Stuxnet

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pages: 492 words: 153,565

Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon by Kim Zetter

air gap, Ayatollah Khomeini, Brian Krebs, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Doomsday Clock, drone strike, Edward Snowden, facts on the ground, false flag, Firefox, friendly fire, Google Earth, information retrieval, information security, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, pre–internet, RAND corporation, rolling blackouts, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, Stuxnet, Timothy McVeigh, two and twenty, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

It may not have worked as well or as quickly as the attackers had hoped, so in 2009 they changed tactics and focused on attacking the frequency converters instead—a more direct method of damaging the centrifuges. Although Stuxnet 0.5 had no kill date and should have still been active when later versions of Stuxnet were released, researchers never found this version on any machines when Stuxnet was discovered in 2010.30 This may have been because it got erased. One of the first things later versions of Stuxnet did when they landed on a machine was check for earlier versions of Stuxnet on the machine and replace them. So it was likely that Stuxnet 0.5 got automatically replaced on infected machines when the June 2009 version was launched.31 It’s also possible that samples of Stuxnet 0.5 were never found because this version was much more tightly controlled than later ones and only infected a limited number of machines.

It took several days of digging, but when they had all the parts unlocked, they could finally see every step that Stuxnet took during its initial stages of infection.4 One of the first things Stuxnet did was determine if the computer was a 32-bit or 64-bit Windows machine; Stuxnet only worked with 32-bit Windows machines. It also determined if the machine was already infected with Stuxnet. If it was, Stuxnet made sure the resident malware was up to date and simply swapped out any old files for the latest ones. But if Stuxnet found itself on a new machine, it began an elaborate infection dance, racing rapidly through a succession of steps to scope out the landscape of the machine and determine the best way to proceed.

All three of the drivers used algorithms and keys that were the same as or similar to those that the Stuxnet and Duqu drivers used, making it clear they were connected to the Tilde-d team. The first of these was the driver that had been found in July 2010 by the Slovakian antivirus firm ESET and was signed with the JMicron certificate.33 Because the driver was found days after the news of Stuxnet broke, everyone assumed it was related to Stuxnet, though it was not found on any system infected with Stuxnet. The driver was a hybrid of the Stuxnet and Duqu drivers, using code that was nearly identical to the Stuxnet driver and some of the same functions and techniques that the Duqu driver used.


pages: 443 words: 116,832

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics by Ben Buchanan

active measures, air gap, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, family office, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Internet Archive, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Laura Poitras, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nate Silver, operational security, post-truth, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, technoutopianism, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Wargames Reagan, WikiLeaks, zero day

Ron Rosenbaum, “Richard Clarke on Who Was behind the Stuxnet Attack,” Smithsonian, April 2012. 18. For the seminal work on this part of the Stuxnet operation, see Ralph Langner, “Stuxnet’s Secret Twin,” Foreign Policy, November 19, 2013. For expanded later analysis, see Ralph Langner, “To Kill a Centrifuge: A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet’s Creators Tried to Achieve,” Langner Group report, 2013, quote on 10. 19. Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 199–203. 20. Langner, “To Kill a Centrifuge,” 9–10. Later, officials would see benefits to the attack becoming public. 21. Langner, “To Kill a Centrifuge,” 10–14; Eric Chien, “Stuxnet: A Breakthrough,” Symantec, November 12, 2010; Ralph Langner, “Can You HEAR Stuxnet Damaging Centrifuges at Natanz?”

Five contractors appear to have been the initial targets, the patient zeroes who unleashed the wider infection.13 Sure enough, Stuxnet eventually made its way into Natanz. Stuxnet’s creators programmed different versions of the code to talk to one another like gossiping teenagers. When a new version of Stuxnet infected a computer that had been previously infected by an earlier version, the two copies of the worm compared notes and combined their information. Versions landing on internet-connected computers sent their information back to Stuxnet’s creators in messages disguised to look like visits to innocuous soccer websites.14 Thus, the list of machines the operation had infected across Iran was constantly updated, and the data it had collected steadily accumulated.

In national security, at least in the West, lawyers are ever-present, and the Stuxnet operation was no exception. At key moments, these attorneys raised concerns about unintended consequences—and rightly so. While the Stuxnet code tried to stay mostly contained within a fairly narrow set of targets, its worm-like nature made it far harder to control than other sophisticated cyber operations tools.15 Throughout the development and testing process, Stuxnet’s creators added a series of target verification checks, using information acquired from earlier reconnaissance. They made it so Stuxnet would cease creating new infections after a certain date, several years away, in June 2012, and the code would launch its most destructive payload only if it was sure it was in Natanz.16 There were so many of these self-restraints that former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke remarked that it looked like a team of Washington lawyers had written the code.17 The Stuxnet payload, once launched, was unprecedented.


pages: 587 words: 117,894

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know by P. W. Singer, Allan Friedman

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, air gap, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business continuity plan, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, do-ocracy, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, energy security, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fault tolerance, Free Software Foundation, global supply chain, Google Earth, information security, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, M-Pesa, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, packet switching, Peace of Westphalia, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, Twitter Arab Spring, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day, zero-sum game

Duqu, for example, was a worm that was discovered in the wild soon after Stuxnet using very similar Microsoft Windows–exploiting code. Many took to calling it “son of Stuxnet,” with the idea that it must be the next version designed by the same team. However, while there are key similarities, experts also have noticed key differences and thus now believe that it was more a case of inspiration than evolution. As Ralph Langner describes this new kind of proliferation problem: Son of Stuxnet is a misnomer. What’s really worrying are the concepts that Stuxnet gives hackers. The big problem we have right now is that Stuxnet has enabled hundreds of wannabe attackers to do essentially the same thing.

Part of Langner’s original motivation to go public about Stuxnet was to encourage adoption of the vendor patches needed to prevent future exploitation among potential targets in the West. Yet a full year after Stuxnet was first revealed to the world, Langner and other security experts were lamenting that that a number of major public infrastructure companies had still not plugged the vulnerabilities that Stuxnet attacked. The more problematic proliferation path, however, is via inspiration. Each construction and use of a new type of cyber weapon lowers the bar for the rest of the crowd. Stuxnet had a complex infection package that included new zero-day attacks, as well as a novel payload that attacked SCADA controllers, but its beauty (and the lesson for others) was in how the different parts of this complex attack worked together.

