Report: Obama ordered his team to ID potential overseas cyberattack targets

President Obama meets with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) among other members of his security team.

(Image credit: CC BY: The White House)

last updated 8 January 2015

In yet another major disclosure of the White House's clandestine intelligence operations, the Guardian reported Friday that President Obama ordered his national security team to create a list of potential foreign targets for cyberattacks.

An 18-page directive issued last October called for the government to "identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO [Offensive Cyber Effects Operations] can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power."

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The disclosure caps a three-day whirlwind of explosive leaks that offered controversial new details about the administration's national security and intelligence gathering policies. Late Wednesday, the Guardian broke the news that the administration had secretly collected phone records for millions of Verizon customers. And Thursday, both the Guardian and Washington Post reported that the government had direct access to the servers of nine major tech companies — including Google, Facebook, and Apple — and used that access to pull troves of personal information in a program called PRISM.

Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.

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