Cyber Survival: Why We’re Losing and What’s Needed to Win. Steven Chabinsky speaks at the American Center for Democracy.
And so, when I hear people talk about a cyber 9/11, or a cyber Pearl Harbor, I’m quite dismissive of those as being appropriate analogies. Instead, what I believe is that we very much might face the equivalent of a cyber Katrina. Where we don’t have resources, we don’t have potable water, we don’t have electricity. What we have are all of the cascading harms that are reflected in Bill Fortschen’s writings, which are every bit or more as devastating as planes with bombs or planes as bombs. These effects are real possibilities, and nations recognize it. Only a couple of years ago, the China Youth Daily featured an article expressing, “Just as nuclear warfare was the strategic war of the industrial era, cyber-warfare has become the strategic war of the information era, and this has become a form of battle that is massively destructive and concerns the life and death of nations.”
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse is certainly an emerging threat against availability and, as a result, an emerging risk to our very way of life. I greatly appreciate the efforts of the American Center for Democracy in bringing thought leadership and emphasis to this important topic. Of more immediate concern, however, may be EMP’s baby brother, “purposeful interference,” more commonly known as jamming. We already are seeing people with $25 illegal jammers interfere with the electromagnetic spectrum, most commonly focused on impeding mobile communications. Think about a situation that requires emergency responders to talk with each other, perhaps an active shooter scenario, hindered through purposeful interference.
And so, when I hear people talk about a cyber 9/11, or a cyber Pearl Harbor, I’m quite dismissive of those as being appropriate analogies. Instead, what I believe is that we very much might face the equivalent of a cyber Katrina. Where we don’t have resources, we don’t have potable water, we don’t have electricity. What we have are all of the cascading harms that are reflected in Bill Fortschen’s writings, which are every bit or more as devastating as planes with bombs or planes as bombs. These effects are real possibilities, and nations recognize it. Only a couple of years ago, the China Youth Daily featured an article expressing, “Just as nuclear warfare was the strategic war of the industrial era, cyber-warfare has become the strategic war of the information era, and this has become a form of battle that is massively destructive and concerns the life and death of nations.”
