[ISN] Wired Opinion: Cyberwar Is the New Yellowcake

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/yellowcake-and-cyberwar/

By Jerry Brito and Tate Watkins
Threat Level
Wired.com
February 14, 2012

In last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama called on 
Congress to pass “legislation that will secure our country from the 
growing dangers of cyber threats.” The Hill was way ahead of him, with 
over 50 cybersecurity bills introduced this Congress. This week, both 
the House and Senate are moving on their versions of consolidated, 
comprehensive legislation.

The reason cybersecurity legislation is so pressing, proponents say, is 
that we face an immediate risk of national disaster.

“Today’s cyber criminals have the ability to interrupt life-sustaining 
services, cause catastrophic economic damage, or severely degrade the 
networks our defense and intelligence agencies rely on,” Senate Commerce 
Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said at a hearing last 
week. “Congress needs to act on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation 
immediately.”

Yet evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent. In 
many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat 
inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress’ 
passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn’t lead to war, 
it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial 
complex.

In 2002 the Bush administration sought to make the case that Iraq 
threatened its neighbors and the United States with weapons of mass 
destruction (WMD). By framing the issue in terms of WMD, the 
administration conflated the threats of nuclear, biological, and 
chemical weapons. The destructive power of biological and chemical 
weapons—while no doubt horrific—is minor compared to that of nuclear 
detonation. Conflating these threats, however, allowed the 
administration to link the unlikely but serious threat of a nuclear 
attack to the more likely but less serious threat posed by biological 
and chemical weapons.

[...]


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