Cyber Warfare and Inadvertent Escalation

Cyber weapons may be relatively new, but non-nuclear threats to nuclear weapons and their command, control, communication, and intelligence (C3I) systems are not. In fact, before the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945–before it even conducted the world’s first nuclear test in July of that year–it had started to worry about non-nuclear threats to its nascent nuclear force, in particular, Japanese air defenses. As the Cold War developed, fears multiplied to encompass threats to almost every component of the United States’ nuclear forces and C3I systems. While these threats emanated primarily from Moscow’s nuclear forces, they were exacerbated by its improving non-nuclear capabilities, particularly in the final decade of the Cold War. A two-decade hiatus in worry following the Soviet Union’s collapse is now over; today, non-nuclear threats to U.S. nuclear C3I assets–in particular, the growing capability of Chinese and Russian antisatellite weapons–are a major concern.

Renowned Economist Nouriel Roubini Warns of 2020 Cyber War

Economist Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business and one of the world’s most prominent Keynesian economists, has predicted that 2020 could be the year the world bears witness to the first-ever cyber war.

Speaking on Yahoo Finance’s ‘On The Move’ on 28 February, Roubini told the debate panel that “[The U.S.] will have the first global cyber warfare this year,” explaining his belief that  the coming cyber war will like play out between the United States and any one of its several major geopolitical rivals, either North Korea, Iran, China or Russia.

“We imposed sanctions against Russia, China, [North] Korea, and Iran,” Roubini explained, “and they cannot respond to us with conventional power, because we are stronger from a conventional point of view.”

Cyber Warfare is a broad term that defines a nation state sanctioned attack on a computer system of another country. One accomplishes this by means of hacking, computer viruses, and the like.

However, in some respects, cyber warfare is a hard term to fully define. Many often view the term itself is as a misnomer, due to the fact that a full out cyber war has not happened before. In fact, offensive cyber actions committed in history have been rejected and disavowed by those involved. Additionally, many experts question what full out cyber warfare would even look like.

Soldiers sharpen cyber warfare skills

Thai soldiers are sharpening their cyber warfare skills for the first time as part of the ongoing Thai-US Cobra Gold military exercise to brace for cyber attacks.

The five-day internet-based drill aims to equip participants with online weapons to deal with "general attacks which do not relate to internal cyber threats in Thailand," Lt Col Jason Silves, the commander of the Washington Air National Guard's 194th Communications Flight said on Wednesday.