Free Cyber Warfare by Bobby Akart

threats to national security within our respective governments, rest. The cyber arena, and the technology upon which it is based, includes the science of cyber engineering. The safety aspects of this science have been evolved into the weapons that will be used as the primary offensive assets in the upcoming new age of cyber warfare.
    The next major war will not be fought with tanks, vessels, and cruise missiles. The world will experience a cyber war with the potential for more damage and loss of human life than could be achieved by our combined nuclear arsenals. Some even say that when conventional weapons are used during this conflict, they are likely to be our own turned against ourselves.
    Via complex cyber intrusions, hacktivists have demonstrated their ability, from halfway around the world, to hack into an automobile’s onboard computer, take control of the steering, brakes and acceleration, and run the car into a ditch, while the driver tried desperately to regain control in vain.
    The same technological discoveries that created the framework of an automobile’s control system pervade every aspect of our military hardware. To expect our military to have some magic that the auto manufacturers do not have, especially in the light of the recent Office of Personnel Management cyber intrusion referenced earlier in which tens of millions of private, and sometimes classified, personnel files were easily stolen by the Chinese and Russians, is absurd.
    The world, and America in particular is on the edge of a steep cliff, about to be pushed over by any number of bad actors who would do us harm. Many believe our government is naïve—largely in denial at the greatest threat to America that has ever existed. The ostrich theory clearly applies, and the nation is at significant risk.
    Advanced nations of the world have placed a great emphasis on cyber technologies and have left Americans behind. This same illiteracy does not exist in Russia, India, China, and Japan where advanced sciences take a priority during a student’s formative years. Our lack of knowledge is also found in our nation’s political leadership. In America, the threat of cyber warfare takes a back seat to social issues. In countries like China, Japan, and Russia, it’s difficult to reach any level of political power without a vast knowledge of computer related technology.
    To these countries, the concept of a government official who was not highly competent in the cyber sciences would be the equivalent of us having a president who could not read or write. This must drastically change and an increasing number of policy analysts believe we must accept cyber attacks from adversarial nation-states for what they are—acts of war—and respond accordingly.
    Strides within the political hierarchy of this nation are being made in recent years. In November of 2011, the US government declared that it has the right to meet cyber attacks with military force. Although this is just a broad declaration, it’s significant because it takes the first step towards a declaratory policy for cyber war. The policy statement provided, in essence: We reserve our right to defend ourselves with bullets, missiles, and bombs in the event that you hack us . The statement was vague and didn’t mean much but fell short of drawing the line in the sand.
    The Five Pillars
    In 2010, United States Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn introduced to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the framework for the United States military strategy for cyber warfare. Known as The Five Pillars , this cyber shield would extend a blanket of security over NATO member’s networks similar to the nuclear defense shield.
    Article 5 of the NATO charter states an armed attacked on one of its members should be considered as an attack on all the members . After the September 11 attacks, this article was invoked in dealing with global terrorism. With the rise in cyber terrorism and crimes, there might be a