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Collateral Damage From Cyber Warfare?
theodp writes "If you're thinking about applying for that open US cyber warfare czar position, Robert X. Cringely points out that you will have to effectively function as a world cyber warfare czar, a fact that neither Republican nor Democratic Administrations have yet been willing to embrace, at least in public. The international nature of today's outsourced-and-offshored IT business has big implications for US security. Try to do a security audit of your company's technical resources in Argentina or Bangladesh, suggests Bob, and see what nightmare is unveiled. Toss some random Code Gods into the mix, says Cringely, and it's really too tough to predict who might win in a game of US vs. Albania."
Maybe it is time to end this man-made idiocy of nations and borders?
They could probably make a better claim to the WORLD position (after all, it's not like the WORLD series - where only americans take part), having as they do, the great population size and a lot more cyber security already in place.
But then again, I suppose Cringely is pandering to an audience, who just want to be told that they're (still) king of the world - no matter what the reality is.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It is really simple, no one country owns the internet and therefore no one country can stand alone in cyber warfare. I do think that it will take a long time to get past the politics around it being related to any government.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Outsource cyber warfare department TO China and avoid
all the complications.
Yours In Socialism,
K. Trout
None of the widely used operating systems out there is secure. Until we embrace microkernels which have been proven to be secure, along with default usage of the object capability model, we'll never be safe.
It's possible to secure a computer to withstand the full force of the internet, even with normal users... but not with the code we have now.
Tannenbaum is right about microkernels... and Linus has reached the wrong conclusion.
There are a few ways any country can "win" in a cyber-war. For one the wires can be cut, I remember a year or two ago a lot of undersea cables were cut by anchors leaving people with no internet. If you really want to get a country off of the internet, theres a lot more ways of doing it than with DoS attacks. What we really need is a totally global net. One where you can't tell which country the IP is from, one without government control. Its too hard to do this with the current net, but a second internet could easily be born with all these things in place.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... is there really a cyber WAR going on? Are people dying? No? Then I don't want to hear about it.
Internet isnt about geographical borders, and treating it like it is definately will cause collateral damage. So far most of internet based attacks were done by individuals or groups of individuals not related with government (at least, not directly). Even If we put a complex (?) criminal organization instead of a single person behind the biggest botnets, we would not be speaking about countries. And even if countries try to get a cyberarmy, probably the biggest talents (and so threats) will want to be out of there.
Probably a better example could be spam. Some administrators take as policy ban entire countries because too much spam coming from there. You think could be some collateral victims in that approach if made generic? (hint, most of the spam is still generated in US).
1. nationalism a populist force. not an artificial force propped up by financial influence
2. the rich are served by poorer workers in other countries. there is in fact a free market in labor, since there are rules on paper, but nothing really stops corporations from shopping for the locations of factories in the countries with the cheapest workers available
3. if workers could move wherever they want, they would all move to the places with the highest salaries. this would dramatically increase the pool of workers in a given field in those locations, thereby bringing down the salaries in that field in that location. thereby nullifying the value of moving in the first place
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As disturbing as it is to me, that is the way things seem to be going. "World" or "International" is a word being thrown around at the government level for a long time now. Especially since countries are slowly becoming more and more combined in terms of borders (look at the European Union, and the proposed North American Union and Asian Union). While I don't agree or think these "unions" are great ideas, having the position of the cyber security "czar" be a kind of international position would sorta make sense...
I do nit envy whoever gets that position though, since trying to even audit network information, or anything to do with an overseas country is a real pain. A company I worked for had elements in Argentina as well as India (mostly outsourcing of support calls for India) and some of the things were obnoxious that had to be done to audit security and network policies.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
As virtual as the Intertubez are, there still IS a physical layer. You could have the L33t-est of hackers in Albania, but that's not going to mean a damned thing when a Super Power decides to start surgical strikes on your infrastructure.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm tired of the resources of my nation being used to protect the world. I would really rather see our Cyber Czar take the opposite approach:
Secure our stuff, and let the rest of the world deal with their own problems in the way they best see fit.
