We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.
You know what's worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people? The slow obliteration and starving of millions of people.
Imagine Venezuela, but much much worse.
Picture a society that doesn't know how to create institutions, conduct trade and collaborate with the people around them without the aid of a computers.
Now, I don't know if disabling their computers would result in an incredibly dysfunctional society that would starve, but it's not unthinkable. If it did, the suffering could be far beyond the instant obliteration of millions of people.
In 20 years, a virtual WMD may well instantly obliterate millions of people.
I'm already unsure of what the most possible damage someone could do with over-the-air automobile firmware updates is today, just to take one example. What would it be like if someone put out a virus that at 11:32:42am on March 3rd, 2036 causes every GM, Ford, and Tesla self-driving car to lock all the doors, floor the accelerator, and let the chips fall where they may?
Consider not just the immediate impact of the crashes, but the fact that you just completely obliterated emergency services (they couldn't hope to serve but a tiny fraction of the victims), choked every major road and most of the minor roads with wreckage, wrought a catastrophe so large that while I don't predict what the effects would be, we're talking something more defining for a generation that would handily compete with both World Wars combined for psychological effect, with the Great Depression tossed in for good measure... it would be astonishing.
I'm not even sure we couldn't get close to that in 2018, to be honest. What if by some horrors the Stuxnet authors were set the task of making this happen? How close could they get?
I think you would need to think in the line of a global economy/technology/infrastructure collapse (no power production/utilities, (global) transport, financial crisis), millions of first world being thrown into third world conditions (no access to water, food, medicine) due to the large cities depending on technology.
Also see: https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e01
Virtual weapons are worse when it comes to proliferation. And they are worse when it comes to identifying attackers. Both of these could make them more likely to be used.
Software which say opened the throttle and disabled the brakes on millions of vehicles simultaneously would be in the ballpark for total destruction in a short time. With self-driving cars, the total destruction can be optimized, hunting down pedestrians and hitting vulnerable infrastructure.
Blackouts. Do what Stuxnet did to the control rooms of a large number of power plants, spinning up the machines to hard, coordinate this attack so it triggers in a large number of places.
If you can pull this off for a continental scale, you're looking at potentially months to restore power to everywhere.
It highlights the shipping "chokepoints" where disruption causes potential food crisis for where the ship had intended to deliver its payload. If the infrastructure which manages these pathways is attacked, the security of these regions is in jeopardy.
> I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.
Incidentally, my impression has always been that, at least with the comparatively low-yield atomic weapons that have actually been used, it's not the instant obliteration that's the biggest problem, but rather the lingering effects of fallout and radiation sickness.
If you can shut down enough utilities (electricity, mobile telecommunications, television & radio station, water treatment plants, access to water...) at the same time on a wide enough area, it would be devastating.
A significant amount of how our society approaches technology issues almost seems like everyone has agreed that they WANT a gigantic catastrophe. Like they want to see an action-movie-scale real life supervillain to emerge who uses technology to severely harm people. I won't be surprised when one nutcase has prison doors flying open, planes falling from the sky, ATMs nationwide spilling into the streets, stock market prices spinning randomly, electrical grids frying themselves and everything attached, all at the same time.
You're 100% right, but you should use the word cyber, not virtual.
I know hackers hate the word cyber because grandma uses it, but it's the right word for it. The stand-in "computer based" almost works, but it doesn't cover things like hacking radios.
Eh, I'm not so sure. One of the biggest appeals of our current WMDs is they can take out the enemy's WMDs in addition to infrastructure. An attack that paralyzes an entire nation's computer network and sends self-driving cars crashing into substations doesn't mean anything to the group of guys in a bunker/submarine with the keys to the 50 year rocket powered by vaccum tubes
Harvey-Specter|7 years ago
steego|7 years ago
Imagine Venezuela, but much much worse.
Picture a society that doesn't know how to create institutions, conduct trade and collaborate with the people around them without the aid of a computers.
Now, I don't know if disabling their computers would result in an incredibly dysfunctional society that would starve, but it's not unthinkable. If it did, the suffering could be far beyond the instant obliteration of millions of people.
jerf|7 years ago
I'm already unsure of what the most possible damage someone could do with over-the-air automobile firmware updates is today, just to take one example. What would it be like if someone put out a virus that at 11:32:42am on March 3rd, 2036 causes every GM, Ford, and Tesla self-driving car to lock all the doors, floor the accelerator, and let the chips fall where they may?
Consider not just the immediate impact of the crashes, but the fact that you just completely obliterated emergency services (they couldn't hope to serve but a tiny fraction of the victims), choked every major road and most of the minor roads with wreckage, wrought a catastrophe so large that while I don't predict what the effects would be, we're talking something more defining for a generation that would handily compete with both World Wars combined for psychological effect, with the Great Depression tossed in for good measure... it would be astonishing.
I'm not even sure we couldn't get close to that in 2018, to be honest. What if by some horrors the Stuxnet authors were set the task of making this happen? How close could they get?
aequitas|7 years ago
Maybestring|7 years ago
Software which say opened the throttle and disabled the brakes on millions of vehicles simultaneously would be in the ballpark for total destruction in a short time. With self-driving cars, the total destruction can be optimized, hunting down pedestrians and hitting vulnerable infrastructure.
Certhas|7 years ago
If you can pull this off for a continental scale, you're looking at potentially months to restore power to everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr...
uptown|7 years ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-food-trade-chokepoin...
It highlights the shipping "chokepoints" where disruption causes potential food crisis for where the ship had intended to deliver its payload. If the infrastructure which manages these pathways is attacked, the security of these regions is in jeopardy.
JadeNB|7 years ago
Incidentally, my impression has always been that, at least with the comparatively low-yield atomic weapons that have actually been used, it's not the instant obliteration that's the biggest problem, but rather the lingering effects of fallout and radiation sickness.
Omnus|7 years ago
baud147258|7 years ago
lurker456|7 years ago
Clubber|7 years ago
otakucode|7 years ago
carapace|7 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Disconten...
Corollary: It is vital (no pun intended) that we learn to live in harmony with Nature or we will destroy ourselves.
3pt14159|7 years ago
I know hackers hate the word cyber because grandma uses it, but it's the right word for it. The stand-in "computer based" almost works, but it doesn't cover things like hacking radios.
tomatotomato37|7 years ago