Truman Senior Fellow Gail Harris in Foreign Policy Association:
In the March/April 2012 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine, Thomas Rid wrote an article called Think Again: Cyberwar. The subtitle was: Don’t Fear the Digital Bogeyman Virtual Conflict is Still More Hype Than Reality. He states his premise up front:
“Time for a reality check: Cyberwar is still more hype than hazard. Consider the definition of an act of war: It has to be potentially violent, it has to be purposeful, and it has to be political. The cyberattacks we’ve seen so far, from Estonia to the Stuxnet virus, simply don’t meet these criteria.”
He then goes on to build some powerful arguments to support his case. I thought the article was well written but he missed a couple of key points. First his definition of war is outdated and doesn’t take in the new reality of how wars are and will be conducted in the 21st Century. In terms of warfare, Cyber is many things. It’s a weapon and it’s a domain that military forces operate in. Cyber is also the backbone of how our highly technical military operates. Cyber attacks have the potential to cripple military operations. A generation used to computers doing a lot of work that was done manually in past conflicts would be forced to learn new ways of doing business on the fly and possibly in the midst of simultaneously conducting combat operations.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Truman National Security Project or Educational Institute.