This would require a moderate paradigm shift, to be sure, for example:
1) US-based corps that choose to outsource will need to factor this into their costs. Perhaps a US-based callcenter, backed by our security efforts, would be a better investment.
2) The original concept of the 'net would need to be reinstated - where if one or many nodes go down, the bulk of it remains functional.
3) Vendors inside the US would need to be encouraged to step it up and provide equivalent IT products to those available overseas. ...and so on, and so on...
I propose we look at the US in much the way any Security Pro looks at his sponsoring company. I can't be concerned with securing everyone on my same internet subnet. That's their deal. I wouldn't propose to use services and resources on those (presumably unsecured) nodes. Only my own IP's are my concern. The opposite is insanity, and is simply not in the best interests of those paying my paycheck. Same for our government, IMHO.
Likewise, where exactly in the Constitution is 'policing Pakistan's internet' supported? Are we still talking about the Commerce Clause? Because at some point it is going to logically fail. You can't just keep expanding power without putting paper behind it, unless we're ready to scrap the whole notion of a common set of national guidelines for what our government should and should not be.
If you haven't seen Die Hard IV: Revenge of the Nerds, you should. It's a great nerd movie (at least, the unrated version is, the theatrical release was more like a censored for TV version).
Almost all the characters except John McClain are nerds. "Freddy", AKA "W4rlock", is the stereotypical uber-nerd, living in his mom's basement. In the movie, America's infrastructure is attacked programatticaly. As McClain and Farrell (a former black hat who has turned white hat) are flying the helicoppter over the darkened city (the bad guys have killed all the electricity) trying to find w4rlock, McClain asks him how they're going to find his house. "Easy, it'll be the one with the lights on".
The premise of the movie is a "fire sale" - everything must go. The bad guys turn all the traffic lights green, causing massive traffic accidents, then have the stock market boards show losses in all stocks, causing wall street panic, kill the electricity, etc.
It's great mindless fun about cyber-warfare. From the wikipedia article about the film
Free Martian Whores!
Just to clear, Bangladesh practically doesn't do any coding [if you consider scale]. On the other hand, poster joking mentioned Bangladesh
...you will long for bullets, bombs, and nukes.
It will be nasty beyond measure. Worse than anything save nukes.
We need to accept this, and prepare for the inevitable.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Who would win in any given matchup are underground groups. not any countries. no resources a formal government is able to muster can top the able hackers of underground scenes. this has been the case all along. us, china, russia, any of them has been hacked by these people wantonly, at will. neither this will change with applicatio of a 'cybersecurity tzar' or any such absurd official, or mustering of millions of $ and hundreds of men in any country's 'cyberwarfare unit'.
hacking, cracking, infiltration, security et al - these all require huge talent in their highest levels (im not talking about phishing or script kiddying), and curiously this type of talent is found in the most rebellious, unruly minds of any society. good luck to you in recruiting those to any government's 'cybersecurity team'. if one thing is in common in these types, its their mutual hatred of any kind of establishment.
am i one of them ? no. but i can appreciate talent, and i can see cold hard truth as it is.
Read radical news here
why the HELL are countries connecting their sensitive networks and data to internet ANYWAY ? it doesnt take millions of bucks and hundreds of it people and a 'cybersecurity tzar' to realize that ANYthing sensitive that is connected to internet is hackable, REGARDLESS of you outsource, offshore, implement hard, tight, restrictive internet controls and protocols, or track every move of every goddamn person on the internet or not.
if you want security, DONT CONNECT YOUR SENSITIVE NETWORKS TO INTERNET. period.
Read radical news here
The man is a tremendous douche who always writes ridiculous articles so that people get their dander up and drive traffic. He's nothing more than a journo-troll.
And this whole cyber-crap thing misses the mark. First off, nix the cyber. Nothing makes you sound less knowledgeable than using cyber when talking about computers. Second off, computer warfare is just another way of fucking with the enemy's infrastructure. If anything, you could classify it a subset of cold warfare. That's anything that's indirect, doesn't involve the acting killing of others, but is a true struggle between nations. Economic warfare is the usual manifestation with trade wars, resource wars, and political maneuvering. It's not some crazy new thing that's all black leather and sexy computer chicks.