FOCUS: WHAT WAS STUXNET? “indiscriminate and destructive” Lucas, “Permissible Preventive Cyberwar.” A study of the spread of Stuxnet was undertaken by a number of international computer security firms, including Symantec Corporation. Their report, “W32.Stuxnet Dossier,” compiled by noted computer security experts Nicholas Falliere, Liam O’Murchu, and Eric Chien, and released in February 2011, showed that the main countries affected during the early days of the infection were Iran, Indonesia, and India: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf, accessed August 11, 2013.


pages: 317 words: 98,745

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace by Ronald J. Deibert

4chan, air gap, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Brian Krebs, call centre, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, connected car, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, digital divide, disinformation, end-to-end encryption, escalation ladder, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Hacker Ethic, Herman Kahn, informal economy, information security, invention of writing, Iridium satellite, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kibera, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, Marshall McLuhan, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, planetary scale, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, South China Sea, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, Stuxnet, Ted Kaczynski, the medium is the message, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, unit 8200, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

., Israel Developed Flame Computer Virus to Slow Iranian Nuclear Efforts, Officials Say,” Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2011, http​://ww​w.wash​ingto​npo​st.com​/wor​ld/na​tion​al-secu​rit​y/us-i​srael-dev​elope​d-com-pu​ter-vir​as-to-sl​ow-iran​ian-nuc​lear-eff​orts-offi​cials-sa​y​/201​2/​06​/​19​/ gJQA​6xB​PoV_s​tor​y.html; and Kenneth Rapoza, “Kaspersky Lab: Same Countries Behind Stuxnet and Flame Malware,” Forbes, June 11, 2012, http​://ww​w.for​bes.co​m/si​tes/ke​nrap​oza/2​012​/06​/1​1​/kas​pers​ky-lab-sa​me-coun​tries-beh​ind-st​uxnet-an​d-fla​me-malw​are/. 11: STUXNET AND THE ARGUMENT FOR CLEAN WAR 1 a detailed “decoding” of the virus: For Langner’s research on Stuxnet, visit his blog at http://www.langner.com/en/blog/. See also Ralph Langner, “Stuxnet: Dissecting a Cyberwarfare Weapon,” Security & Privacy, IEEE 9, no. 3 (2011): 49–51. 2 the planning and operational process behind the Stuxnet virus: On June 1, 2012, the New York Times reported that anonymous current and former government officials of the U.S., Europe, and Israel had confirmed that Stuxnet was indeed the work of American and Israeli experts, under orders of President Obama, who wanted to slow Iran’s progress towards building an atomic bomb without launching a traditional attack.

., a leak that occurred through an error in the code of a new variant of Stuxnet sent into the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. This error allowed the Stuxnet worm to spread into an engineer’s computer when it was hooked up to the centrifuges, and when he left the facility and connected his computer to the Internet the worm did not realize that its environment had changed. Stuxnet began spreading and replicating itself around the world. The Americans blamed the Israelis, who admitted nothing, but whoever was at fault, the toothpaste was out of the tube. The real significance of Stuxnet lies not in its complexity, or in the political intrigue involved (including the calculated leaks), but in the threshold that it crossed: major governments taking at least implicit credit for a cyber weapon that sabotaged a critical infrastructure facility through computer coding.

Sanger, “Worm Was Perfect for Sabotaging Centrifuges,” New York Times, November 18, 2010, http​://www.n​ytimes.c​om/2010​/11/19/w​orld/mi​ddleeast​/19stux​net.h​tml. 3 the kinds of manoeuvres that could exploit holes: The Siemens and Idaho National Lab 2008 presentation of the PCS7’S vulnerabilities to cyber attacks is available at Marty Edwards and Todd Stauffer, “Control System Security Assessments,” Presentation prepared for the 2008 Siemens Automation Summit, http​://grap​hics8​.nyti​mes.co​m/pac​kages​/pdf/​scien​ce​/NS​TB.pdf. 4 code behind Stuxnet was far larger than a typical worm: Symantec reversed engineered Stuxnet and documented its findings in Nicolas Falliere, Liam Ó Murchú, and Eric Chien, “W32. Stuxnet Dossier Version 1.4,” Symantec, February 2011, http​://www.​symante​c.com/c​ontent/en/​us/enter​prise/m​edia/sec​urity​_respon​se/whi​tepapers​/​w32​_​stuxn​et​_​doss​ier.pdf. 5 an obscure date in the worm’s code: The clues of Israeli involvement in Stuxnet’s code have been reported by Michael Joseph Gross in “A Declaration of Cyberwar,” Vanity Fair, April 2011, http​://www.v​anityfair.​com/cultur​e/feature​s/2011/​04/st​uxnet-2​01104, 4; Paul Roberts, “Stuxnet Analysis Supports Iran-Israel Connections,” Threat Post, September 30, 2010, http​://thr​eatpo​st.com/e​n_​us/​blog​s​/stux​net-anal​ysis-sup​port​s-ira​n-isra​el-con​nectio​ns-093​010; John Markoff and David E.


pages: 294 words: 81,292

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat

AI winter, air gap, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Automated Insights, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bill Joy: nanobots, Bletchley Park, brain emulation, California energy crisis, cellular automata, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, don't be evil, drone strike, dual-use technology, Extropian, finite state, Flash crash, friendly AI, friendly fire, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, Loebner Prize, lone genius, machine translation, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, optical character recognition, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, prisoner's dilemma, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, rolling blackouts, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, Skype, smart grid, speech recognition, statistical model, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subprime mortgage crisis, superintelligent machines, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, Thomas Bayes, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero day

The device that controlled DHS’ tortured generator: Associated Press, “US video shows hacker hit on power grid,” China Daily, September 27, 2007, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-09/27/content_6139437.htm (accessed February 10, 2012). it was built to kill industrial machines: Bres, Eric, “The Stuxnet Mystery Continues,” Tofino (blog), October 10, 2010, http://www.tofinosecurity.com/blog/stuxnet-mystery-continues (accessed June 14, 2012). holes that permit unauthorized access: IT Networks, “Stuxnet Things You Don’t Know,” last modified March 25, 2011, http://www.it-networks.org/2011/03/25/stuxnet-things-you-dont-know/ (accessed December 14, 2011). their operators didn’t sense anything wrong: Poeter, Damon, “Former NSA Head: Hitting Iran with Stuxnet Was a ‘Good Idea,’” PCMAG.COM, March 12, 2012, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401111,00.asp (accessed April 22, 2012). two countries jointly created Stuxnet: Ibid. a joint U.S.

