Cyberwar. If the attack is discovered immediately and intercepted, it is a lost battle. Any other result of a cyber attack is a variable of infinite possibilities, good, neutral and bad. Unlike traditional war, cyber wars must be completely invisible to be successful, i.e. pure espionage rules apply. The constant media portrayal of US cyberspace as an irreparable sieve, if true, means that we have already lost. The reality is undoubtedly something else, but what?

 

Places like Libya and Syria or cults like ISIL and AlQaeda are destroying themselves with obscene levels of physical, verifiable, internecine violence. This is apparently OK (and sadly gets my vote) because such madness can be seen and the participants are bad.

 

If Chincoms or Putin Stalinists achieve cyber first strike capability, does anyone really doubt that it would be used? When the US achieves this type of digital Armageddon capacity, it will not be implemented as a first strike obliteration. What will happen, because we are so civilized, is the forced implementation, both overtly and covertly, of restrictions and control of the opposition electronic structure.

 

Cold War paranoia? I was born in 1950; A pro American, anti-Vietnam radical in the '60s - '70s. Now I am a disabled father and grandfather of a total of 17+. I live solely as a result of US medical technology. Had I been born 20 years later, as are all of my descendants, I might have achieved an unlimited, healthy life. This bonanza is coming; and in spite of the Machiavellian idiocy of some of our 'leaders', I would rather place the future in the proven US tendency towards benevolence, than even consider trusting the inheritors of 70 years of megalomanic, genocidal sociopaths.