How Glenn Greenwald Made President Obama's Meeting WIth China's President Xi Jinping In The California Desert A Drag

Walter Annenberg was connected. He built his familiy's business from publishing a shady race track form to an empire publishing TV Guide, Seventeen, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nixon appointed him Ambassador to England in return for his financial and editorial assistance to the Republican Party. In 1976 the Queen made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), something every Republican plutocrat aspires to. His palatial estate in Rancho Mirage, our near Palm Springs, was often billed as Camp David West and hosted events for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushs, Margaret Thatcher, as well as for every puffed-out monarch that had thus far escaped being decapitated-- from Queen Elizabeth to the last criminal Shah of Iran. Reagan appointed his second wife, Leonore, Chief of Protocol for the State Department.

Today, his Sunnylands estate, is still used for diplomatic events and in 2013-- June 7 and 8, it was the site of the "shirtsleeves summit" between Obama and Xi Jinping. As Bobby Flay was preparing dinner to delight the two presidents' taste buds, The Guardian was publishing an article by Glenn Greenwald, Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks. This was especially ill-timed for Obama who wanted to meet with President Xi to get on his ass about cyberattacks from China.

President Obama said Friday that he told China's President Xi Jinping that it's critical they come to an understanding on how they'll work together on cybersecurity, one of the most contentious issues facing the two nations.

…China has been widely linked to network break-ins of numerous Western companies and agencies. And Obama issued an executive order this year to compel government and industry to share intelligence about network breaches, mainly to protect the nation's infrastructure.

The Pentagon also blamed China for cyberattacks in its annual report to U.S. lawmakers on Chinese military capabilities. The report, published in May, stated that some of the recent cyberattacks in the United States appeared "to be attributable directly to Chinese government and military."

Xi didn't address those charges but said China was also the victim of cyberattacks. He added that through good faith negotiations the U.S. and China could make the issue "a positive area of cooperation."

Greenwald's article included an unpublished Presidential Policy Directive issued in October 2012, which, according to Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair, "instructs the secretary of defense, director of national intelligence and head of the CIA to create a list of overseas targets of 'national importance' for possible cyberattacks. The purpose of the tentative attacks is not heightened defense, retaliatory action or even as a pre-emptive measure. It is to 'advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.' Dauntingly the commander in chief also humors domestic targeting but specifies such theoretical operations cannot be carried out unless he has issued his consent or there is a national emergency, whereby various departments are authorized to act autonomously. Likewise the 18-page manuscript states cyberattacks are to conform to U.S. and international law unless they are overridden by presidential approval." Obama must have flipped. I bet he's still mad at Glenn!

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America's offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama's move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have "mountains of data" on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as those China was accused of having carried out against the US.

Presidential Policy Directive 20 defines OCEO as "operations and related programs or activities… conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, that are intended to enable or produce cyber effects outside United States government networks."

Asked about the stepping up of US offensive capabilities outlined in the directive, a senior administration official said: "Once humans develop the capacity to build boats, we build navies. Once you build airplanes, we build air forces."

The official added: "As a citizen, you expect your government to plan for scenarios. We're very interested in having a discussion with our international partners about what the appropriate boundaries are."

…The US is understood to have already participated in at least one major cyber attack, the use of the Stuxnet computer worm targeted on Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges, the legality of which has been the subject of controversy. US reports citing high-level sources within the intelligence services said the US and Israel were responsible for the worm.

In the presidential directive, the criteria for offensive cyber operations in the directive is not limited to retaliatory action but vaguely framed as advancing "US national objectives around the world."

The revelation that the US is preparing a specific target list for offensive cyber-action is likely to reignite previously raised concerns of security researchers and academics, several of whom have warned that large-scale cyber operations could easily escalate into full-scale military conflict.

Sean Lawson, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Utah, argues: "When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force."

An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking--breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.

Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."

The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for "doing what we do every day," the source added.

One of the unclassified points released by the administration in January stated: "It is our policy that we shall undertake the least action necessary to mitigate threats and that we will prioritize network defense and law enforcement as preferred courses of action."

When Americans win something big-- like some kind of title or a ball game series or something like that, Obama calls them and congratulates them and sometimes invites them to the White House. Greenwald, like Obama, a constitutional lawyer (although not that much like Obama) was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as well as the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. No invitation to visit the White House… and not even a hacked phone call!