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This was true say 20 years ago. The current future of warfare is a small team of hackers taking out a power grid, freezing banks and financial transactions, muc

This was true say 20 years ago. The current future of warfare is a small team of hackers taking out a power grid, freezing banks and financial transactions, mucking with the transportation system, etc. *And* these attacks may not be state-sponsored. Fighting for land via physical violence? Really?? That's as old as cavemen.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Errr. Read the current news.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Errr. The current is not the future. And the article's title is *the future* of warfare. What's also sadly funny is that everyone here is already assuming warfare is a given in the future.
broken-kebab 3y ago
Really. When armed men enter the room any team of hackers is immediately pwned, and raises hands up. FWIW if current wars prove anything it's that no matter how sophisticated miltech got, the real control is still by infantry present at wanted place
- ourmandave 3y ago
  All roads lead to the xkcd $5 Wrench answer. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yaris 3y ago
  If armed men enter the _correct_ room. And finding that is not as easy as it looks in movies, taking into account the fact that there can be no _the_ room rather than several rooms in different countries. Infantry can get stretched too thin to cover all of them at once.
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    The Geneva Conventions aren't offering you any protections, so if the infantry is stretched a little too thin you probably can't do much complaining about the "treatment" they give you.
  - broken-kebab 3y ago
    What you describe is exactly how it looks in Hollywood movies, while in real life we still yet to see any strategic achievements anywhere caused merely by cyberattack in spite of all sci-fi propheting. E.g. Ukrainian, and Russian hackers have been attacking each other relentlessly since RF started the war, and most successful operations include Ukrainians transmitting anti-Putin images on advertisement screens somewhere, and some e-services downed for a few hours on both sides. It looked cool in news, but didn't move a needle on the ground. Or during massive protests in Belarus in 2020, pro-opposition hackers penetrated almost everywhere, leaked tons of info, but when it all eventually boiled down to armed gov't loyalist forces vs unarmed crowds in streets, guess who won? Organized power is not that dependent on internets, and really important electronic systems are not that fragile anymore. Meanwhile infantry changes power on the ground in a very tangible, inescapeable way.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  True of false, Israel "blacked out" comms in Gaza*, and is controlling just about anything else entering. Physical attacks are for revenge. And are based on the past more than a view to the future. * Similar happened in Ukraine. The media doesn't highlight such things because their reporting what keeps you engaged in the short term, not what ultimately matters further out.
  - broken-kebab 3y ago
    I know for sure that in unoccupied territories Ukrainians do great job keeping their communications reliably working (to the point that there are plenty of software development businesses successfully doing their jobs despite of war) unless a rocket hits some piece of infrastructure nearby. Which sort of disproves your claim. Zero blackouts were caused by hacking, and multiple by explosions.
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      afaik, that was mainly due to Starlink. Needless to say, Starlink is now a target.
acdha 3y ago
I’ve heard very similar claims since the 90s but it hasn’t happened yet - Russia has certainly tried but their war in Ukraine is very much physical violence with a tiny fringe of cyber warfare, and their most famous success helping Trump get elected was an old school propaganda play exploiting existing fractures in the Republican Party, not the movie plot stuff like voting system tampering. The NSA appears to have been a little more successful with things like Stuxnet but even there it’s hard to say that had much lasting impact compared to, say, the Mossad’s more direct targeting of scientists. This makes me think that we’re prone to dramatically overweight the importance of the types of systems we work on, and forget how most physical systems have a fair amount of robustness stemming from human operators being able to notice problems and halt things before too much damage happens.
- yaris 3y ago
  Other things aside, the style of war Russia is engaged in has little to do with the lack of (or neglect of or unimportance of) cyber aspect, it has more to do with the fact that Russian officials did not expect a war at all. For them it was more of "freeing good population from their bad and corrupt government", to the point that some troops had their parade uniform when going to Ukraine, to celebrate rather than to fight. So the physical presence was a requirement since it is hard to parade remotely ;-) [EDIT] Clarify the point
  - acdha 3y ago
    Oh, they definitely weren’t prepared but if anything I’d have expected them to lean more on cyber attacks since they’re faster than getting tanks out of long-term storage and shipping them across the country. There have been some reports of activity but I found it interesting how what was widely predicted to be a major threat has been so marginal.
scottLobster 3y ago
Yeah, China totally plans to hack Taiwan into rejoining the mainland. You realize how ridiculous that sounds? The types of attack you mention are perhaps an additional dimension of war in the future, but you sound a lot like all the experts back in WWII who thought strategic bombing would make ground forces obsolete. And your last line is weird. We do lots of things today that are as old as cavemen, physically and socially.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Ridiculous? Your search engine must be broken. Or you work / profit from an industry that benefits from the dated paradigm you blindly embrace. Start with C4I and go from there. p.s. Just because we can doesn't mean qe should. Precedent is no excuse for stupidity.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  We're talking about the future here. Imagine if in 1990 someone said, "You'll carry a computer in your pocket in 20 yrs.?" Only fools underestimate the possibilities of the future. Words like ridiculous in this context are...ridiculous. Tanks and ships, etc. are *very* expensive. A team of hackers, much less so.
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
Allow me to say that your answer seems particularly naive. As another HNer has already commented, control of physical space trumps any hacker doing anything. Particularly true when you can't simply H-Bomb an enemy, or the entire world would rise against you.
- pierat 3y ago
  > As another HNer has already commented, control of physical space trumps any hacker doing anything. Particularly true when you can't simply H-Bomb an enemy, or the entire world would rise against you. Ransomware victims would beg to differ. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/illinois-hospital-links-closure-ransomware-attack-rcna85983 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/illinois-hospital-link... As we computerize more and more, it also makes our networks more and more sensitive to computer/network attacks.
victorbjorklund 3y ago
I think we have seen that opposite is true. Both russia and its allies has a lot of hackers etc and so does Ukraine and its allies. Despite this we have seen very little use of hacking other than DDOS public site and defacing sites.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Just want to point out...the title specifically mentions *the future* of warfare, not the current which is still very much based on a 20th Century paradigm, 20th Century educated decision makers, etc. Also keep in mind, the media loves to show carnage and destruction. A _______ crippled and disabled due to a cyber attack isn't sexy. Sure, they mention it but their level of attention is not an indication of importance for a given objective.
- cout 3y ago
  If the hackers are doing their jobs, there should be little evidence that there ever was a hack -- like if stuxnet had never made it into the wild presumably everyone might have thought the centrifuges were faulty.
mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
War is physical violence. Hacking should be considered as part of the evolution of the Cold War, its a clandestine activity.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Errr. Read the current news.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Errr. The current is not the future. And the article's title is *the future* of warfare. What's also sadly funny is that everyone here is already assuming warfare is a given in the future.

