The US government is rewriting its military rule book to make cyber-attacks a possible act of war, giving commanders the option of launching retaliatory military strikes against hackers backed by hostile foreign powers.
This is the headline that The Guardian carried today.
What suprised me most about this was the fact that is wasn’t already considered an act of war. I mean if the Iranian government took out the American air traffic control network and caused civilian casualties the USA would not react militarily?
In my opinion of course the USA would react so the question is what is this article really about? The Pentagon has concluded that the laws of armed conflict can be widened to embrace cyberwarfare in order to allow the US to respond with the use of force against aggressive assaults on its computer and IT infrastructure. So the question must be, what is the definition going to be of “aggressive assault”. This is the real question.
And let’s not forget the fact that is it very hard to determine the identity and possibly the location of any attack. Not to mention the fact that this presents the golden opporutnity of countries to sabotage one another by launching attacks for one another’s territory.
As usual, new laws ask more questions than they answer.
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