The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks.
“The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower,” Hamadoun Toure said.
“Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack,” added the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union during the ITU’s Telecom World 2009 fair in Geneva.
You know, I read stuff like this, and I am convinced its mostly a load of hooey. Yes, countries might be temporarily crippled because of our dependence on computers and computer networks, but, you know, we can function without computers. It will be a steep learning curve, but we fought two world wars and sent a man to the moon largely without what we now would recognize as a computer.
I believe the key is the countries that can quickly revert back to the old fashioned ways of typewriters and “doing it all on paper.” Its hard; we might not be trained for it, but in time of crisis, we can adapt. It is possible, harder but possible, to run a country without computers.