broken-kebab 3y ago

Really. When armed men enter the room any team of hackers is immediately pwned, and raises hands up. FWIW if current wars prove anything it's that no matter how sophisticated miltech got, the real control is still by infantry present at wanted place

ourmandave 3y ago
All roads lead to the xkcd $5 Wrench answer. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yaris 3y ago
If armed men enter the _correct_ room. And finding that is not as easy as it looks in movies, taking into account the fact that there can be no _the_ room rather than several rooms in different countries. Infantry can get stretched too thin to cover all of them at once.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  The Geneva Conventions aren't offering you any protections, so if the infantry is stretched a little too thin you probably can't do much complaining about the "treatment" they give you.
- broken-kebab 3y ago
  What you describe is exactly how it looks in Hollywood movies, while in real life we still yet to see any strategic achievements anywhere caused merely by cyberattack in spite of all sci-fi propheting. E.g. Ukrainian, and Russian hackers have been attacking each other relentlessly since RF started the war, and most successful operations include Ukrainians transmitting anti-Putin images on advertisement screens somewhere, and some e-services downed for a few hours on both sides. It looked cool in news, but didn't move a needle on the ground. Or during massive protests in Belarus in 2020, pro-opposition hackers penetrated almost everywhere, leaked tons of info, but when it all eventually boiled down to armed gov't loyalist forces vs unarmed crowds in streets, guess who won? Organized power is not that dependent on internets, and really important electronic systems are not that fragile anymore. Meanwhile infantry changes power on the ground in a very tangible, inescapeable way.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
True of false, Israel "blacked out" comms in Gaza*, and is controlling just about anything else entering. Physical attacks are for revenge. And are based on the past more than a view to the future. * Similar happened in Ukraine. The media doesn't highlight such things because their reporting what keeps you engaged in the short term, not what ultimately matters further out.
- broken-kebab 3y ago
  I know for sure that in unoccupied territories Ukrainians do great job keeping their communications reliably working (to the point that there are plenty of software development businesses successfully doing their jobs despite of war) unless a rocket hits some piece of infrastructure nearby. Which sort of disproves your claim. Zero blackouts were caused by hacking, and multiple by explosions.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    afaik, that was mainly due to Starlink. Needless to say, Starlink is now a target.

