Cyber Pearl Harbor

> “Indeed, while the focus of US debate is more frequently on fears of a so-called ‘digital Pearl Harbor’, the more serious problem may actually be a long-term economic ‘death by a thousand cuts’.”

There's so much to unpack here, from parallels with the Cold War and discovery of the uncrossable lines on the path to mutually assured destruction, to plausible deniability and its impact on the ability of democratic states to reasonably react to and apply cyber warfare techniques with sovereign state opponents. We've been wondering how the future of cyberwarfare will play out for so long, and we're just now perhaps realizing that we are the boiling frog.

The main argument is that preventing a cyber Pearl Harbor is the wrong approach, however it offers little evidence that these styles of attacks have not been thwarted by the US’s approach to security policy.

It’s true that it underestimated social media trolling being a threat, but that’s orthogonal to whether or not effort should have been spent on stopping mass attacks.

Cyber Pearl Harbor doesn't worry me nearly as much as Cyber Gulf of Tonkin.

The article takes the Russian "attack" in 2016 as given. The evidence is shaky at best that the Russians were in any way involved in leaking emails revealing the DNC's underhanded tactics to sideline Sanders.

As such, the article plays to the Cyber Gulf of Tonkin model.

“During the two and a half decades leading up to the Russian cyber attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election ..”

You lost my interest right there ..

Mass vehicle hack during rush hour.