Ryan Singel’s cri de coeur about cyberwar hype is too juicy to merely provide a link. A few choice excerpts:
The Washington Post gave [former DIRNSA and DNI] McConnell free space to declare that we are losing some sort of cyberwar…But that’s not warfare. That’s espionage…Those enamored with the idea of “cyberwar” aren’t dissuaded by fact-checking…[if the DoS attack on Estonia] was cyberwar, it’s pretty clear the net will be just fine. In fact, none of [the commonly cited examples] demonstrate the existence of a cyberwar, let alone that we are losing it. But this battle isn’t about truth. It’s about power…
the problem with developing cyberweapons…is that you need to know where to point them…The military needs targets…Never shy of extending its power, the military industrial complex wants to turn the internet into yet another venue for an arms race. And it’s waging a psychological warfare campaign on the American people to make that so. The military industrial complex is backed by sensationalism, and a gullible and pageview-hungry media…
There is no cyberwar and we are not losing it. The only war going on is one for the soul of the internet. But if…self-interested exaggerators dominate our nation’s discourse about online security, we will lose that war — and the open internet will be its biggest casualty.
On the opposite end of the nuance spectrum: more than 41% of the zeros of the zeta function are on the critical line.
just because nothing with any significant real-world effects has been executed yet doesn’t mean it ever will be. a successful DOS of NIPRNet wouldn’t be an act of war? retargeting a Hellfire via IP? tweaking wall street and devaluing the dollar via confidence loss? it’s a pretty broad spectrum out there, and a blanket statement that nothing will ever amount to an act of war is about as credible as a blank statement saying the gov’t should completely control the innernet.
Agreed, obviously.
not so obvious from Singel’s comments, maybe it’s just the excerpting but those words sound like he’s part of the tin-foil-hat crowd: afraid of any gov’t involvement in the internet at all and downplaying any potential harm from malicious activity at all.
Singel has a point. Both he and the “sky is falling” crowd are misleading. The result of both POVs is that most people won’t take the real threats seriously enough.