Translated with AI
The British government has announced the creation of a new army unit, Cyber Command, which will be tasked with protecting the country from hacker attacks and helping the British military to independently organize such attacks, the BBC reports.
In a 21st century war, a computer keyboard could become a fully-fledged and very dangerous weapon, warned British Defense Minister John Healey: with its help, an enemy could inflict damage to the country's economy no less (or even more) than a targeted artillery strike.
In the last two years alone, the British authorities have had to deal with approximately 90,000 cyber attacks, one way or another connected to foreign intelligence agencies, the minister specified – primarily hackers from Russia and China.
The new Cyber Command will begin by undertaking a major modernization of Army unit targeting and coordination systems using artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies designed to speed up battlefield decision-making.
The British budget has allocated 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) for their development alone, out of the nearly 60 billion that it plans to spend on defense in general this year.
It is assumed that the structure being created will also play a leading role on the electronic front – from coordinating efforts to intercept enemy communications to jamming drones.
John Healy told journalists about all these ambitious plans during a visit to Corsham, where the headquarters of the British cyber forces is located.
In Corsham, however, the Defence Secretary focused on the recent increase in cyber attacks from overseas. According to experts, not only are hacker attacks becoming more frequent, but so are their sophistication.
Defense officials also confirmed that the British military was carrying out its own offensive cyber attacks, which Healey said was evidence of how much the nature of warfare had changed in recent years.
“Now the weapon of war is the keyboard, and we must take this into account and somehow respond,” he concluded.
