Sec. Clinton is off in Estonia for a High Muckamuck level confab to talk about what NATO should be doing with itself. I think the biggest military alliance the world has ever seen has been managing to keep busy just fine, but every few years they seem to have these angsty existential crises.
NATO’s core Article 5 famously states “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”
Well, they’re mulling what that means in the Brave New Cyber World over in Estonia – target, incidentally, of a significant attack a couple years back that probably came from Russia.
NATO’s commander recently wrote
“In NATO in particular, in my view, we need to talk about what defines an attack … because in this unsettled sea in which we sail, I believe it is more likely that an attack will come not off the bomb rack of an aircraft but as electrons moving down a fiber optic cable.”
But what’s that mean for NATO? A sprawling multi-country alliance doesn’t seem likely to be the proper way to respond to cyber attacks, but if it can help with coordination, information sharing and defense among members, that would be a bonus.
