The Newage Warfare is Even More Dangerous Than Nuclear War

Humankind is constantly under threat by the existence of nuclear weapons. But is the world really under the danger of nuclear attack?

Frankly, how many nuclear attacks have we experienced since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945? Zero.

So, while some countries still threaten the world with their nuclear arsenal, the fact is that nuclear warfare has become redundant in today's world. No country can afford to use nuclear anymore, it would be self-destruction.

But just don’t relax, even if we don’t realize, most of the world is still at war, and there are more dangerous weapons ruling the warzone. The future of war is different and it’s already taking place in front of us.

Imagine this; your bank balance has dropped to zero, someone’s wiped out your confidential data from servers, trains aren’t running because the control rooms are down, and airports are not operating because their computers are dead. You can’t even drive anywhere because the traffic lights are stuck on red. There’s no internet because routers have been destabilized.

Within a matter of hours, your entire country plunges into chaos. And you don’t even know who’s behind it. This is not a story from a fiction novel, movie, or a peek into the distant future; this could happen today in real life.

And the big question is, how are we going to stop it?

As America celebrated independence on the 4th of July, a cybercriminal gang was on a hacking spree. It infiltrated a Florida-based IT firm and launched a ransomware attack. The hacker stole data and demanded seventy million dollars in return.

The victims included more than fifteen hundred organizations around the globe — government agencies, small businesses, banks, supermarkets, and even schools.

It’s been called the biggest ransomware attack on record. The attack over the weekend underscores the need for companies and government agencies to focus on improving cyber security.

Who was behind this attack?

The cyber security community says it could be REvil, a group of hackers behind the solar winds hack of 2020, when a trojan horse exploited the software of three U.S.firms — Microsoft, Solar Winds, and VMware.

They stole the data of some of the biggest organizations globally — NASA, NATO, the European parliament, the British government, the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. Telecom Department, and the Department of Commerce.

Who exactly were these hackers?

Well, no one knows. Some say they are from China; others blame Russia. But their identity remains a mystery.

What does all of this indicate?

The world is entering a new age of warfare, which could change everything we know about human conflict. It’s called “Cyber Warfare.”

A cyberwar does not have a physical battleground; it’s fought through computers. It doesn’t involve armies, has clear rules, and progresses at a breakneck pace.

Cyberwar is fought in various ways — economic, social, cultural, military.

Ninety percent of cyberattacks are economic, mainly targeting banks.

North Korea has been doing it for a while now. It has a team dedicated to robbing banks — the Beagleboyz.

Since 2015, they’ve stolen from at least thirty countries. In 2016, they stole 81 million dollars from the Bank of Bangladesh; in 2018, 805 million rupees were stolen from India’s Cosmos Bank.

Cyberwars are mainly launched for money. But they are also used for gaining power through propaganda, misleading the public, sowing disinformation. Russians ace these kinds of cyber warfare.

They are accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by manipulating voter databases, hacking presidential candidates’ campaigns, and spreading social media propaganda. Most of these are still accusations, and the Russian president says he’s still waiting for America to provide evidence.

Another hotspot of cyberwar is playing with intellectual property rights, and the country mastering it is China — no surprise!

In April this year, a network of suspected Chinese hacking groups carried out a cyberattack on Microsoft Exchange emails of at least thirty thousand American organizations. We can only imagine the number of data theft as there were no published numbers.

And then we have military attacks, the most critical threat. This includes espionage, corrupting information, disrupting military programs, hacking command rooms.

Now, most of us think of Russia and China when we think of such attacks. No one ever thinks of America, probably because the Americans are good at P.R., always portraying themselves with good guys.

But Washington’s capabilities in carrying out cyber strikes are unparalleled.

Have you ever heard of ‘Stuxnet?’ It was a computer worm detected in 2010. This worm crippled Iran’s nuclear program. Someone introduced it into an Iranian power station through a USB flash drive.

It then spread across the nuclear network, explored it, and looked for weaknesses. Once it found them, the worm altered how the key systems operated, leading to the failure of critical parts.

It damaged at least 184 of Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges or machines. Current estimates suggest that this led to a thirty percent decrease in Iran’s uranium enrichment efficiency.

Who was behind this Stuxnet?

Iran and Edward Snowden accuse it of being the handy work of the C.I.A. and Mosade, Israel’s intelligence agency.

It gets more interesting. Let me show you some images below. They’re from places that you may have never heard of.

This is flying dales in England’s North York Moors. It’s an air force station that has no planes. The building that you see is called “The Pyramid.” It’s a giant radar. There’s something similar, miles away in Alaska air force base, again with no airplanes.

Similar airbases are located in the South, at Bill, a small town in the deserts of California, another one in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, an empty air force base hidden in the forests, and get another one in the frozen North of Greenland — what exactly these installations?

They’re all part of America’s early warning system radars, built to detect attacks on America and its allies. Capable of stopping incoming nuclear missiles with the help of dedicated satellites in space, you can call it the nervous system of American defense.

In January 2020, after the death of Iranian general Kasim Sulemani, Iran launched a dozen missiles at U.S. military bases in Iraq, and yet the damage was minimal.

The U.S. space force confirmed that it was this system that helped them to counter the attack. The system worked as intended, but given the technological advancements in today’s world, imagine if these systems were hacked — it’s going to be a nightmare scenario.

Not only will it leave America’s defense infrastructure blind, but it might also push the entire world into chaos. According to America’s latest nuclear posture review, which is an instruction manual of its weapons, these radars are so crucial that America would respond by using nuclear weapons if they get attacked.

And this is a reality of cyber warfare, where one cyber intrusion can set off a terrifying chain of events. One escalation can evolve into something apocalyptic.

The warnings of such doomsday scenarios have been there for quite some time. In 2013, Iranian hackers infiltrated the control system of a dam in New York city. The investigators described the hack as just the tip of the iceberg; they said the next target was a much larger dam in Oregon.

In December 2015, the world witnessed its first power outage due to a cyber attack. Hackers compromise the systems of three energy companies in Ukraine, leaving 230,000 people without electricity for six hours.

In May 2021, there was a cyberattack on America’s largest pipeline system, “The Colonial pipeline.” It forced the company to shut down operations and freeze its systems. It took three days to restore the pipeline, driving gas prices to the highest level in three years.

These are all indications; the age of cyber warfare is upon us. It’s wide-ranging, cheap, and anonymous, and that makes it hard to come back.

It can result in the collapse of supply chains, markets, even governments; basically, anything with an internet interface is at risk now.

We’d like to believe that it’s the government’s job to protect. But this is an undeclared war against an invisible enemy, so you have to be on guard.

How do you safeguard yourself from cyber threats?

Eight simple steps can help you be safe

1) Keep your internet connections secured.

2) Check links before clicking them.

3) Keep your system software strong and up to date

4) If your device is connected to your office network, ensure endpoint protection.

5) Install a firewall to block any attacks

6) Backup your data; you never know when you might lose it

7) Above all, control access to your systems.

8) Don’t let people plug in random chips and drives.

These are basic, and in most cases, they should help.

But on a higher level, governments need to put safeguards in place. Cyberwarfare cannot remain an unregulated affair. We have nuclear conventions and treaties, and now cyber is a new nuclear.

So we need regulation pledges from governments not to promote and harbor cyber mercenaries.

It won’t happen in a hurry because it won’t suit these governments, but the effort must begin for the sake of all of us.