Make no mistake, America is at war — a war that is both borderless and bullet-less. Distinctively, there hasn’t been a “shot heard ‘round the world” to indicate the beginning of this global military engagement. Unlike the vast majority of preceding wars throughout human history, this war isn’t characterized by brute force. There aren’t any bludgeoning, dismembering or puncturing instruments typically used in battle.
In a cyberwar, keyboards are the weapons of choice. There are no bombs being dropped, much less declarations of war, so most Americans have no idea that we’re in a war to begin with.
However, the disconnect between American’s perceptions of war and the perilous geopolitical reality of this global conflict is due in part to this war’s intangibility, but also to an outdated definition of war itself.
Traditionally, one thinks of war as a physical confrontation where a victor is measured by the excess amount of their opponent’s body bags compared to their own. It’s a violent, bloody conflict. The Cold War amended our definition of war to include indirect confrontations, but the Korean War and the Vietnam War reinforced our perception of war as an instrument of mass carnage and bloodshed.
When most Americans define war, they certainly don’t categorize Russian election influence or database hacks into that standard definition. There’s no violence, but there’s definitely malevolent intent. Moreover, maybe you’ve read a few headlines about the Russians or the Chinese trying to hack into government servers, but the headlines are only written when these foreign governments get caught. Those exposed hacks are just the tip of the iceberg.
The issue is that foreign adversaries are almost never caught, and most of the time, the U.S. government has no idea who exactly is behind the attacks — whether that be a foreign government, a terrorist organization or a Red Bull-guzzling teenager.
Yes, digital hackers are often college or high school-aged people, and many have the alarming ability to infiltrate American military networks. It’s just that easy, but keep in mind cyber warfare is in its infancy, as is its underlying technology.
Our ability to define war is not mere semantics. We can’t win a war if we don’t know we’re in one, and the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that we are currently engaged in a struggle of significant consequence. It’s impossible to know the capacity of foreign hackers to steal our nuclear codes, but suffice to say that our enemies are trying harder than ever and with increasingly better technical skills.
Thankfully, the U.S., unlike Iran, has much better cyber security for its nuclear program, and concern over such a hack is extremely low. However, Iran’s hack proved that it was theoretically possible to circumvent what was thought to be impregnable cyber security measures to shut down major defense vulnerabilities, such as a nuclear facility.
As it eventually turned out, the perpetrator of that attack on the Iranian nuclear facility was none other than the U.S., but since that revelation in 2012, a lot has changed in the cyberwar games. The reality of that happening domestically is a far less pertinent concern for a country like ours, which has allocated obscene amounts of its defense and homeland security budget to cyber security.
The NSA orchestrated attack on the Iranian nuclear facility demonstrated for the first time the scope and implications that cyber warfare would have for future geopolitical conflicts. If there was an event to be looked back upon as “the hack seen around the world,” then this was it. Pandora’s box had been opened.
Thus, the Russian cyber invasion and physical annexation of Ukraine was an unsurprising sequence of the U.S.’s cyber attack on the Iranian nuclear facility. Russia launched an all-out cyber assault on Ukraine beginning in 2014, and in the process systematically undermined seemingly every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military politics and energy.
Russian hackers deleted data, destroyed computers and, in some cases, paralyzed organizations’ basic functions. The cogs that a modern society’s machine require to function sputtered in lieu of the cyber attack, and a country already experiencing sociopolitical turmoil devolved into complete disarray. Russia took advantage of a weakened proceeded to annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
What Russia discovered is that it’s much cheaper and easier to attack a country’s critical utilities whose technological systems are poorly defended if not undefended. Securing nuclear codes or breaching nuclear facilities is a near impossible feat as they are by far the most secure. So, Russian hackers exploited old technology, shutting down power grids and water treatment plants across the country. The Russians fired a warning shot for future battles to come.
As the nation grapples with the threat of a crippling cyber attack, state governments need to do their part to protect citizens. If foreign hackers find infiltrating the federal government to be too costly and time consuming, they’ll begin attacking the severely vulnerable state governments. Isolated attacks have already begun.
Cities across the country have already experienced just a little bit of what’s to come if they don’t bolster their cyber security. Atlanta, for example, suffered the worst cyber attack targeting a U.S. city to date. Hackers slowed or shut down critical municipal systems. In total, the hacks cost the city nearly ten million to repair their software, of which 30 percent was deemed “mission critical.”
Louisiana needs to be proactive in preventing its major cities from being hacked. Gov. John Bel Edwards recently issued his concerns over the sheer scope of the issue. “If you think about it too much, you almost can’t even sleep at night,” Edwards said. To acknowledge the importance of the issue he has also made October Cyber Security Awareness Month.
Cyber security concerns from state politicians are long overdue, but our elected officials have to do more than offer words or dedicate awareness months. We need adequate cyber infrastructure, and we need it now. The safety of Louisianans matters far too greatly for government officials to sit on their hands. Will New Orleans be the next American city under cyber siege? Baton Rouge? I don’t want to wait to find out, and neither should you.
Patrick Gagen is a 21-year-old mass communication and finance senior from Suwanee, Georgia.
