Re: On scoops, and .... stuff.

[Richard Thieme <rthieme () thiemeworks com>]

I am seconding Mister Geer's remarks as people who deeply understand our 
vulnerabilities may not like the "Pearl Haror" metaphor but do 
appreciate the threat and the seriousness it represents to our 
infrastructure. There are serious threats from bio and cyber alike and 
they are not trivial. The actualization of the threat is contingent on 
political, military and economic contextual factors, not the offhand 
dismissal of a term with a smirk.

Asked what keeps me awake at night at a recent conference, I could only 
say that a technologist at the CIA told me he can't sleep, reading the 
intercepts, and appreciating what people are in fact attempting to do. 
Trying to stay one step ahead of those plans is why all means are used 
to understand various enemies and therefore it is irrelevant which party 
or president is shown the daily briefing, his/her response will always 
be, do whatever you can to prevent this. We live in a world without 
walls, and this means: do whatever is necessary. What-EVER is necessary.

As a sound thinker added: we may have to destroy freedom in order to 
save it. (we have always taken that road perhaps but in digital worlds, 
we are taking that road, squared).

Group-think is not helpful for analysis regardless of the group in which 
it occurs. And what is really wrong with the Pearl Harbor metaphor is 
that Pearl Harbor refers only to a sneak attack on Hawaii. That span of 
ocean no longer protects any country. And MAD works only with actors 
equally "rational" as to upsides and downsides.



governmentdan () geer org wrote:
>  > The point is that it could have been a lot worse for
>  > Saudi Aramco. It could have been a total loss, and
>  > everyone on every side knows it.
>
>
> Yes.
>
> The snarky response of much of the Digerati to
> Panetta's trundling out of "Cyber Pearl Harbor"
> and other near-cliches is unhelpful if Panetta's
> remarks are based not on armchair risk assessment
> but rather on the results of experiments that will
> not be reported.  If true, then events like the
> Aramco event provide a chance to use a non-secret
> body of information to hint at bodies of information
> for which the non-secret event is, effectively, a
> public confirmation of what can otherwise only be
> hinted at.
>
> Thus I am sure that you, too, eagerly await the
> mandated universality of electronic health records
> powered by a Smart Grid, California highways
> with reserved lanes for autodriven cars, and/or
> the implementation of participatory democracy as
> a smartphone app.
>
> --dan
>
>
>
>
>
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>   


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