 1993 in our war with Islamist terrorism after they blew up the truck bomb in the parking garage at the World Trade Center. We were attacked. It shook us up for a while, but then people forgot about it. At least in that case we knew we had been attacked. Now we are attacked every day and most people don't know it. Maybe there is a story in the paper one day and they read it and it is on TV and then they forget about it.…