[Stuxnet’s creators] opened up the box: Sean McGurk, former head of cybersecurity DHS, interview by Steve Kroft, “Stuxnet: Computer worm opens new era of warfare,” CBS News, March 4, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390124/stuxnet-computer-worm-opens-new-era-of-warfare/ (accessed June 3, 2012). Before, a Stuxnet-type attack: Clayton, Mark, “From the man who discovered Stuxnet, dire warnings one year later,” MinnPost, September 23, 2011, http://www.minnpost.com/christian-science-monitor/2011/09/man-who-discovered-stuxnet-dire-warnings-one-year-later (accessed January 14, 2012). the good luck did not last: Sanger (2012). Al Qaeda’s attacks of 9/11: Carter, Shan, and Amanda Cox, “One 9/11 Tally: $3.3 Trillion,” New York Times, September 8, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html (accessed January 14, 2012).

SCADA has become almost a household acronym because of the phenomenon called Stuxnet. Stuxnet, and its cousins Duqu and Flame, have convinced even the most hardened skeptics that the energy grid can be attacked. Stuxnet is to malware what the atomic bomb is to bullets. It’s the computer virus IT people refer to in hushed tones as a “digital warhead” and the “first military grade cyber weapon.” But the virus isn’t just smarter than any other, it has completely different goals. While other malware campaigns stole credit card numbers and jet fighter plans, Stuxnet was created to destroy machinery. Specifically, it was built to kill industrial machines connected to a Siemens S7-300 logic controller, a component of a SCADA system.


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Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, air gap, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, Citizen Lab, clean water, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, false flag, global supply chain, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, machine readable, Mikhail Gorbachev, no-fly zone, open borders, pirate software, pre–internet, profit motive, ransomware, RFID, speech recognition, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, tech worker, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

American and Israeli hackers had planted their digital sabotage code into the exact heart of the mechanical process that had brought the Middle East to the brink of war, and they were disrupting it with uncanny precision. Stuxnet had allowed them to pull off that coup without even tipping off their targets that they were under attack. Everything was going according to plan—until the summer of 2010, when the hackers behind Stuxnet would lose control of their creation, exposing it to the world. * * * ■ The discovery of Stuxnet began the same way as the discovery of Sandworm would years later: a zero day. In June 2010, VirusBlokAda, an obscure antivirus firm based in Minsk, Belarus, found that a computer of one of its customers in Iran had been stuck in a loop of repeated crashes and restarts.

That application was one form of the software that allows industrial control system operators to monitor and send commands to equipment. Somehow, the analysts determined, Stuxnet’s goal seemed to be linked to physical machines—and probably in Iran. It was only in September 2010 that the German researcher Ralph Langner dove into the minutiae of that Siemens-targeted code and came to the conclusion that Stuxnet’s goal was to destroy a very specific piece of equipment: nuclear enrichment centrifuges. With that final discovery, the researchers could put together all of the links in Stuxnet’s intricate kill chain. First, the malware had been designed to jump across air gaps: Iran’s engineers had been careful enough to cut off Natanz’s network entirely from the internet.

It would then play that recording to the plant’s operators while it committed its violence so that to an operator observing the Siemens display, nothing would appear amiss until it was far too late. Stuxnet’s only flaw was that it was too effective. Among computer security researchers, it’s practically a maxim that worms spread beyond their creators’ control. This one was no exception. Stuxnet had propagated far beyond its Natanz target to infect computers in more than a hundred countries across the world. Other than in the centrifuge caverns of Natanz, those collateral infections hadn’t caused physical destruction. But they had blown the ultrasecret malware’s cover, along with an operation that had been millions of dollars and years in the making. Once Stuxnet’s purpose became clear, the United States and Israel quickly became the prime suspects for its creation.


pages: 651 words: 186,130

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

4chan, active measures, activist lawyer, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boeing 737 MAX, Brexit referendum, Brian Krebs, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Vincenzetti, defense in depth, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, index card, information security, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, Morris worm, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, NSO Group, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open borders, operational security, Parler "social media", pirate software, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, Seymour Hersh, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

In 2019, Kim Zetter and Huib Modderkolk reported in Yahoo News that an Iranian engineer, recruited by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD, provided “critical data” and “much-needed inside access when it came time to slip Stuxnet onto those systems using a USB flash drive.” Other sources provided conflicting accounts, so I leave this as an open question. For details of Stuxnet’s zero-days, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Eric Chien and Liam O’Murchu at Symantec, who were among the first to publish a detailed analysis of the Stuxnet code. Their analysis was later incorporated into a forensic dissection of Stuxnet by Carey Nachenberg at Stanford University Law School in 2012. I also must thank Ralph Langner, “The German,” for being so patient with me as I returned to this subject nearly a decade after he first started dissecting Stuxnet’s code.

I also must thank Ralph Langner, “The German,” for being so patient with me as I returned to this subject nearly a decade after he first started dissecting Stuxnet’s code. Langner’s 2011 Ted Talk on Stuxnet is still one of the most easily digestible analyses there is. It is available here: www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyber_weapon?language=en. To this day, Iranian officials still maintain that they were able to uncover Stuxnet before it could wreak havoc. The official numbers show otherwise: After steadily building up capacity between 2007 and 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) records show a gradual drop-off starting in June 2009 that continued over the next year.

Others allowed it to crawl across the network from there, climbing ever higher up the digital chain of command in search of its final destination: Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant, where it burrowed deep into the offline, or “air-gapped,” computers that controlled the rotors that spun Iran’s uranium centrifuges. And then, by remote command, Stuxnet silently spun some of Iran’s centrifuges out of control, while stopping others from spinning entirely. By the time Iran’s nuclear scientists discovered that a computer worm was responsible for the destruction of their centrifuges, Stuxnet had already destroyed a fifth of Tehran’s uranium centrifuges and set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back years. Langner had made a name for himself with his analysis of the Stuxnet code—and for having the chutzpah to be the first to call out the weapon’s two architects: the United States and Israel.


