Ex-U.S. general urges frank talk on cyber weapons

The United States should be more open about its development of offensive cyber weapons and spell out when it will use them as it grapples with an increasing barrage of attacks by foreign hackers, the former No. 2 uniformed officer in the U.S. military said.

"We've got to step up the game; we've got to talk about our offensive capabilities and train to them; to make them credible so that people know there's a penalty to this," said James Cartwright, the four-star Marine Corps general who retired in August as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cartwright, who raised the profile of cyber security issues while still in uniform, said that the increasing intensity and frequency of network attacks by hackers underscored the need for an effective deterrent. "You can't have something that's a secret be a deterrent. Because if you don't know it's there, it doesn't scare you," said Cartwright, now a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.