Did you steal info from a poorly-secured computer system? Great, that's just digital espionage. You could have sent a guy in with a camera to photograph stuff 30 years ago but you did it with a computer now. Same idea, different tools. Did you crash his telcom system? Great. Could have been done with a saboteur 30 years ago (generally poor luck with that sort of thing) but you managed it from your desk. Excellent.
While there will always be security holes in software, most of this exposure can be mitigated against with simple, sensible procedures. The thing we tend to forget is real life ain't like Hollywood. It may be cool in Chuck to think that a guy with a supercomputer armband can hijack a Predator whenever he feels like it but that's not reality. It may be cool to think that a hacker could pick any target he wants and break in but it's usually more a matter of running scripts and finding holes where you can get them, very luck of the draw.
When it comes to infrastructure attacks, I'm far less concerned with computer attacks. Throughout this country, we have a number of single points of failure that would be difficult to replace. Any civil engineer could draw up a hitlist in five minutes far more knowledgeable than I'm going to suggest here.
1. Long-haul transmission lines. It wouldn't take that much explosive to bring a tower down and they're often running through isolated areas. Knock a few towers down, then we're stuck spending billions to guard the rest.
2. While everyone is preoccupied with towers, hit the ...crap, I'm forgetting the name. My memory is wonky here but there's some expensive stuff used in electrical distribution that has very long lead times for ordering replacements. Blow up one of these, it could be a year before the new one arrives.
3. While everyone is preoccupied with that, send a few Lee Malvo teams to randomly snipe people around the country. Doesn't matter that the average commuter is ten times more likely to die in a crash that day than get sniped, everyone will panic.
4. While everyone is preoccupied with snipers, one of the other soft targets can be hit. Seriously, one electrical line failing took out New York. Making that happen again would have to be easier than plots like blowing up tanker trucks in the tunnels.
By all means, let's protect the computers but it's attacks like I've outlined above that I think would prove far more deadly. Of course, if I were the terrorist, I'd rather fart around with computer attacks from the safety of my cave than risk entering the target country but that's just me. I think people should be ridiculed for their political views, not killed. I'd make a lousy terrorist.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
lol!
nationalism is in fact a corrosive force in the world. i share your hatred of it. i share your hatred of the rich too. but at least i understand what nationalism is and what the rich aristocracy is a hell of a lot better than you do. the notion that it is invented by the rich is retarded
nationalism is really just a form of tribalism, extended over a broader area because of commonalities of ethnic allegiance and shared language. it requires a modern media to drive it, and this explains why and how modern european nationalism arose after the invention of the printing press
but it's all self-emerging, it requires no force to drive it. there is no funding needed to create nationalism, it is just something that appears amongst passionate nationalists, most often the poor middle class, in fact: study the history of any nations nationalistic heroes
in fact, much of the agenda and interests of the rich and the aristocratic classes throughout history is diametrically opposed to nationalistic forces, and the rich have frequently succumbed to populist nationalist uprisings throughout history. the aristocracy was and is often described by nationalist narratives as sell-outs ready to betray their own people
not that plenty of rich in many countries are often enthusiastically nationalistic, but this not a cause-effect relationship, in either direction. just look at the history of communist china or communist russia if you want to see a better example of the rich being skewered in the name of populist nationalist uprisings, nevermind the fact that nationalist instincts in those countries are still continuously manipulated propagandisitically according to governmental instruments- not the rich
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Proposed by who? It isn't something I have seen getting any serious political attention, so talking about it as if it is a serious possibility is on the level with talking about the proposed Interplanetary Union.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What we've already observed is the fact that cyber-warfare is a very real reality. Sure, it hasn't become a problem for the lowest common denominator, but there is no un-crossing that line, and no amount of pretending can make that potential threat go away. We can prevent cyber-warfare, or we can promote it.
