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The cyber blitzkrieg
The cyber blitzkrieg
The forces of the perfect storm of climate change, energy tsunamis and global economic bubbles in collision are complex and varied; each with their own levels of threat and urgency. In this milieu, it’s easy to over-fixate on the more visible threats and downplay the others.
Case in point: The Iranian nuclear showdown has dominated the news and polarized the geopolitical world. While frightening, it has overshadowed another “real-time” threat of growing proportions: cyber-warfare and cyber-security.
It’s not a new threat. Our personal computers are barraged with viral assaults. The cyber firewalls of such giants as J.P. Morgan, Target, Home Depot, SONY and Anthem Health are regularly penetrated – with the loss of sensitive information on tens of millions of Americans at a crack.
It’s bad enough when hackers and criminals do their dirty deeds; it’s downright dangerous when nation states organize and deploy their cyber-forces against other nations in a harmful manner.
Cyber-warfare has escalated into a new global battlefield with ill-defined “rules of the road.” The barriers to entry are low, and serious cyber-attacks can now be conducted by tiny nations and terrorist groups against any nation or company. It’s a perfect example of using asymmetric warfare to attack a far greater force using unconventional means. Though cyber forensics are improving, identifying the source of an attack is almost as difficult as deciding on a response.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, recently reported to congress that “Cyber threats to U.S. national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact.” He went on to identify Russia as one of the most sophisticated cyber adversaries and that cyber threats, in general, would be more of an “ongoing series of low-to-moderate level of cyberattacks from a variety of sources over time…” One can only imagine what he might say about this in a classified briefing.
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The Tragedy of NATO: Economic Problems Embedded in Collective Security Agreements – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada
The economic phenomenon known as the “Tragedy of the Commons” instructs us that commonly held resources that are insufficiently protected will be plundered to extinction. The phenomenon was recognized in the early nineteenth century to explain why the commons in England quickly came to be denuded by sheep. All sheepherders had an equal right to graze sheep on the commons. There often was no agreement as to how many sheep each could graze, so it was sheer rational self-interest for each to graze as many sheep on the common ground as possible. In short order the commons came to be overgrazed. What later came to be called “the tragedy of the commons” was a simple and imminently understandable explanation.
Is security an economic resource?
One can easily accept that grassland is an economic resource that must be protected, but what about security and, if security is held collectively, can collective security agreements also be vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons? Security is a service that usually requires economic resources. We secure our personal possessions when we take precautions such as padlocking our bicycles, locking our car doors and the house, buying monitored security systems, purchasing heavy safes, and the like. These are all economic goods to secure our personal property. But what about protecting our physical selves? It is on a somewhat different plane but the purpose is the same. We may carry concealed weapons, take personal self-defense courses, or hire personal body guards. All these things require the expenditure of time and money to acquire economic goods to make us more secure.
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