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Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Air France Flight 447, air gap, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, brain emulation, Brian Krebs, cognitive bias, computer vision, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, DevOps, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, fail fast, fault tolerance, Flash crash, Freestyle chess, friendly fire, Herman Kahn, IFF: identification friend or foe, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Hawkins, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Loebner Prize, loose coupling, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, sensor fusion, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Wozniak, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, Tesla Model S, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, theory of mind, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Valery Gerasimov, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, William Langewiesche, Y2K, zero day

In order to reach inside these protected networks, Stuxnet spread via removable USB flash drives. This also meant that once Stuxnet arrived at its target, it was on its own. Computer security company Symantec described how this likely influenced Stuxnet’s design: While attackers could control Stuxnet with a command and control server, as mentioned previously the key computer was unlikely to have outbound Internet access. Thus, all the functionality required to sabotage a system was embedded directly in the Stuxnet executable. Unlike other malware, it wasn’t enough for Stuxnet to give its designers access. Stuxnet had to perform the mission autonomously.

Nicolas Falliere, Liam O Murchu, and Eric Chien, “W32.Stuxnet Dossier,” Symantec Security Response, February 2011, https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf. 214 two encrypted “warheads”: Gross, “A Declaration of Cyber War.” 214 Computer security specialists widely agree: Falliere et al., “W32.Stuxnet Dossier,” 2, 7. 214 Natanz nuclear enrichment facility: Gross, “A Declaration of Cyber War.” Ralph Langner, “Stuxnet Deep Dive,” S4x12, https://vimeopro.com/s42012/s4-2012/video/35806770. Kushner, imeopro.com/s42012/Stuxnet.t 214 Nearly 60 percent of Stuxnet infections: Falliere et al., “W32.Stuxnet Dossier,” 5–7.

Stuxnet had to perform the mission autonomously. Like other malware, Stuxnet also had the ability to replicate and propagate, infecting other computers. Stuxnet spread far beyond its original target, infecting over 100,000 computers. Symantec referred to these additional computers as “collateral damage,” an unintentional side effect of Stuxnet’s “promiscuous” spreading that allowed it to infiltrate air-gapped networks. To compensate for these collateral infections, however, Stuxnet had a number of safety features. First, if Stuxnet found itself on a computer that did not have the specific type of PLC it was looking for, it did nothing.


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Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan

air gap, Big Tech, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, computer age, data acquisition, drone strike, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, game design, hiring and firing, index card, information security, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, John von Neumann, kremlinology, Laura Poitras, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Morris worm, national security letter, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, packet switching, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Stuxnet, tech worker, Timothy McVeigh, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Wargames Reagan, Y2K, zero day

Murchu, and Eric Chien, “Symantec Security Response: W32.Stuxnet Dossier,” https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf; David Kushner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, Feb. 26, 2013, http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet; Eugene Kaspersky, “The Man Who Found Stuxnet—Sergey Ulasen in the Spotlight,” Nota Bene, Nov. 2, 2011, http://eugene.kaspersky.com/2011/11/02/the-man-who-found-stuxnet-sergey-ulasen-in-the-spotlight/. Microsoft issued an advisory: “Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10—046—Critical: Vulnerability in Windows Shell Could Allow Remote Execution,” Aug. 2, 2010 (updated Aug. 24, 2010), https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms10-046.aspx; Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day, 279.

In their probes: Ibid., 196ff; Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (New York: Crown, 2014), Ch. 1. This would be a huge operation: Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “Stuxnet Was Work of U.S. and Israeli Experts, Officials Say,” Washington Post, June 2, 2012. uninterruptible power supplies: Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day, 200–201. A multipurpose piece of malware: Ibid., 276–79. Much of Zetter’s information comes from the computer virus specialists at Symantec and Kaspersky Lab who discovered Stuxnet. A typical malicious code took up, on average, about 175 lines.

Gates doesn’t say that the classified program was Stuxnet, but it’s clear from the context—and from other sections of the book where he mentions a classified program related to Iran (190–91) and denounces the leak (328)—that it is. In March, the NSA shifted its approach: Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day, 303. The normal speed: David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Christina Walrond, “ISIS Reports: Stuxnet Malware and Natanz” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Science and International Security), Feb. 15, 2011, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/stuxnet_update_15Feb2011.pdf. They’d experienced technical problems: An unclassified version of a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate noted that Iran was experiencing “significant technical problems operating” centrifuges (“Key Judgments from a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s Nuclear Activity,” reprinted in New York Times, Dec. 4, 2007); this was well before Stuxnet was activated.


pages: 340 words: 96,149

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex by Shane Harris

air gap, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Brian Krebs, centralized clearinghouse, Citizen Lab, clean water, computer age, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, don't be evil, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, Firefox, information security, John Markoff, Julian Assange, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, peer-to-peer, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Stuxnet, systems thinking, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day

Researchers generally credit Stuxnet with destroying one thousand centrifuges between 2009 and 2010. This was only about 20 percent of the total number operating at the plant, and the Iranians had more centrifuges in reserve to replace the damaged equipment. But Obama administration officials have said that Stuxnet set back Iran’s weapons program by up to two years. That’s precious and valuable time if, as appears to be the case, Stuxnet was designed to forestall a war, not to start one. But those aggressive programming features also increased the chances that Stuxnet would be discovered, which eventually it was, in June 2010, when an obscure security company in Belarus discovered the first evidence of a computer virus that would later be dubbed Stuxnet.

Why would any of these features be necessary for a weapon that was built to attack machines behind an air gap, where they were separated from the Internet? The obvious answer is that Stuxnet’s designers knew it wouldn’t stay behind the air gap for long. And perhaps they didn’t want it to. Stuxnet was also designed to scout out networks and computers inside Natanz as it looked for the right target to attack. The contractors inside the plant worked for other clients as well. If their laptops became infected with Stuxnet, and they carried those computers to their other work sites, the worm might perform this reconnaissance function at other nuclear facilities in Iran. Stuxnet could tell the United States who those nuclear contractors were working for, where other nuclear facilities in Iran were located, and perhaps how far along those plants might be on their respective enrichment paths.