One of the simplest ways to promote it is to treat it like "anything goes". Rules (including social rules!) have to apply; and politics has shown us a way. Treaties, alliances, and all that good stuff -have- to happen, or it'll be a dog eat dog world (just imagine... another country trashing the NYSE - wouldn't that be a problem)
Politics isn't all bad. It brings us a lot of the sense of safety we tend to take for granted. We can say that we actually trust someone, and we don't have to look over our shoulder at them so much. Those boundaries have made economic and national interests a reality.
Cyberspace can be relegated to a position where it's just a national asset. However, it must be stressed that it's also a national asset that can hurt us just as much as it can help us, and where the boundaries exist is becoming more and more blurred. One country can (very easily) do nefarious things with another country's connection to the internet.
In the advent of a high-tech war (not a low-tech guerrilla warfare), we're at a disadvantage. We have the most to lose, because so much of our assets depend on the Internet Backbone. Can you imagine a NYSE without an internet to connect it to places? It would mean simultaneous economic woes as well as mass confusion and panic.
The very design of the internet works against us. Right now, the entire backbone of the internet is not one that lends itself easily to politics. Right now, it's a sort of uber-organization, but we can't exactly just depend on it to be around forever without a backup plan, can we? It simply has to be politicized for it to exist in the long run. Net neutrality provides a framework where it can happen, and where things can become heterogeneous (and independent) in a peaceful manner.
The next step up from Net Neutrality is to draw up equivalents of treaties, which would allow everyone a chance to protect their (business or national) interests. After all, cyberspace is not just an asset, it's a territory where things can happen. Those treaties will mostly fall along the lines of political boundaries.
Of course, a treaty has no weight without a penalty attached to its violation. Even if that penalty is very simple (i.e. you just hacked us, so you can't have a connection to us any more).
We're talking about the dawn of a new age, where we're going to be hiring politicians to talk computer lingo. This -has- to be handled with care, and with all of the expertise that is relevant to politics, for it to not blow up in our faces. If we go about this the wrong way, it could lead to open warfare, which is why we need the right approach.
By the way, the last thing I want as the cyberwarfare czar is a RIAA lawyer... because they'll demand things of other nations that would blow up in our face(s)... and they already extort the average Joe. They've already got into many other places of the gov't.
There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
study history
nationalist uprisings throughout history are largely middle class in nature, and almost automatically are enemies of the contemporary aristocratic elite of the time
here's an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
all original nationalistic movements HAD to make enemies of the rich of their time. the rich were entrenched in the political structures of the time, and therefore the rich were made rich by political arrangements that depended upon the suppression of nationalistic movements in order to continue to exist
i am not saying that nationalism is a good force. i dislike it like you
i am not saying that the rich are a good force. i dislike the rich like you
however, unlike you, i understand the concepts better. therefore, i am better at being able to actually fight and defeat nationalism and the entrenched upper class. would you like to defeat nationalism? would you like to defeat the upper class? then please, fucking educate yourself and stop spouting ignorance
here, i'll get the ball rolling for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_italy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and whatever you are fighting for would equally be eventually corrupted and serve only an entrenched aristocracy, and equally require revolution in order to right injustices. this is the inevitable cycle of history. every revolution is fought by the commoners in the name of righting injustice by the ruling class, and every revolution eventually decays into nothing more than a new ruling class. this observation applies equally to whatever the hell you think you are fighting for
that's why its called history, moron, you should study it someday, you would learn this. it has valuable things to teach you about your own beliefs
instead, you naively and ignorantly believe that you are the only person who has ever thought to fight for something that could never be corrupted. you really believe you are immune to the lessons of history? then you more than anyone else are doomed to repeat history
as you well understand, communism in china and russia was fought for by peasants against the rich, in exactly the same ecstatic belief that corruption by the rich aristocracy was now finally being defeated forever. what happened? they merely stayed poor, and merely served a new aristocracy. i mean it is a cosmic joke that the most ultracapitalist country on the planet right now is ruled by the chinese communist party, an ideology supposedly diametrically opposed to capitalism. what a farce!
