The White House is looking for a way to combat the Islamic State in cyberspace, according to a published report.
The administration wants to “see options” for cyberattacks, an official quoted in a Los Angeles Times report said over the weekend. “That doesn’t mean [attacks] are all in play. It just means they want to look at what ways we can pressure” the Islamic State, he added.
“If you do see something that is in service of an active operation, you may want to take some action to disrupt that operation,” Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser to the president, told the paper.
According to the report, the White House directed Pentagon officials to develop some form of cyberoffensive following the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. At least one of the two perpetrators in that incident was active on social media, and reports have indicated the second was radicalized at least in part on the Internet.
The report also comes as the presidential front-runners in each party have said they would take greater measures to deter the Islamic State online. Hillary Clinton called on Silicon Valley to put the “great disrupters at work … disrupting ISIS” on Dec. 6, while Donald Trump has repeatedly called for “closing [the Internet in] areas where we are at war with somebody.”
