The USA is ramping up for cyber-warfare and is building up a new headquarters of Cyber Command for the  military worth $358 million. The HQ is being built on a golf course which formerly belonged to the military.  It is the same course where President Dwight Eisenhower used to play.

The HQ will be located 25 miles to the north of Washington in Maryland’s Fort Meade. The command will be adding 3,000 to 4,000 cyber warriors. These are the projected figures for the end of 2015. Once this many people are hired, the US will quadruple its cyber defenses which will be in charge of defending cyber-attacks from adversaries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

The focus will not only stay on defense but the hired professionals whom will also be trained for offense in case the US faces any cyber-attacks. Keith Alexander, the Army General and Cyber Command head told Reuters that the professionals will be trained to the highest standards on both sides of electronic warfare.

For years the US has claimed that China, Russia and its other adversaries have actually conducted cyber espionage and stolen intellectual property rights but now there are chances that the cyber-attacks may be disruptive in nature and catastrophically damage military systems, financial networks, power grids and air travel.  With this new cyber-warfare command, it targets to make cyber-warfare an integral part any military campaign.

Officials from Washington said that the US will only attack when she is attacked. However, there is a large scale disagreement on this statement among various countries who cited the example of the Stuxnet virus which was co-developed by Israel and the US and used against Iran’s nuclear program.  Stuxnet was a very sophisticated virus and nuclear enrichment centrifuges were damaged by the virus at the Natanz facility of Iran.  It is worth noting that while the US has openly discussed cyber-attacks against it,  the USA has always kept its offensive cyber operations classified. The best example is the PRISM program which gathered personal information about people from various online services and companies without letting anyone know about the program. The PRISM program extended beyond the boundaries of the US and is a serious question on freedom and liberty.