you really should study history, you're quite green. for your sake, i hope you are 13 years old. ideologically, you are only 13 years old, if not actually chronologically 13 years old
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you assume my motivation is actually to help him
and so you should study a little psychology yourself: that the motivations of everyone on the intarwebs, nevermind civil society, would be the same facile and ridiculous goody two shoes "to serve and to help" is a whopping fallacy of an assumption on your part
mostly i'm just being self-serving: picking on an idiot for fun
which in a way, makes me an idiot myself
so see? i do know something of pscyhology: i'm the self-aware smug asshole ;-)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What worries me is an attack that takes Wall Street down for three weeks. When it comes back up, the US will no longer be the financial center of the world. Singapore, Beijing, and Dubai will have taken up the load.
That wasn't possible in 2001, by the way; the other trading centers didn't have the capacity or the capital backing. Now they do.
Then again, Beijing is going to displace New York within a decade anyway. The US is now a debtor nation, and trading moves away from debtor nations.
of ideology, of faithful believers, villains of hate, and cynics who choose not to engage in the retarded battle, seeing it all as pointless (me)
certainly, the naive fool is an eternal force in world history. there is nothing new in you under the sun, and someone like you will always be around. the cynical corrupt asshole is another one, which you peg me as. but i personally consider myself more like the goat in animal farm, muriel:
http://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/71126.html
in other words, i see the passionate fools like yourself, and i see the villainy of the leaders, but i see its a giant cycle of history, constantly renweing itself. and so i have decided to simply retire from this ridiculous drama, and enjoy mylife, and ride the tide whatever it may be, knowing it is all retarded and foolish
you, of course, would be boxer, eternal fool for the value of revolution, as if it will really change anything:
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How much you know of me from so little evidence! I bow before your all encompassing wisdom, oh cynical goat.
You certainly have gone to a lot of effort to convince me to believe something negative about myself. Why is that so important to you, who do as little as possible, and see yourself above the fray? Maybe your cynicism is a mere excuse, and people who are not cynical threaten your self image?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I have done thousands of unpaid, volunteer hours of the years and observed that it has been pretty much for nothing. The super-rich control everything, and that which many aren't aware they control, that's the way the do even deeper control......
This is the logical outcome of outsourcing technology. In the USA, we have given our expertise away. After energy shortages, I would have to assess this as THE security risk for us. We won the first Iraq war on our technology. We will lose the next one on our technology, wielded by others. And of course it was all done to make profits look good for the next quarter so some managerial technopeasant could get their bonus. Indirectly, we were sold out by Wall Street MBAs and a business culture that thinks money is *magic*, and damn the consequences.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
you are 100% correct
i am merely flattering myself, thinking i could convince a random soul that the world is more complicated than they think it is
please, go back to your simple beliefs about nationalism and the aristocracy, forget little old me attempting to suggest it is more complicated than you think
simple minds need simple ideas to motivate their passions, and to suggest that it would kill your passions to suppose things are more complicated, is of course tomfoolery on my part, not yours. that a deeper knowledge of history and your beliefs and where you fit in the larger scheme of things might not be something the simple workhorse of the revolution wants, or even needs
it was indeed foolish of me to think i could pick a random bit of flotsam and jetsam of history, the simpleminded idealist, and suggest to them more complicated concepts. i should have just left the pieces fall as they do, as they always have, over and over again, throughout history, and hewed to my own self-stated path of staying out of the fray
indeed, to engage you otherwise, exactly as you suggest, is truly hypocritical of me
so: ignore me, i apologize, go back to your regularly scheduled programming
the rich feed nationalism!
the rich feed nationalism!
four legs good! two legs bad!
