Washington Ignores Cyberattack Threats, Putting Us All at Peril
Commentary: This article is a good read on what is going on in cyberwarfare and how it could dramatically effect our day to day lives as civilians in the US or any country dependant on information systems for survival.
For thousands of years, besieging armies sought to cut the water supplies to walled cities to break down their resistance. No matter how brave, a warrior could not fight without water, and the women and children he defended could not live long without it. The 21st-century-warfare version of depriving a city of water will be to deny entire states the ability to process, protect, and communicate information.
The astonishing thing about last spring’s alleged Russian cyberattack wasn’t the crippling effect it had on Estonian’s government and the lives of its citizens but the lack of serious reaction elsewhere. The European Union raised but one scolding finger, NATO sent a few experts to the Baltic nation, and the US protested mildly and briefly — then President Bush welcomed Putin to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. In fact, as the world witnessed the trial run of a new mode of warfare, pundits at The New York Times and other publications dismissed the digital assault on the tiny nation as much ado about nothing. Those what-me-worry voices miss three critical points:
First, Estonia’s advanced state as an e-society makes it appear uniquely vulnerable, but a full-scale cyber attack on the US could be far more devastating. Beyond the at-risk civilian sector, our armed forces rely on digitized information and communications to fuel their high tech hardware. If petroleum was the indispensable asset that decided campaigns in World War II, today the key is a military’s ability to collect, compute, communicate, and shoot. If the computers don’t work, the bombs don’t strike their targets.
Insiders acknowledge that the Department of Defense is worried about the vulnerability of its networks and weapons systems, and defensive security is being tightened. At the same time, officials are developing offensive methods, though these black programs are classified. Still, the Pentagon doesn’t seem to fully grasp the dangerous potential of this new domain of warfare. If you follow defense- budget dollars, funding still goes overwhelmingly to cold war era legacy systems meant to defeat Soviet tank armies, not Russian e-brigades.
Full Article and Source: Wired
