Is the CIA or is China hacking the Web?

Performers take the stage May 2, 2011 near image of Mao Tse-tung at Beijing's Red Classic restaurant nostalgic for China's revolutionary past (Ng Han Guan/AP).

(CNET) The Chinese military wants to beef up its cyber-defense efforts as it anticipates greater threats originating from the U.S.

"The U.S. military is hastening to seize the commanding military heights on the Internet, and another Internet war is being pushed to a stormy peak," the Chinese military wrote in its official newspaper, Liberation Army Daily.

"Their actions remind us that to protect the nation's Internet security, we must accelerate Internet defense development and accelerate steps to make a strong Internet army."

Though Liberation Army Daily isn't an official mouthpiece for the Chinese government, Reuters, which first reported on the story, points out that it typically reflects the official opinion of China's ruling party. More

Is it the CIA?

Wisdom Quarterly

The best evidence pointing a finger at the CIA is twofold. It has easy access (through the NSA, Google, Facebook, misconstruing the Patriot Act, as well as subversive and clandestine means such as co-opting arrested hackers), and what it stands to gain is enormous. It would gain a blanket cover story, with plausible deniability for itself as the source.

In this way it can accuse China, or any other convenient cyber "terrorist" group it wants to target for "retaliation," all the while explaining how American citizens lost our privacy. CIA Agent Phillip Agee explained how it's done in general. In particular, My Lai and Ben Tre* revealed CIA involvement prompting the US military during the U.S. war on Vietnam:

"We had to destroy [privacy] in order to save it."

The CIA has followed the same tactics in the Americas (Agee himself being involved in them) and is following them today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen. Why not one more front, the Web itself?

And the blame is put on an "anonymous" hacker group to show that, far from being the perpetrator, the CIA is the victim of malicious hacks humiliating it. Remedy? Orwellian clampdown? All out cyber-war?

Oh no, CIA hacked; this means war!
(WPN) The hacker group LulzSec, famous for their gaming community hacks, is moving on to bigger targets. While the group has claimed responsibility for hacks and data dumps against Sony, Bethesda, and Nintendo in the past, they recently went after the U.S. Senate and have now taken down the CIA’s website. More

• *One of the most famous quotes of the Vietnam War was from the AP writing about the provincial capital Bến Tre in 1968: "'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties..."