four legs good! two legs bad!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Of course the first time someone challenges one of these so called "czars" in court about having no oversight from the Legislative or Judicial branches they will all be ruled Unconstitutional. Which is the correct ruling.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Actually, Ex-president Bush started the ball rolling on the NAU (North American Union). And it was covered in the media a little back when it was first made light of, but has since been swept under the rug. Can see a news segment here
As for the Asian Union, it has been proposed on many different levels inside of Japanese and other smaller asian countries governments but no official announcement or endorsement of it has been made. But the NAU is most likely still in the works.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
but it often is
i reacted to your mischaracterization of the rich being the source of nationalism, since that idea is so completely out of whack with historical fact
if anyone needs to examine their reasons for thinking something, it is you
but of course, you take my attacks on your statements as attacks on your core beliefs and your ability to be passionate about them
you can still believe as you do, you can still be passionate about your beliefs. but you need to STRENGTHEN your passions and your beliefs by correcting them where they are obviously laughably wrong
or: i'm just a tool of dick cheney
you decide
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not just a question of the "rich," it's an issue of power. Organized societies with leaders accomplish more than societies without; political systems have huge costs but also result in greater efficiency and larger-scale governance, which means the ability to take on larger projects. Ultimately, nationalism has been driven by the desire to have such large-scale systems, to put together alliances of villages, towns, and feudal lands and castles into a nation-state. Since the battle of Agincourt in 1415, the nation-state has been able to exist only because of nationalism, which allows for infantry-based armies.
(The battle of Agincourt is chosen because it marks the beginning of the infantry revolution, because the poor man with the longbow could kill the knight with his expensive armor. That meant armies needed more than wealth--they needed recruiting power.)
Bush made public statements to the contrary. Go to the following page and search on "We represent three":
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070821-3.html
Just above Bush's statements, Harper and Calderon also mock the very concept.
Forgive me for linking to government records of public statements, rather than Lou Dobbs.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
the most nationalistic amongst any population are the poor. in any time period. in any culture
if you won't go for educational wikipedia links, then please just travel more. do you even get out of the suburbs? what "poor" are serving as your baseline? western white urban 20 something hipsters? pffffffft!
again, like i said, you can believe whatever the hell you want to, but when you make statements that directly contradict well-established fact, i feel compelled to reply to you. that's my weakness i guess. i guess i should just cynically learn to accept that some people will believe stupid shit to support their passions even in the face of the most obvious of contradicting facts
one would hope that beliefs would flow from facts, but it makes sense in some ways that the most passionate ideologues have beliefs which directly contradict reality. why watch and study the world when you can close your eyes and start shouting?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'll call you a moron
is that a personality failure on my part? ok, but i don't know how else to react to stupidity than call it stupid. and you're stupid
like this:
"Before the 19th century, people did not think of themselves as 'English' or 'French."
i mean how do i respond to this? i mean, the statement is obviously fucking retarded. but i can't say that? i have to be nice and put on a plastic smile and supportively hold your ignorant hand and calmly explain to you the fucking obvious?
i'm sorry, i don't know how to do that. all i know how to do is say the truth: you're a fucking moron. why? for saying fucking moronic things like this
mod me into oblivion world, call me uncouth, insensitive, whatever
how or why should i respect obvious stupidity?
i don't know how to do it
i have no respect for you, and i consider you ignorant. based on a well-established string now of obviously ignorant statements and beliefs
what can i do?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
how the rationalization process works, to shore up the blind spots, and maintain the beliefs in spite of reality
that's about all i got out of this thread
"Before the 19th century, people did not think of themselves as 'English' or 'French."
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes it is interesting to see you rationalize your ego based blathering. I see you've given up trying to back up anything you say, and continue to do nothing more than attack. You seem to think your opinions don't require proof.
Have you heard of Freud's concept of projection? It's an ego defense mechanism. What one can not accept in one's self, one projects onto others.
Why is it so important for you that others see you as intelligent and well informed? And, given that that is obviously so important to you, can't you see that your actions induce quite the opposite impression in people?
The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over, hoping for a different result. In light of that bit of wisdom, I'm going to end this conversation. Rather than replying, which would only confirm my hypothesis, I suggest you take a minute to calm down and reflect on just what it is you hope to accomplish here, and whether your choice of actions are achieving your intended outcome.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
how will those nations find and prosecute them.
