What you need to start a war now is not a trigger, but a mouse

Cybersecurity’ has become a buzzword in today’s world. A Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit was recently held in London, where cyber security ministers from the UK, US, China, India and France discussed ways on how to combat the threat of cyber terrorism.

Different opinions were shared. France, for example, believes that if nations were able to work together and set up international security standards, national laws would prove enough to fight this scourge. India saw the situation differently cyber space is borderless, therefore a global legal regime is needed to deal with the issue: “The nature of cyber space is that it is borderless and anonymous and it is not subject to government territories that have laws,” affirmed Kapil Sibal, who also holds the IT and communications portfolio. The minister noted: “There is a fundamental contradiction between government regulation and the nature of cyber space.”

Interestingly, China was represented. Though Liu Xiaoming, the PRC’s ambassador to the UK refused to join the panel discussion, he assured his colleagues: “We are now in an era where the whole world is linked by the internet which means cyber security is a vital global issue that calls for international collaboration.” Nice words.

Around the same time, Google again accused China of stealing personal passwords and breaking into sensitive email boxes: “The Internet has been an amazing force for good in the world—opening up communications, boosting economic growth and promoting free expression. But like all technologies, it can also be used for bad things. “The spokesperson for Google added: “We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.”

This was a serious and pointed accusation, since an important signals’ intelligence unit of the PLA is located in Jinan. A week earlier, defence contractor Lockheed Martin admitted that it had also been hacked, though “it managed to stop the ‘tenacious’ attack before any critical data was stolen”. Knowing that Lockheed Martin deals with US defence hardware and software, this news would not leave the Obama’s Administration indifferent. What US analysts fear most is an ‘electronic Pearl Harbor’. James Miller, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy declared: “Over the past decade, we have seen the frequency and sophistication of intrusions into our networks increased. Our networks are scanned thousands of times an hour.”

On May 25, the China Review News, a Chinese publication, affirmed that the spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence, Senior Colonel Geng Yansheng, acknowledged the existence of a professional cyber warfare unit at Guangzhou Military Region (known as the ‘Online Blue Army’). Geng admitted: “China’s network protection is comparatively weak. Enhancing IT capacity and strengthening network security protection are important components of military training for an army.” He refused to answer whether the objective of the ‘Blue Army’ was to attack other countries.

While the Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed Google’s pointing a finger at China, two PLA Senior Colonels, Ye Zheng and Zhao Baoxian wrote an essay in the China Youth Daily arguing that Beijing needed cyber-warfare skills: “Just as nuclear warfare was the strategic war of the industrial era, cyber-warfare has become the strategic war of the information era, and this has become a form of battle that is massively destructive and concerns the life and death of nations.” The PLA is said to have already conducted simulated cyber battles between a ‘blue army’ fighting a ‘red team’ using virus and mass spam attacks.

The future is rather depressing. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was ready to respond to computer sabotage with military force: “The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the US to respond using traditional military force.” It is not an easy proposition to decide when computer hacking can constitute an act of war. Apparently the Pentagon has defined some criteria which may soon be released. Another issue is how to be sure of the origin of the attack? Further, can missiles solve all problems?

Just look at the situation in Libya — three months after the beginning of the bombarding, Gaddafi is still going strong. There is no ready-made solution to this new type of war.

— The author is a French-born writer and journalist