As cyberwarfare heats up, allies turn to U.S. companies for expertise
Ellen Nakashima
Published: November 22
In the spring of 2010, a sheik in the government of Qatar began talks with the U.S. consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton about developing a plan to build a cyber-operations center. He feared Iran’s growing ability to attack its regional foes in cyberspace and wanted Qatar to have the means to respond.
Several months later, officials from Booz Allen and partner firms met at the company’s sprawling Tysons Corner campus to review the proposed plan. They were scheduled to take it to Doha, the capital of the wealthy Persian Gulf state.
That was when J. Michael McConnell, a senior vice president at Booz Allen and former director of national intelligence in the George W. Bush administration, learned that Qatar wanted U.S. personnel at the keyboards of its proposed cyber-center, potentially to carry out attacks on regional adversaries.
“Are we talking about actually conducting these operations?” McConnell asked, according to several people at the meeting. When someone said that was the idea, McConnell uttered two words: “Hold it.”
via As cyberwarfare heats up, allies turn to U.S. companies for expertise – The Washington Post.
Filed under: Information operations