acdha 3y ago

I’ve heard very similar claims since the 90s but it hasn’t happened yet - Russia has certainly tried but their war in Ukraine is very much physical violence with a tiny fringe of cyber warfare, and their most famous success helping Trump get elected was an old school propaganda play exploiting existing fractures in the Republican Party, not the movie plot stuff like voting system tampering. The NSA appears to have been a little more successful with things like Stuxnet but even there it’s hard to say that had much lasting impact compared to, say, the Mossad’s more direct targeting of scientists. This makes me think that we’re prone to dramatically overweight the importance of the types of systems we work on, and forget how most physical systems have a fair amount of robustness stemming from human operators being able to notice problems and halt things before too much damage happens.

yaris 3y ago
Other things aside, the style of war Russia is engaged in has little to do with the lack of (or neglect of or unimportance of) cyber aspect, it has more to do with the fact that Russian officials did not expect a war at all. For them it was more of "freeing good population from their bad and corrupt government", to the point that some troops had their parade uniform when going to Ukraine, to celebrate rather than to fight. So the physical presence was a requirement since it is hard to parade remotely ;-) [EDIT] Clarify the point
- acdha 3y ago
  Oh, they definitely weren’t prepared but if anything I’d have expected them to lean more on cyber attacks since they’re faster than getting tanks out of long-term storage and shipping them across the country. There have been some reports of activity but I found it interesting how what was widely predicted to be a major threat has been so marginal.

scottLobster 3y ago

Yeah, China totally plans to hack Taiwan into rejoining the mainland. You realize how ridiculous that sounds? The types of attack you mention are perhaps an additional dimension of war in the future, but you sound a lot like all the experts back in WWII who thought strategic bombing would make ground forces obsolete. And your last line is weird. We do lots of things today that are as old as cavemen, physically and socially.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Ridiculous? Your search engine must be broken. Or you work / profit from an industry that benefits from the dated paradigm you blindly embrace. Start with C4I and go from there. p.s. Just because we can doesn't mean qe should. Precedent is no excuse for stupidity.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
We're talking about the future here. Imagine if in 1990 someone said, "You'll carry a computer in your pocket in 20 yrs.?" Only fools underestimate the possibilities of the future. Words like ridiculous in this context are...ridiculous. Tanks and ships, etc. are *very* expensive. A team of hackers, much less so.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

Allow me to say that your answer seems particularly naive. As another HNer has already commented, control of physical space trumps any hacker doing anything. Particularly true when you can't simply H-Bomb an enemy, or the entire world would rise against you.

pierat 3y ago
> As another HNer has already commented, control of physical space trumps any hacker doing anything. Particularly true when you can't simply H-Bomb an enemy, or the entire world would rise against you. Ransomware victims would beg to differ. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/illinois-hospital-links-closure-ransomware-attack-rcna85983 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/illinois-hospital-link... As we computerize more and more, it also makes our networks more and more sensitive to computer/network attacks.

victorbjorklund 3y ago

I think we have seen that opposite is true. Both russia and its allies has a lot of hackers etc and so does Ukraine and its allies. Despite this we have seen very little use of hacking other than DDOS public site and defacing sites.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Just want to point out...the title specifically mentions *the future* of warfare, not the current which is still very much based on a 20th Century paradigm, 20th Century educated decision makers, etc. Also keep in mind, the media loves to show carnage and destruction. A _______ crippled and disabled due to a cyber attack isn't sexy. Sure, they mention it but their level of attention is not an indication of importance for a given objective.
cout 3y ago
If the hackers are doing their jobs, there should be little evidence that there ever was a hack -- like if stuxnet had never made it into the wild presumably everyone might have thought the centrifuges were faulty.

mattbrewsbytes 3y ago

War is physical violence. Hacking should be considered as part of the evolution of the Cold War, its a clandestine activity.