Read radical news here
Take down the top half a dozen large grocery store jobbers servers (or poison them with erroneous information so it gets totally screwed up), along with similar number rail lines and big truckers routing servers, and the bulk of the US starts to starve in three days. "Just in time" warehousing, using the transportation vehicles as the warehouse, is a fabulous way to cut costs, but it is completely dependent on a rather complex and robust computer infrastructure that must be intact and running. Not running, no food goes anyplace, not in any practical quantities anyway. If that attack was combined with simultaneous physical attacks on several major water pipelines that fed a few major metro areas, natgas pipelines, distilled petroleum products pipelines, and backhoe attacks on fiber optics, etc, the US would be a quite *interesting* place to be living shortly. Wouldn't take more than the hacking crew and maybe a coupla dozen guys on the ground (working independently in "cells of one") to do that either.
Yes, the US is totally fragile and wide open to serious disruption because of almost complete reliance on iffy computer infrastructure and centralized delivery for critical products, that have no credible backups in place or even theoretical replacements.
And seeing as how that hasn't been happening much..no attacks, not even minor ones, it makes ya wonder about all their OMG terrorists! BS they keep using as an excuse for more and more big brother action.
Dont' even get me started on the outsourcing of the IT infra. Suffice it to say that America is sooooo screwed it's beyond help.. it's Too Late for Americans to save their country anymore from a cyber attack that's going to destroy everything you depend on- your banking system, your food distribution system.. etc. etc... the best move to make is to GET OUT before it hits.
You let your coke snorting Wall Street trash CEOs outsource the CODE YOU RUN YOUR COUNTRY on to persons unknown to companies unknown and certainly neither of those have the same level of interest in not harming America as , say, Americans are expected to have. But you act like that doesn't MEAN anything, like there are no consequences to that fact.
I love people who get free market "free movement of goods services and people" in their heads and can't be bothered, typically for ideological reasons, to think about whatr copuld possibly go wrong. Do you really think I can't write code to bring your whole system down when I want and have you never know it until it's too late? Get REAL.
This country was destroyed by free market junkies and charlatans posing as economists. The reality is, the infrastructure is kept safe because the people in charge of creating had no motivation to do harm. They had no malice of the terroristic variety. You RELY on that being the case. That's the ground you walk on, and intellectually, it's the ground you THINK on.. it's the world you know and reason about and take examples from and have an intuition about. What you don't get is - that's all gone. But you're still reasoning as though it weren't gone. We have NO IDEA of the extent of damage that can be inflicted when code is written by organizations easily penetrated by terrorists. If you don't think the routing and shipping software that maintains sanity in the crazy quilt network of schedules, orders, delivery requests, invoices and warehouse inventory of you FOOD SUPPLY is a matter of grave national security and should be outsourced to the lowest bidder then , well, you're going to get exactly what you ARE going to get, no question. A dissolut\ion of your society. Yeah, the "free market" will take care of everything all right- it's called extinction of the people who left everything to the free market. Yep, that's survival of the fittest alright.
I love it when I hear politicians say they never saw it coming- who would have thought they'd do THAT?
Well you read it on Slashdot first. The outsourcing of common programming to whoever slaves their workers the hardest in whatever 2nd or 3rd world hello-hole will bid the lowest is what ultimately brought America down. This is also known as the attack of the no-patriotism Wall Street / CEO coke-snorters or attack of the CATO Institute thought zombies .
Your thinking is stuck It's stuck in a time when the people who made the things you depend on thought of themselves as having something fundamental in common with you. All your reasoning is flawed, because that's long gone. And it's probably going to cost you your lives.
Nothing to worry about here folks, keep up the outsourcing !
There's way too many "free market " corporotrash greedhead Republicans with way too much power to change anything.
The worst thing you can say is they WILL lead America into a nightmare twilight of total societal dissolution and finally, destruction.
The best thing you can say is, it won't last that long.