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In reply to the discussion: NSA Chief General Kieth Alexander and "The Secret War" [View all]Laelth
(32,017 posts)52. It is incredibly expensive.
But the threat of cyber-attack is quite real. From the essay:
In August 2012 a devastating virus was unleashed on Saudi Aramco, the giant Saudi state-owned energy company. The malware infected 30,000 computers, erasing three-quarters of the companys stored data, destroying everything from documents to email to spreadsheets and leaving in their place an image of a burning American flag, according to The New York Times. Just days later, another large cyberattack hit RasGas, the giant Qatari natural gas company. Then a series of denial-of-service attacks took Americas largest financial institutions offline. Experts blamed all of this activity on Iran, which had created its own cyber command in the wake of the US-led attacks.
Perhaps they have lost it, as you say, but the cyber-cold-war appears to be quite real and, worse, a growing threat. I find it unlikely that Congress will limit the powers of the machine of state surveillance under these circumstances.
-Laelth
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This is absolutely, without a doubt, Orwellian, Outrageous, and Alarming!
Fantastic Anarchist
Jun 2013
#7