Re:Leak Suggests NSA Was Deep in Middle East Banking System
by iamacynic on Sunday April 16, 2017 @06:03PM
(#14127797)
you could say that the continual, un-ending nature of covert cyber/internet and financial war prevents any individual player or group from gaining sudden over-proportional power (as is possible with the two arm leverage of technology and finance) and causing a large-scale conflict. i.e. it's the new multi-lateral cold war of the 21st century.
Re:Leak Suggests NSA Was Deep in Middle East Banking System
by SomeStupidPoint on Sunday April 16, 2017 @06:10PM
(#14127840)
It's just the cyberization of the economic, psychological, and ideological warfare that has existed... Well, probably since always, but I've heard of at least to the 1600s and the birth of the modern nation-state.
Nations have always jockeyed for economic advantage, harmed the cohesion of rival nations (eg, psyops and funding dissidents), and advanced groups in those nations ideologically sympathetic to themselves. Sometimes it spills in to small scale conflicts or actual revolutions or wars.
Re:Leak Suggests NSA Was Deep in Middle East Banking System
by theparanoid on Sunday April 16, 2017 @10:57PM
(#14128960)
In the overt corporate space Microsoft sure did win during the 90's. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Iran schlonged their middle-east rivals in cyber warefare this or the next decade.
From the perspective of most Americans, the IC are loyal soldiers who brought nearly the whole globe under American control at a price below that of our latest fighter plane. Total information warfare superiority. The new nuclear dominance.
Now, you (and I) might find that unsavory, but for people who are fans of real politik, it wasn't even a question. If anything, the IC should've done more to neutralize Chinese and Russian capabilities.
I would argue the real politik view is simplistic, but yours is also naive. You're simply wrong about the US going to war if others did the same -- they do and we don't. We retaliate in cyberspace, dissident funding, etc. That state of continuous covert warfare is normal, everyone does it, and there are many reasons the US wants to dominate at it.
The only criticism I have of the IC is failing to advance our defensive capabilities, not for keeping us at the forefront of the cyber battlefield.