Ask HN: Could hackers prevent WW3?
Is it at all feasible that hacker collectives / independent agents might be able to stop world powers intent on violence from destroying each other?
If you're serious about this, I would start with https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/political-science/17-42-causes-a...
The study of the first world war is probably most instructive and there is a lot of content out there on the History. As you dig into this material, keep in mind that history is not just the study of the past but the study of the stories we tell ourselves about the past. Dig into the material OCW class or get started on youtube:
- https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL931Bkj5KLMvaoUfenv1G...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd2ch4XV84s&t=358s&list=PLi5...
Seriously, no. Aside from the fact that war is in essence a social problem that cannot solely be solved by technical means (see afarrell's earlier post), cyber warfare is an incredibly advanced area of conflict. What makes it so complex is not only the skill needed for the creation of the utilized malware itself, but also all the military intelligence that is needed to sabotage specific physical targets. (I am presuming here that anybody wanting to stop WW3 would have to knock out command posts, communication lines, missile launchers and other weapon systems, etc.)
The classic example is, of course, Stuxnet, the first "supervirus" ever found. Discovered in 2010, it was aimed at the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. The Symantec people who analysed it estimate that development time would have been approx. half a year and would have required a full mockup of the Natanz target for testing purposes. Obviously, Iran doesn't make the design plans of their nuclear facilities public, so extensive espionage work must have been carried out beforehand. On a side note, Stuxnet also exploited four separate Windows Zero-Days. (For more details, see the official report at http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/secur...)
My point is: attacking physical targets with computer-based attacks requires a lot of forethought, know-how and intelligence - on a scale that only large nation states are able to furnish. And don't forget, to prevent WW3, it isn't enough to just take down a few targets. You need to make sure that every last one of those nuclear subs keeps its missiles in check...
Say the US wants to attack North Korea. The US military's command and control is designed to withstand hacking from major state actors - China and Russia. So are individual weapon systems. A "hacker collective" isn't going to make much headway against that, unless they are better than Russia and China's state hackers, or unless the US military is woefully unprepared for a cyber attack from a prepared state actor.
Based on the long history in the cold war of things like the moon looking like a big missile launches and both sides believeing the other side might try a pre-emptive strike, I think its far more likely for hacking and related confusion to cause a war.
But I cant say much about oligarchies where power is owned by a group.