To keep us better informed (more likely, only slightly less disinformed), I offer up some articles today that are from the “dark side” of cyber. Well, maybe “dark” is the wrong word, except in the sense that it’s not easy to access the “cultures” therein. So, let’s just say “murky.” I would not have it said that readers of the EWI Digest/Blog are deficient in knowledge about Anonymous. Below they will find a piece on Anonymous’s short-lived threat against the Zetas in Mexico and an article entitled “Anonymous 101.” I also include what strikes me as an interesting, if wholly paranoid and perverse, look at what a major antiwar sort takes the meaning of cyberthreat to be.
Back closer to Planet Earth in substance, you will find that at least one commentator has figured out that the threat of armed attack is no deterrent to cyberwarfare. After all, has it been a deterrent to terrorism. There’s also a rebuttal to Aussie Desmond Ball’s recent arguments regarding the weakness of China’s cyber capabilities. And you’ll find a couple of pieces arguing their strength. A number of articles argue that both the Chinese military and the Pentagon (DARPA) are hiring divisions of cyberwonks, then Joseph Steinberg comes along to give us the bad news that we’re training more Chinese than Americans in IT and sending IT jobs abroad to the extent of harming our hacking capacity. Another piece argues that we better not cyber-attack a real adversary because the United States’s cyber-vulnerability is too great. After reading these things, I concluded that I very much hoped that our peace activist friend mentioned above is not paranoid in suggesting that the next war will be led off by a massive U.S. cyber attack on our enemies. Seems to me that we badly need a nasty cyber-industrial complex.
Incidentally, the “Duqu” worm alarmists will be surprised to learn the Stuxnet virus did not decimate the Iranian capacity to centrifuge uranium to the extent we thought. They have the IAEA’s word for it.