Jens Stoltenberg: "Cyberattacks can trigger Article 5" of the NATO charter | Hacker News Reader

Jens Stoltenberg: "Cyberattacks can trigger Article 5" of the NATO charter

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27 pointsthrowaway575216 comments

This has the wonderful property that proof isn't necessary. Pretty much any country can be blamed for a cyberattack so this means that NATO now has the power to declare war with anyone they want, anytime they want, for any reason they want, without provocation, by simply saying it was a cyberattack. Regardless of what Russia or anyone else is doing now, this is ripe for unlimited abuse.

Only if you can convince the major members of NATO to go along with a false flag, which will be extraordinarily difficult. They're reluctant to act generally and most will require overwhelming evidence.

> NATO now has the power to declare war with anyone they want, anytime they want, for any reason they want, without provocation

NATO has always had that power; NATO opponents claim that is what they actually did under the banner of “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo in 1999, but even if it isn't, they clearly could any time they had the necessary consensus.

NATO doesn't quite work like a dictatorship with a supreme commander at the top.

> NATO is an alliance of 30 sovereign nations but their individual sovereignty is unaffected by participation in the alliance. NATO has no parliaments, no laws, no enforcement, and no power to punish individual citizens. As a consequence of this lack of sovereignty the power and authority of a NATO commander are limited. NATO commanders cannot punish offences such as: failure to obey a lawful order; dereliction of duty; or disrespect to a senior officer.[147] NATO commanders expect obeisance but sometimes need to subordinate their desires or plans to the operators who are themselves subject to sovereign codes of conduct like the UCMJ. A case in point was the clash between General Sir Mike Jackson and General Wesley Clark over KFOR actions at Pristina Airport.[148]

> The NATO commander can issue orders to his subordinate commanders in the form of operational plans (OPLANs), operational orders (OPORDERs), tactical direction, or fragmental orders (FRAGOs) and others. The joint rules of engagement must be followed, and the Law of Armed Conflict must be obeyed at all times. Operational resources "remain under national command but have been transferred temporarily to NATO. Although these national units, through the formal process of transfer of authority, have been placed under the operational command and control of a NATO commander, they never lose their national character." Senior national representatives, like CDS, "are designated as so-called red-cardholders". Caveats are restrictions listed "nation by nation... that NATO Commanders... must take into account."[147]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

I suspect orders for countering cyber attacks are similar.

A NATO war would be a nuclear war. Nobody is looking to abuse cyber attribution to start a NATO war.

NATO doesn't want war, thank god.

Look how many wars NATO has ever started or tried to start: zero.

> Look how many wars NATO has ever started or tried to start

The NATO-Yugoslavia war has entered the chat.

NATO has entered the chat. Yugoslavia has already been chatting with some other parts of Yugoslavia.

NATO members have started many more war than any others

When they defend call themselves NATO, when they attack they change their name to 'international coalition'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_i...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_inter...

Giles, K. What deters Russia: Enduring principles for responding to Moscow. Chatham House, 2021 https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/202...

This is seriously scary. I'd hope any NATO response to a cyberattack is in-kind, it seems really foolhardy to escalate a physical war over a cyberattack.

If it involves shutting down critical infrastructure, it’s the same as dropping bombs.

It very clearly is not. For example you can protect critical infrastructure by simply unplugging the Internet access to it.

Doesn't sound critical, then.

So, I, a non party to article 5 can trigger WWIII by a clever cyber attack masked as a state actor?

This is absolutely insane, we all know that it is practically impossible to prove who did a cyber attack unless the one that did it is openly talking about it.

"Cyberwarfare" is massively over hyped by the media and Hollywood. Stoltenberg seems out of touch with reality if he takes what he is saying seriously.

For one thing not all critical infrastructure is connected to the internet or "hackable." Nor should it be.

EMPs might do massive damage to modern electrical based infrastructure but I doubt anybody would consider an EMP attack "cyber."

So who will be the new Gavrilo Princip then?

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