Why didn't anyone tell us? is the question everyone will be asking. Well, not everyone. A few of us, particularly Richard Clarke and more recently Leon Panetta, have been warning the nation. But too few have been listening. The threat, of course, is cyber warfare, the destructive use of computers to crash large-scale computer-based systems, what experts call the critical infrastructure.
That infrastructure includes: energy, communications, financial, and transportation systems, the systems upon which our economy and nation depend. They are all computer-operated now and all are vulnerable to cyber attack.
What's more, unlike warfare of the past, attacks can come from obscure, independent, malign hackers in basements anywhere in the world. And they are at work. Pentagon computer systems are more or less constantly under attack, too often successfully. So, in theory at least, we could have iron-clad, cover-riveted treaties with Russia, China, India, and virtually all other governments and none would protect us against the rogue hacker.
How will you know when the "cyber Pearl Harbor" has occurred? When the lights and heat in your home go off. When you can't make a phone call. When no ATM works. When your flight cannot land.
Several senators introduced the Cyber Security Act of 2012 to create a government-corporate partnership to protect the critical infrastructure, virtually all of which is in private, corporate ownership, from attack. It passed by a majority but was not filibuster-proof because of Republican opposition. How can this be?
It can be because, at the behest of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Senator John McCain, a reputed national security expert, led opposition to the measure. He and the Chamber argued that it imposed too many burdens on business.
Now, wait a minute. Our economy is totally dependent on critical systems. Those systems are owned by private corporations. Our national security leaders have declared them to be immanently threatened. Yet the owners of those systems don't want government intervention (even as the same corporate owners claim the principal duty of government is to protect us)?
Even the most ardent free enterprise Ayn Rand advocate is hard pressed to put profit ahead of national security. But that seems to be what the chief corporate lobbying group is saying. We don't want the government to tell us we have to harden our computer systems if it's going to cost money. This is appalling.
As this author has been writing and saying for quite a number of years, the warfare of the 21st century does not resemble the warfare of the past. The new warfare involves individuals or small cells using modern technology to attack our nation's greatest vulnerabilities. Those are computers. And our critical infrastructure will remain vulnerable so long as those who own them place their dedication to profit and their hostility toward the U.S. government ahead of national security and the national interest.
And no one should say we were not warned.
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Cyber warfare a real threat, the US Secretary of Defense warns
The Singularity is coming....
The holes in the system are just as aggravating now as they have continued to be.
The complexity of modern technology may very well lead to a catastrophic situation with devastating consequences. Never say never!
This fallacy has led, repeatedly, to actioning the idea that you can make the whole better off by making some people worse off. Almost 100 years of persisting in this fantasy has led us to where "we" are right now: spectacularly, profoundly in debt, more legislated, regulated, watched, monitored, and taxed than any generation in the history of the country, more divided, less free, angrier, and less civil than at any time since the Civil War. All, at root, because 'we' refuse to recognize that the individual is the basic, sovereign unit FOR WHOM 'society' exists and without whom society simply evaporates.
Corporations are a great example. Would great wealth be created if everyone acted as an individual? No way. When there is a common goal everyone will benefit from, and the sacrifice to reach the goal is shared, production is higher.
Our problem is we have no goal as a country, nothing we are all aiming for achieving. Absent a goal everyone can unite behind, people are left to achieve individual goals that require others to not achieve theirs for some to achieve theirs. This creates conflict and a battle for resources and power, and leads to the dysfunctional political system we have today.
In LIFE and for LIFE, you remove MONOPOLIES. You do not pow down to them or give up the game
Rockefeller's and Rothschild's MUST BE controlled not let to run while if you CHILDREN are to have any opportunity to LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS
nytimes.com/2012/06/01/obama-ordered-wave-of-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
The “Y2K” computer limitation (it was not a bug, since two-digit years were designed into older computer systems) was a real problem, requiring the replacement of many planning and accounting systems. However no one was ever in danger of a plane falling from the sky or the water stop flowing from the tap. And charlatans like Pat Robertson who was flogging water storage barrels and the Chinese government were absolute fools (especially the Chinese government since airplane navigation systems work off Greenwich Mean time and “midnight” in China, when they grounded their planes, was the “wrong” time to worry about anyway).
And this "consultant" is trying to repeat that scare.
Cyber attacks can and do happen. Microsoft experiences thousands a day. But Microsoft (to sue them as an example) has software security in place, and so do government agencies that have secure information.
So we will hear about individual attacks all the time, but we do not hear that any planes are crashing or elevators falling or water works closing down. And anyone who puts out nonsense like the stuff above is trying to sell you something.
A federal role in defense and security is widely accepted by sane and intelligent folks from all across the political spectrum -- even when they disagree on whether there is a proper federal role in Education, say, or bank regulation.
Sen. McCain certainly accepts a (HUGE) federal role in defense; why this man who lobbies constantly for US blood and treasure to be spilled in new wars against Israel's regional adversaries is AGAINST proper cybersecurity standards is baffling, I'll admit.
And FWIW... en-route centers, approach controls and airport control towers still have radios that work and controllers who can think.