I'm really starting to take an issue with declaring all this stuff as "cyber war" or "cyber warfare" (here and everywhere else in this thread). It's not a war if there is no intend of actually killing people. Even something as intense as the "cold war", had the qualifier cold in it, because there was no open confrontation. And what is now summarized as cyber (intelligence) warfare is orders of magnitude less deadly (though not necessarily less damaging to our civil rights). It's not a war if I steal your trade secrets and undermine your negotiation positions in international treaties.
If you frame it as a "war" you get a whole different solution space. Instead of strengthening the IT security of domestic companies that build your core infrastructure you end up with "offense is the best defense" strategies and undermine the IT security of everyone. If you stop using war rhetoric this kind of statement:
> If you didn't see it, there's a link on another branch of the conversation containing (at least) 37 other countries involved in cyber [espionage].
> I'm really starting to take an issue with declaring all this stuff as "cyber war" or "cyber warfare" (here and everywhere else in this thread). It's not a war if there is no intend of actually killing people.
Countries are owning each others' communications, power, transportation, energy, food production, etc infrastructure. Sabotaging these can cripple a nation, not to mention kill people (check out damage from the recent Great Northeast Blackout - note here that it is not known whether this was a cyber attack).
The military and defense contractors are targets of attacks as well as industry. Titan Rain, Moonlight Maze and Operation Aurora are some well know geopolitically motivated attacks that breached defense contractors (includingLockheed Martin, Sandia), US internet infrastructure (including Rackspace, Google), aerospace (including NASA) and military (including the DoD).
You may remember this year that Wall Street and JP Morgan was hacked, that the DoD was hacked, that several hundred defense contractors were hacked, and that the list of people with top secret clearance was hacked. You may remember this year that Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system schematics were hacked.
In the eyes of the military, these things constitute an attack. They give it the name warfare. It certainly isn't classical warfare. Maybe we need a new term. I do like the "cold" term.
I'm really starting to take an issue with declaring all this stuff as "cyber war" or "cyber warfare" (here and everywhere else in this thread). It's not a war if there is no intend of actually killing people. Even something as intense as the "cold war", had the qualifier cold in it, because there was no open confrontation. And what is now summarized as cyber (intelligence) warfare is orders of magnitude less deadly (though not necessarily less damaging to our civil rights). It's not a war if I steal your trade secrets and undermine your negotiation positions in international treaties.
If you frame it as a "war" you get a whole different solution space. Instead of strengthening the IT security of domestic companies that build your core infrastructure you end up with "offense is the best defense" strategies and undermine the IT security of everyone. If you stop using war rhetoric this kind of statement:
> If you didn't see it, there's a link on another branch of the conversation containing (at least) 37 other countries involved in cyber [espionage].
becomes far less of an existential threat.