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Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request.
From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:12:06 -0500
On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:31:47 +0100, asmo said:
I believe that the IIIWorld War conflict might start in 10 months or more from now. The question is: who's unified and who's willing to participate. Leadership is not yet defnied. It may be as well someone well known in IT industry or someone completely unknown.
Almost certainly *not* lead by anybody well known in the IT industry. Basically, if you manage to start a world war, you're almost by definition going to have at least two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council getting on your case (if only one of the five shows up, you've only managed a regional skirmish, not a world war). If you get *lucky*, you get France and the UK militaries beating up on you. If you're unlucky, one or more of (US, Russia, China) are going to come looking for you as well. There's very few IT organizations that have enough military might to pull that off. (Let's face it guys - if you can't survive the entire 82nd Airborne dropping in for lunch and live-fire practice, you're not ready to start a world war.) And you can rule WWIII == cyberwar right out - the world is interconnected enough that cyberwar on a "world war" scale is a Bad Idea for the same reason biological weapons are - it comes back to haunt you. You may be able to create a lot of havoc with a cyber attack, but creating enough havoc in any world-power nation to constitute "victory" is almost certainly going to screw your *own* country over as well. Consider the recent global economic crisis as an example - you'd need an event much bigger and messier than that. And there's pretty much noplace on earth that's big and high tech enough to launch that sort of thing and yet not interconnected enough to avoid the backlash. (That is, of course, also why no cybercriminals have nuked the internet yet - the ones smart enough to do it are also smart enough to realize that doing so kills their profit margin). Biggest danger right now - civil wars from Libya to Pakistan, with perhaps as many as 400 nuclear warheads in play (around 80-100 each for India, Pakistan, and Israel, and 100 or so illicit warheads from the former Soviet Union in the hands of various government and non-government actors). That *could* evolve into a mess big enough to qualify as a World War, but only because there *won't* be anybody leading it. tl;dr: Cool story, bro.
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Current thread:
- III World War. - Broadcast Request. asmo (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Thor (Hammer of God) (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Christian Sciberras (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Michele Orru (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Christian Sciberras (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Michal Zalewski (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Valdis . Kletnieks (Feb 28)
- Re: III World War. - Broadcast Request. Thor (Hammer of God) (Feb 28)