Let’s face it cyber crime/warfare, above anything else, could be the greatest of all threats to humanity, possibly, even to include nuclear warfare and may be the most devastating and invasive weapon of them all.
Why do you think the Chinese are spending so much money investigating Space warfare rather than the billions that the US spend on their ‘rusting hulks’ of their very expensive Armed Forces?
China, with their burgeoning, 2nd largest, economy in the world, could invest so much more money on conventional weapons but, as they are visionaries, they see the future world battleground as being in cyber-space that they, very sensibly, want to control.
As the West ‘fiddles’ China have been ‘hoovering up’ precious metal mines in the world over the last 20 years that are the essential components for battery technology which is now the ‘life blood’ of the most modern appliances and the future for cars.
The Russians on the other hand, led by President Putin (aka ‘Rambo’), are still fighting the ageing battles of the Cold War. Paradoxically their economy is the 10th largest (in dollar terms) in the world yet their Armed Forces are the second largest. This reckless expenditure will bankrupt Russia and takes no account of cyber-warfare.
The Americans, on the other hand, have the world’s largest Armed Forces and are still churning out expensive carriers and state-of-the-art military warplanes by the dozen. Even ‘little old England’ is going to have two aircraft carriers shortly that it can’t even afford. What is wrong with this policy is that all of these expensive military toys are rendered useless if you don’t control cyber-space.
As an illustration the world thought that Israel would bomb the Iranian nuclear sites back to the Stone Age (and, oddly enough, the UK have the only ‘bunker busting’ bomb for this task). Very unusually for the Israelis they are using their brains and not their military brawn to fix this problem by ‘messing up’ the Iranian’s IT systems using cyber-weapons.
Now to my point here; if you, like me, are so convinced of this notion then if the US Federal Prosecutor, Preet Bharara, is successful (and even if he is not) in prosecuting the three cyber rogues, Gery Shalon, Ziv Orenstein and Joshua Samuel Aaron (see reference below) who are being prosecuted for the most audacious cyber crime in commerce, to date, why don’t they put their efforts to far more constructive use than making illicit money by utilising their skill set by helping the US military/NATO to control cyber-space in the event of a war?
They could be uniquely equipped for this purpose as depicted by the film ‘Catch Me If You Can’ with Leonardo Di Caprio.
After all, he who controls cyber space is ‘King’!
Just my thoughts for what they are worth.
Written by Trevor Abrahmsohn.
Follow Trevor on Twitter.
Reference Note
Prosecutors have charged three men relating to the largest cyber-attack of financial firms in US history.
Personal information for 100 million people was accessed by cyber-thieves between 2012 and the summer of 2015.
At a press conference on Tuesday, US federal prosecutor Preet Bharara called the scheme “securities fraud on cyber-steroids”
Twelve institutions were victims of the hacking, including JPMorgan, and asset manager Fidelity.
US prosecutors said they were expanding charges against two Israeli men, Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, as well as a US citizen, Joshua Samuel Aaron.