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Shachtman is right to a certain extent: this is not a Cyber Cold War; the geopolitical landscape has changed since the fall of the Berlin wall; Washington and Moscow no longer compete for ideological hegemony. But Shachtman is missing something critical: the massively destructive capabilities of cyberweapons.
We live in an age of increasing economic interdependence; minor market fluctuations in the U.S. can have enormous ripple effects all across the world. We also live in an electronic and information age. The U.S., more than any other country, relies on cyberspace and the electrical grid to operate. What would happen if there were "massive, simultaneous, all-encompassing cyberattacks on the power grid, the banking system, transportation networks, etc.?" That remains to be seen. The world would probably not revert to a stone-age system, but much of our modern, convenient world would grind to a halt.
Ostensibly, the destruction would hardly compare to a nuclear holocaust. But that's not the point. And that’s what Schachtman is arguing: Cold War analogies ultimately fail because there are too many differences. What's more, the few similarities that do exist, exist to hyperbolize or underscore the crux of cyberwarfare: major infrastructural damage.
This raises a few questions: what can we achieve with cyberweapons? What can cyberweapons do that traditional military weaponry cannot? Does cyberweapon proliferation pose a significant problem for the U.S.? If so, will we one day regret putting the Stuxnet virus on a thumb drive?
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