Other officials, including David Petraeus, former commander of US forces in Iraq, have spoken publicly about cyber operations in Iraq and the contribution they made to the US victory there. [>] The president had already okayed: In addition to the author’s own interviews with current and former US officials and computer security experts, information about the Stuxnet campaign was drawn from voluminous research papers and news articles, of which the following provided key details: Ralph Langner, “Stuxnet’s Secret Twin,” Foreign Policy, November 21, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/19/stuxnets_secret_twin_iran_nukes_cyber_attack#sthash.nq7VuMAC.8FWcquMx.dpbs; David Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” New York Times, June 1, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?


pages: 394 words: 117,982

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger

active measures, air gap, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, computer age, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Google Chrome, Google Earth, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, off-the-grid, RAND corporation, ransomware, Sand Hill Road, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

Bush and Barack Obama, had both come to the decision to use the most sophisticated cyberweapon in history against Iran as the last, best chance to forestall a new war in the Middle East. Neither Rhodes nor Morell seemed surprised that I had pieced the story together; the weapon’s code, called “Stuxnet,” had accidentally spread around the world nearly two years before, making it evident that someone was using malware in an attempt to blow up Iran’s nuclear facilities. Stuxnet was filled with digital fingerprints and other clues about where and when it had been written. That someone eventually would follow those clues to discover the plan that had launched it seemed inevitable. The operation, which I learned through months of reporting had been code-named “Olympic Games,” was simply too big, and involved too many players, to stay secret forever.

The only thing that was clear was that there would be no backpedaling. When Michael Hayden, who had been central to the early days of America’s experimentation with cyberweapons, said that the Stuxnet code had “the whiff of August 1945” about it—a reference to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—he was making clear that a new era had dawned. Hayden’s security clearances meant he couldn’t acknowledge American involvement in Stuxnet, but he left no doubt about the magnitude of its importance. “I do know this,” Hayden concluded. “If we go out and do something, most of the rest of the world now feels that this is a new standard, and it’s something that they now feel legitimated to do as well.”

There has since been a lot of finger-pointing about who was responsible, with the Israelis claiming the United States moved too slowly, and the United States claiming the Israelis became impatient and sloppy. But one fact is indisputable: the Stuxnet worm got out into the wild in the summer of 2010 and quickly replicated itself in computer systems around the world. It showed up in computer networks from Iran to India, and eventually even wound its way back to the United States. Suddenly everyone had a copy of it—the Iranians and the Russians, the Chinese and the North Koreans, and hackers around the globe. That is when it was given the name “Stuxnet,” a blend of keywords drawn from inside the code. In retrospect, Operation Olympic Games was the opening salvo in modern cyber conflict.


pages: 525 words: 116,295

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives by Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen

access to a mobile phone, additive manufacturing, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Carvin, Andy Rubin, anti-communist, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, bitcoin, borderless world, call centre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Dean Kamen, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, false flag, fear of failure, Filter Bubble, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Hacker Conference 1984, hive mind, income inequality, information security, information trail, invention of the printing press, job automation, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, market fundamentalism, Mary Meeker, means of production, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Parag Khanna, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Robert Bork, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Susan Wojcicki, The Wisdom of Crowds, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, young professional, zero day

Yet less than a month after the public revelations about these cyber weapons, security experts at Kaspersky Lab, a large Russian computer-security company with international credibility, concluded that the two teams that developed Stuxnet and Flame did, at an early stage, collaborate. They identified a particular module, known as Resource 207, in an early version of the Stuxnet worm that clearly shares code with Flame. “It looks like the Flame platform was a kick-starter of sorts to get the Stuxnet project going,” a senior Kaspersky researcher explained. “The operations went separate ways, maybe because Stuxnet code was mature enough to be deployed in the wild. Now we are 100 percent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together.” Though Stuxnet, Flame and other cyber weapons linked to the United States and Israel are the most advanced known examples of state-led cyber attacks, other methods of cyber warfare have already been used by governments around the world.

references to dates and biblical stories: Elinor Mills, “Stuxnet: Fact vs. Theory,” CNET, October 5, 2010, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20018530-245.html. written by as many as thirty people: Michael Joseph Gross, “A Declaration of Cyber-War,” Vanity Fair, April 2011, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104. an early variant of Stuxnet: Elinor Mills, “Shared Code Indicates Flame, Stuxnet Creators Worked Together,” CNET, June 11, 2012, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57450292-83/shared-code-indicates-flame-stuxnet-creators-worked-together/. Unnamed Obama administration officials confirmed: Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?

security experts at Kaspersky Lab: “Resource 207: Kaspersky Lab Research Proves That Stuxnet and Flame Developers Are Connected,” http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2012/Resource_207_Kaspersky_Lab_Research_Proves_that_Stuxnet_and_Flame_Developers_are_Connected; Mills, “Shared Code Indicates Flame, Stuxnet Creators Worked Together,” http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57450292-83/shared-code-indicates-flame-stuxnet-creators-worked-together/. identified a particular module, known as Resource 207: “Resource 207: Kaspersky Lab Research Proves That Stuxnet and Flame Developers Are Connected,” http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2012/Resource_207_Kaspersky_Lab_Research_Proves_that_Stuxnet_and_Flame_Developers_are_Connected.


pages: 598 words: 134,339

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, Airbnb, airport security, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Benjamin Mako Hill, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, congestion charging, data science, digital rights, disintermediation, drone strike, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, failed state, fault tolerance, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, friendly fire, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, informal economy, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, lifelogging, linked data, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, moral panic, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, national security letter, Network effects, Occupy movement, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, real-name policy, recommendation engine, RFID, Ross Ulbricht, satellite internet, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, South China Sea, sparse data, stealth mode startup, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, telemarketer, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, undersea cable, unit 8200, urban planning, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, yottabyte, zero day

Schwartz (12 Nov 2012), “Cyber weapon friendly fire: Chevron Stuxnet fallout,” Information Week, http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-and-breaches/cyber-weapon-friendly-fire-chevron-stuxnet-fallout/d/d-id/1107339. industrial plants in Germany: Robert McMillan (14 Sep 2010), “Siemens: Stuxnet worm hit industrial systems,” Computer World, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9185419/Siemens_Stuxnet_worm_hit_industrial_systems. failure of an Indian satellite: Jeffrey Carr (29 Sep 2010), “Did the Stuxnet worm kill India’s Insat-4B satellite?” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/firewall/2010/09/29/did-the-stuxnet-worm-kill-indias-insat-4b-satellite.

the only person convicted: Computer Weekly (13 Mar 2009), “Kids responsible for Estonia attack,” Computer Weekly, http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240088733/Kids-responsible-for-Estonia-attack. Stuxnet is the first military-grade: David Kushner (26 Feb 2013), “The real story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. Kim Zetter (2014), Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Crown Publishers, http://books.google.com/books/? id=iBTpnQEACAAJ. It was launched in 2009: William J. Broad, John Markoff, and David E.

