Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — Al Qaida has focused on planning massive cyber attacks on the United States.

Officials said the Al Qaida campaign was meant to disrupt power supply, banks, critical facilities, including nuclear plants, without sending fighters into the United States.

“We’re in a pre-9/11 moment, in some respects, with cyber,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, referring to Al Qaida’s suicide air strikes in 2001, said.

In an address to the Aspen Security Forum on July 24, Carlin reflected the U.S. assessment of significantly enhanced Al Qaida capabilities. He said Al Qaida has adopted cyber warfare as a strategy and tested the feasibility of such operations.

“It’s clear that the terrorists want to use cyber-enabled means to cause the maximum amount of destruction to our infrastructure,” Carlin said. “It’s clear because they have said it.”

In 2013, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was struck by a massive attack that targeted the kingdom’s energy sector. The cyber attack knocked out 30,000 computers of Saudi Arabia’s energy monopoly, Saudi Aramco. Operatives linked to Iran were believed to have conducted the attack.

Carlin said the U.S. government has intensified monitoring of Al Qaida and other cyber warriors, including China. He did not rule out the prospect of joint attacks on the United States.

“We’ve become much much better at observing what is currently going on in terms of the information that as we speak is being taken from hard working Americans who are looking to create and innovate, and it’s being stolen, day in and day out, and used by their competitors to the disadvantage of the American companies,” Carlin said. “From our perspective we have to apply the same type of approach that we did to terrorism to the national security cyber threat.”

  ‘Pre-9/11 moment’: Officials say Al Qaida planning massive cyber attack on U.S., Aspen Security Forum, John Carlin, Saudi Aramco