Uneasy Aims: The Search for Cyberweapons

It’s one thing to wipe out the whole electronic infrastructure with one massive electromagnetic pulse. It’s a whole nother game to alter instructions on an operating computer. When it’s not connected to the Internet.

Yeah, that sort of changes the game, doesn’t it? The Washington Post informs us that the Pentagon has $3.4 billion to spend on cyber security of both the offensive and defensive sorts, including attempting to do the above. Which isn’t, perhaps, as impossible as it seems. Ethernet is, after all, just a really fast sequential signalling. Could we microwave right on to the enemy’s wires? (See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-accelerating-cyberweapon-research/2012/03/13/gIQAMRGVLS_story.html.)

It’s an interesting possibility. As long as one is not on the wrong side of someone’s else’s definition of “enemy.”