Techniques first developed: Tom Simonite (19 Sep 2012), “Stuxnet tricks copied by computer criminals,” MIT Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429173/stuxnet-tricks-copied-by-computer-criminals. software that Elcomsoft sells: Andy Greenberg (2 Sep 2014), “The police tool that pervs use to steal nude pics from Apple’s iCloud,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/09/eppb-icloud. once-secret techniques: Mobistealth (2014), “Ultimate cell phone monitoring software,” http://www.mobistealth.com. Stuxnet’s target was Iran: Jarrad Shearer (26 Feb 2013), “W32.Stuxnet,” Symantec Corporation, http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?


When Computers Can Think: The Artificial Intelligence Singularity by Anthony Berglas, William Black, Samantha Thalind, Max Scratchmann, Michelle Estes

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, AI winter, air gap, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, backpropagation, blue-collar work, Boston Dynamics, brain emulation, call centre, cognitive bias, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, create, read, update, delete, cuban missile crisis, David Attenborough, DeepMind, disinformation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Ernest Rutherford, factory automation, feminist movement, finite state, Flynn Effect, friendly AI, general-purpose programming language, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, job automation, John von Neumann, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Parkinson's law, patent troll, patient HM, pattern recognition, phenotype, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, self-driving car, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, Skype, sorting algorithm, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, technological singularity, Thomas Malthus, Turing machine, Turing test, uranium enrichment, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, wikimedia commons, zero day

By deploying Stuxnet, the USA greatly encouraged the development of such weapons. They also made their use acceptable. Before Stuxnet, the USA had warned that any cyber-attack would be considered to be a military attack that might produce a military response. After Stuxnet, that threat can no longer be taken seriously. Thowing stones from glass houses. Multiple Stuxnet was only intended to attack Iranian centrifuges. However, an updated version of the software had a bug which caused it to spread much more widely. That is how it was eventually discovered, on a computer outside of Iran. Stuxnet attacked any controller that looked, to Stuxnet, like an Iranian centrifuge.

Stuxnet attacked any controller that looked, to Stuxnet, like an Iranian centrifuge. The Siemens controllers involved are quite common so Stuxnet could attack many different types of equipment throughout the world. Kaspersky had found Stuxnet in a Russian nuclear power plant, but fortunately Stuxnet included a self destruct date. Perhaps more importantly, the code of Stuxnet has now been carefully studied by numerous white hat and black hat security experts. It essentially provides an excellent manual as to how to produce top quality malware and viruses. In June 2014 new, high quality malware, known as Dragonfly or Havex, was found to have infected many energy producers, mainly in the USA and Western Europe.

Modern anti-virus software needs to be much more intelligent in order to detect malware, but a substantial amount of malware remains undetected, and the anti-virus software can also attack normal, good software. Stuxnet was not intelligent in the sense of being an AGI, but it was autonomous in the sense that once it was released into the wild, it behaved in ways that its authors could not predict and control. Stuxnet could not call home when working in cognito behind an air gap, so it just did what it thought was best. That is how it escaped from the centrifuges and was eventually detected. As to the Iranian centrifuges, it is estimated that Stuxnet had destroyed about 20% of them and set the Iranian program back by several months. Stuxnet is gone, and the centrifuges replaced, and output actually increased slightly during 2010.


pages: 409 words: 112,055

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Exxon Valdez, false flag, geopolitical risk, global village, immigration reform, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kubernetes, machine readable, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, move fast and break things, Network effects, open borders, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, quantum cryptography, ransomware, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, software as a service, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

This kind of mistaken collateral damage is not unique to NotPetya or to the GRU. The software used in the so-called Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant reportedly carried out by the United States in 2010 somehow got out into the world, even though the Natanz plant was not connected to the internet or any other network. Stuxnet quickly spread around the globe, was captured by cybersecurity teams in many countries, and was decompiled, with parts of it later reused in new attack tools. Stuxnet, however, did not damage anything outside of Natanz, because it was written in a way that the only thing it could hurt was the Iranian nuclear enrichment processor.

When we wrote Cyber War in 2009, we quoted a senior intelligence official who told us point-blank that his teams at the NSA carried out an undisclosed number of missions every month and never got caught. That was then. Only months after Cyber War was published, the cybersecurity community, and soon after the general public, began to learn about Stuxnet, the highly sophisticated malware attack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Like Stuxnet, other campaigns and malware groups have also been solidly pinned to the NSA. In the case of Longhorn, not only had the group been caught in the act, but Symantec had traced its campaign across forty targets in fifteen countries. What many suspected was seemingly confirmed in stolen U.S. government files released by WikiLeaks.

Obama himself was, as were many of his top advisers. They were disappointed with the first major U.S. cyber-war attack, the now infamous Stuxnet program. Officially known as Operation Olympic Games in the intelligence community, the operation seemed at first to have been a marvel of both covert action and cyber intrusion. (The attack is now the subject of many books and even a movie, Zero Days, directed by Alex Gibney.) Upon further examination, however, it had failed on several important criteria. The attack was supposed to remain covert. The Stuxnet attack software was discovered by the Iranians. How it worked was supposed to remain secret.


pages: 464 words: 127,283

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia by Anthony M. Townsend

1960s counterculture, 4chan, A Pattern Language, Adam Curtis, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, anti-communist, Apple II, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Big Tech, bike sharing, Boeing 747, Burning Man, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, charter city, chief data officer, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, company town, computer age, congestion charging, congestion pricing, connected car, crack epidemic, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital map, Donald Davies, East Village, Edward Glaeser, Evgeny Morozov, food desert, game design, garden city movement, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global supply chain, Grace Hopper, Haight Ashbury, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jacquard loom, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, jitney, John Snow's cholera map, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kibera, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, load shedding, lolcat, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, messenger bag, mobile money, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, off grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), openstreetmap, packet switching, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, place-making, planetary scale, popular electronics, power law, RFC: Request For Comment, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, scientific management, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, social software, social web, SpaceShipOne, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, telepresence, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, too big to fail, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, undersea cable, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, working poor, working-age population, X Prize, Y2K, zero day, Zipcar

id=2071893. 40Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “Stuxnet was work of U.S. and Israeli experts, officials say,” Washington Post, June 1, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-01/world/35459494_1_nuclear-program-stuxnet-senior-iranian-officials. 41Vivian Yeo, “Stuxnet infections spread to 115 countries,” ZDNet, August 9, 2010, http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-threats/2010/08/09/stuxnet-infections-spread-to-115-countries-40089766/. 42Elinor Mills, “Ralph Langer on Stuxnet, copycat threats (Q&A),” CNet News, May 22, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20061256-245.html. 43Symantec Corporation, “W32.Stuxnet,” Security Responses, blog, last modified September 17, 2010, http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?

