Did the U.S. help make Stuxnet?

Interviewed by CNBC, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn would not deny that the U.S. was involved in creating Stuxnet: "this is not something that we're going to be able to answer," he told correspondent Melissa Lee.

• [Mr. Winka]

  “Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt. That’s the first thing they teach you.”

• [noen]

  If they did it is certainly preferable to the nuclear tipped bunker buster bombs they were considering using at the time.

• [Anonymous]

  No, that sounds like a natural follow up to his previous answer. To summarise:

  ‘Was the US involved?’

  ‘It’s very difficult to attribute this to anyone at the moment.’

  ‘But was the US involved?’

  ‘Like I said we are unable to work that out without further investigation.’

  Which is really a lot less damning than ‘We are unable to confirm or deny…’ etc.

• [teapot]

  Did BB miss the earlier debate? This “new” commentary from William Lynn is nothing but chaff to confuse serious investigation.

  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/did-a-us-government-lab-help-israel-develop-stuxnet.ars

  Stuxnet is so incredibly precise, so incredibly careful in maintaining secrecy of its operation and so setup-specific that there is absolutely no doubt that Israel and the US Govt had a hand in creating it.

• [Anonymous]

  So if the US doesn’t deny doing it, then isn’t the US admitting that they did help make it?

  • [emmdeeaych]

    It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate on it

• [frankieboy]

  they wish they did it.

• [Eli]

  People are reading WAY too much into this. The DoD never confirms or denies covert activities. If they denied the things they didn’t do, it would be pretty easy to figure out exactly what they did do.

  Also, I’m not sure I’d want to publicly disclaim credit for a really impressive hack, even if I had nothing to do with it.

  • [turn_self_off]

    Yep, better to feed the FUD about what US military can and can not do then be open about it. Mind games are a big part of the military life at command level. Hell, it was what kept the cold war from boiling over. This because either side was not 100% they could get in a perfect attack without the enemy retaliating. Tho for a time there was some nutcases on either side that found some loss of life (in the order of 2-3 cities worth) to be an acceptable cost related to taking out the enemy…

    • [aratuk]

      I think this policy is less about FUD than it is the fact that there are a lot of questions where the answer can be inferred by a process of elimination if you start providing any answers at all to otherwise innocuous sub-questions.

      However, this guy does sound especially ridiculous with his non-answers.

• [Anonymous]

  Which means the government has no idea where Stuxnet came from, but finds it advantageous to give the appearance that they had something to do with it.

• [Bluemoon]

  Why do some people have such a hard time telling the difference between a Non answer and a Lie.

  responsible honest answer: We can’t answer that. = we can’t confirm that, and we can’t deny that. there are too many factors for such a simple response.

  republican answer: nope

• [codesuidae]

  preferable to the nuclear tipped bunker buster bombs

  Nuclear tipped? What’s the rest of it made of?

• [mr_josh]

  [michael bluth voice]You’re still askin’ that?[/michael]

• [davejenk1ns]

  Five responses in, and Bluemoon breaks the Partisan barrier. Jenkins Rule, engage!