The Obama administration would be required to define a cyber act of war under a bill announced on Monday by U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD).
Rounds, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that he would introduce the Cyber Act of War Act to require the administration to establish guidelines for when a cyber attack rises to an act of war.
“With the Internet playing a major role in nearly every aspect of our lives, we not only face the threat of losing our personal information online, but we are at risk of having our daily lives interrupted by cyber-attacks that have the ability to cripple our power grid, water supplies and communications networks,” Rounds said.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting in February, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, confirmed in response to a question from Rounds that it would be “extremely helpful” to have a clear definition of what constitutes a cyber act of war.
“Cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure are capable of impacting our entire economy and causing significant destruction,” Rounds said. “This legislation would require the executive branch to define which of these actions constitute a cyber act of war, which would allow our military to be better able to respond to cyber attacks and deter bad actors from attempting to attack us in the first place.”
Under the bill, the administration would be directed to consider how cyber attacks could be equivalent to attacks that use conventional weapons, as well as the intangible effects of cyber attacks.