The devastatingly destructive potential of cyber attacks has become the security challenge of our age, said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. “Cyber is one of those quiet, deadly, insidious unknowns you can’t see,” said Hagel while speaking to about 200 service members at JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii on May 30 on the opening leg of his official trip to Singapore. “It’s in the ether—it’s not one big navy sailing into a port, or one big army crossing a border, or squadrons of fighter planes. . . . This is a very difficult, but real and dangerous, threat. There is no higher priority for our country than this issue,” he added. Hagel noted that cyber is “one of the very few items” pegged to receive a boost in funding in the Pentagon’s Fiscal 2014 budget request. (AFPS report by Karen Parrish)
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.