- Aug 4, 2009
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Why World War III will be fought on the internet - The Week
Within the last 100 years, the face of warfare has evolved dramatically, and rapidly. In the First World War, soldiers were dragging themselves through muddy trenches and dodging mortars. In the Second World War, V-2 rockets and atom bombs made the news — and in Russia, Italian soldiers faced off against Russian troops for the last significant cavalry charge in history. The Gulf Wars brought us long-range missiles and, ultimately, drones. Today, we're facing an entirely different kind of battlefield and a different brand of weaponry.
Over the course of history, war has become more and more abstract, not just in terms of its aim, but the weapons used. Close-quarters fighting has grown unusual, as have battles fought over obvious and tangible resources like land. Today, wars are about politics, and the tools we use to fight them distance warriors from each other — a soldier in Arizona can command a drone strike in Pakistan, while a hacker in Russia can execute code thousands of miles from a target.
We have lost the immediacy of warfare, which, in a way, seems to make it more inevitable. Isolation from the consequences of war is a one-way ticket to boosting confidence in waging it. In the case of cyberwar, those consequences could be huge. This isn't a matter of corporate hackings and embarrassingly leaked emails, accurately defined as "vandalism" by the Obama Administration. This is a case of oil pipeline explosions,shutdowns of power grids, nuclear reactor meltdowns, sabotage of weapons systems, and other events that could cause substantial damage, and significant fatalities.
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Within the last 100 years, the face of warfare has evolved dramatically, and rapidly. In the First World War, soldiers were dragging themselves through muddy trenches and dodging mortars. In the Second World War, V-2 rockets and atom bombs made the news — and in Russia, Italian soldiers faced off against Russian troops for the last significant cavalry charge in history. The Gulf Wars brought us long-range missiles and, ultimately, drones. Today, we're facing an entirely different kind of battlefield and a different brand of weaponry.
Over the course of history, war has become more and more abstract, not just in terms of its aim, but the weapons used. Close-quarters fighting has grown unusual, as have battles fought over obvious and tangible resources like land. Today, wars are about politics, and the tools we use to fight them distance warriors from each other — a soldier in Arizona can command a drone strike in Pakistan, while a hacker in Russia can execute code thousands of miles from a target.
We have lost the immediacy of warfare, which, in a way, seems to make it more inevitable. Isolation from the consequences of war is a one-way ticket to boosting confidence in waging it. In the case of cyberwar, those consequences could be huge. This isn't a matter of corporate hackings and embarrassingly leaked emails, accurately defined as "vandalism" by the Obama Administration. This is a case of oil pipeline explosions,shutdowns of power grids, nuclear reactor meltdowns, sabotage of weapons systems, and other events that could cause substantial damage, and significant fatalities.
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