Security experts believe Stuxnet, carried in on a USB thumb drive, infected and took over the SCADA systems controlling the plant’s equipment. Working stealthily to knock the centrifuges off balance even as it reported to operators that all was normal, Stuxnet is believed to have put over a thousand machines out of commission, significantly slowing the refinement process, and the Iranian weapons program.40 The wide spread of Stuxnet was shocking. Unlike the laser-guided, bunker-busting smart bombs that would have been used in a conventional strike on the Natanz plant, Stuxnet attacked with all the precision of carpet bombing.

So you will find the same products in a power plant, even in elevators.”42 Skeptics argue that the threat of Stuxnet is overblown. Stuxnet’s payload was highly targeted. It was programmed to only attack the Natanz centrifuges, and do so in a very specific way. Most importantly, it expended a highly valuable arsenal of “zero-day” attacks, undocumented vulnerabilities that can only be exploited once, after which a simple update will be issued by the software’s supplier. In its report on the virus, security software firm Symantec wrote “Incredibly, Stuxnet exploits four zero-day vulnerabilities, which is unprecedented.”43 Stuxnet’s unique attributes aside, most embedded systems aren’t located in bunkers, and they are increasingly vulnerable to much simpler attacks on their human operators.


pages: 295 words: 84,843

There's a War Going on but No One Can See It by Huib Modderkolk

AltaVista, ASML, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, call centre, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Google Chrome, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, machine translation, millennium bug, NSO Group, ransomware, Skype, smart meter, speech recognition, Stuxnet, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day

Several Iranian scientists were sacked and it is estimated that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme has been set back years. This digital attack was a joint operation by US and Israeli intelligence. They worked on it for years. They came up with and wrote the sabotage virus, dubbed Stuxnet by analysts who studied it afterwards. Thought to be the first-ever offensive cyberweapon, Stuxnet inaugurated a new phase in digital warfare. Without a single American or Israeli soldier having set foot on Iranian soil, it launched a precision attack every bit as destructive as bombs dropped from a plane. In time, the virus would spread beyond the plant and run amok to infect thousands of computers.

Little wonder, then, that in 2004 the CIA and Mossad were already turning to the AIVD. This marked the beginning of preparations for what would be the deployment of the world’s first cyberweapon. Two years later, US President George Bush gave the official green light for Operation Olympic Games, and thus for the launch of Stuxnet. Little of what transpired after that is publicly known. It’s a fact that the Stuxnet virus struck at Natanz and that the AIVD played some kind of role, that it set up two front companies and recruited moles to infiltrate the facility. One front dead-ended because the recruit wasn’t allowed in, but the other, an Iranian engineer posing as a mechanic, succeeded.

The AIVD-recruited engineer managed to enter Natanz on this pretext on multiple occasions, the first sometime before the summer of 2007, and to collect information from the plant’s internal network. Several updates of the Stuxnet virus were subsequently needed before it could be launched as planned. The engineer went back every few weeks or months to gather more information, and in the end to attempt to inject Stuxnet into the underground plant’s computers. He claimed that he’d succeeded. One source, describing this dangerous operation, told me the Iranian engineer was ‘the principal means of getting the virus inside Natanz’.


pages: 448 words: 117,325

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, 3D printing, air gap, algorithmic bias, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brian Krebs, business process, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fault tolerance, Firefox, Flash crash, George Akerlof, incognito mode, industrial robot, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, invention of radio, job automation, job satisfaction, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, loose coupling, market design, medical malpractice, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, NSO Group, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, printed gun, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, real-name policy, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, sparse data, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, The Market for Lemons, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, Uber for X, Unsafe at Any Speed, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

Nathaniel Popper (21 Aug 2017), “Identity thieves hijack cellphone accounts to go after virtual currency,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/business/dealbook/phone-hack-bitcoin-virtual-currency.html. 49This is called a man-in-the-middle attack: Rapid7 (9 Aug 2017), “Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks,” Rapid7 Fundamentals, https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/man-in-the-middle-attacks. 49A credit card issuer might flag: Gartner (accessed 24 Apr 2018), “Reviews for online fraud detection,” https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/Online Fraud DetectionSystems. 50This was one of the techniques: David Kushner (26 Feb 2013), “The real story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. 50For years, though, hackers have been: Dan Goodin (3 Nov 2017), “Stuxnet-style code signing is more widespread than anyone thought,” Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/evasive-code-signed-malware-flourished-before-stuxnet-and-still-does. Doowon Kim, Bum Jun Kwon, and Tudor Dumitras (1 Nov 2017), “Certified malware: Measuring breaches of trust in the Windows code-signing PKI,” ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS ’17), http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~tdumitra/papers/CCS-2017.pdf. 51Facebook has a “real name” policy: Amanda Holpuch (15 Dec 2015), “Facebook adjusts controversial ‘real name’ policy in wake of criticism,” Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/15/facebook-change-controversial-real-name-policy. 51Google requires a phone number: Eric Griffith (3 Dec 2017), “How to create an anonymous email account,” PC Magazine, https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2476288,00.asp. 52He was found by a dogged FBI agent: Nate Anderson and Cyrus Farivar (3 Oct 2013), “How the feds took down the Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/how-the-feds-took-down-the-dread-pirate-roberts. 52Pedophiles have been arrested: Joseph Cox (15 Jun 2016), “How the feds use Photo-shop to track down pedophiles,” Vice Motherboard, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8594/enhance-enhance-enhance-how-the-feds-use-photoshop-to-track-down-pedophiles.

NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (Feb 2017), Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/humanitarian-law/tallinn-manual-20-international-law-applicable-cyber-operations-2nd-edition. 68Stuxnet, discovered in 2010: David Kushner (26 Feb 2013), “The real story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. Ralph Langner (1 Nov 2013), “To kill a centrifuge,” Langner Group, https://www.langner.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/to-kill-a-centrifuge.pdf. Kim Zetter (2015), Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Crown Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=1l2YAwAAQBAJ. 68Targets are not limited to: These are often known as SCADA systems.

Now, cybersecurity has its own separate event. We’re all within the blast radius. Even a well-targeted cyberweapon like Stuxnet damaged networks far away from the Iranian Natanz nuclear plant. In 2017, the global shipping giant Maersk had its operations brought to a halt by NotPetya, a Russian cyberweapon used against Ukraine. The company was a bystander caught in the cross fire of an international cyberattack. So far, most cyberattacks haven’t happened in wartime. There was no war when the US and Israel attacked Iran with Stuxnet in 2010, or when Iran attacked the Saudi national oil company in 2012. There was no war when North Korea used WannaCry to lock up computer systems around the world in 2017, or in the years prior when the US conducted cyber operations against North Korea in an attempt to sabotage its nuclear program.


Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy B. Zegart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, active measures, air gap, airport security, Apollo 13, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Chelsea Manning, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, failed state, feminist movement, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, Gene Kranz, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, index card, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, job automation, John Markoff, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Nate Silver, Network effects, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, operational security, Parler "social media", post-truth, power law, principal–agent problem, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, seminal paper, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, uber lyft, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

Carey Nachenberg, remarks, “A Forensic Discussion of Stuxnet,” Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, April 23, 2012. 100. Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up.” 101. David Kushner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, February 26, 2013, https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. 102. Sanger, Perfect Weapon, 21. 103. Nachenberg remarks; Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, “Stuxnet Was Work of US and Israeli Experts, Officials Say,” Washington Post, June 2, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/stuxnet-was-work-of-us-and-israeli-experts-officials-say/2012/06/01/gJQAlnEy6U_story.html. 104.

., 1st sess., June 13, 2019. 131. Sanger, Perfect Weapon; Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (New York: Crown, 2015). Cybersecurity experts at Symantec believe a version of the Stuxnet virus was deployed as early as 2005 but the virus was not publicly discovered until 2010. Jim Finkle, “Researchers Say Stuxnet Was Deployed against Iran in 2007,” Reuters, February 26, 2013, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyberwar-stuxnet/researchers-say-stuxnet-was-deployed-against-iran-in-2007-idUSBRE91P0PP20130226. 132. Sanger, Perfect Weapon, 268–85. 133.

Cartwright, who was then in charge of American nuclear deterrence, had been thinking about new technologies. What if the United States attacked Iran’s centrifuges with a cyberweapon?98 The result was Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyber weapon in the world, with code fifty times larger than typical malware.99 The CIA, the NSA, and Israel’s elite cyber Unit 8200 reportedly joined forces.100 Forensics revealed that Stuxnet used four rare and valuable “zero day” vulnerabilities (coding flaws unknown to security researchers or software vendors) to find the precise software operating Iran’s centrifuges, spread inside, hide, and destroy without a trace.101 Still, the operation needed humans.


pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito, Jeff Howe

3D printing, air gap, Albert Michelson, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Burning Man, business logic, buy low sell high, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital rights, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, frictionless, game design, Gerolamo Cardano, informal economy, information security, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, move 37, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pirate software, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, Productivity paradox, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Singh, Singularitarianism, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, the strength of weak ties, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Two Sigma, universal basic income, unpaid internship, uranium enrichment, urban planning, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

When technicians do need to transfer data in or out of these systems, they do so by protected USB sticks. Stuxnet had either managed to get onto a plant employee’s jump drive, or it was an inside job. This feat gained considerably more stature once analysts determined that the virus had targeted five nuclear facilities in Iran—thought to be of the securest sites anywhere in the world. Stuxnet’s second great coup lay in avoiding detection until it had already destroyed nearly one thousand of Iran’s centrifuges and put the country’s nuclear program back years. What’s telling is that these systems turned out to have virtually no security at all. Once Stuxnet got past a first, supposedly impervious line of defense, it became a fox in a hen house.

The malware would also cleverly alter the information sent back on the computer screens so that its sabotage of the turbine would remain undetected for a long time. Stuxnet’s two great accomplishments—the ability to infiltrate a highly secure industrial system and the ability to stay hidden for many years—made it the object of sustained fascination among cybersecurity professionals. It also, however, demonstrates why resilience is always preferable to strength: There is no Fort Knox in a digital age. Everything that can be hacked will, at some point, be hacked. To convey just how stunned security experts were when Stuxnet became public, consider this: The SCADA systems in use at a nuclear plant are “air-gapped.”

The failure occurred in the imagination of the men who built it, the inability to imagine how to lose in a way that allows you to continue fighting, which is as neat a definition of resilience as you can find. Deception played an equally important role in Stuxnet’s success. The PLCs, programmable logic controllers, that controlled the turbines not only lacked a mechanism to detect malicious code designed to alter the behavior of the motors, but also had no means of detecting attempts to avoid detection by faking the data displayed to the system. Once Stuxnet bypassed the walls used to maintain security at the nuclear facilities, it never encountered another defensive measure. This failure of imagination, this inability to resist the allure of the impervious defense, is hardly limited to Iran or even nuclear plants.


pages: 274 words: 85,557

DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You by Misha Glenny

Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brian Krebs, BRICs, call centre, Chelsea Manning, Fall of the Berlin Wall, illegal immigration, James Watt: steam engine, Julian Assange, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, pirate software, Potemkin village, power law, reserve currency, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, SQL injection, Stuxnet, urban sprawl, white flight, WikiLeaks, zero day

We know that Bradley Manning, the man accused of having removed the US diplomatic cables that were subsequently published on WikiLeaks’ website, managed to download all the material onto a CD marked as a Lady Gaga album. We also know that Stuxnet – to date the world’s most sophisticated virus – must have been planted on its apparent target in Iran’s nuclear facilities by somebody (wittingly or otherwise) infecting the computer systems with a memory stick or CD. Iran’s nuclear operating systems are not connected to the Internet. But they are still networks, and their infection by Stuxnet proved that they were within reach of a professional intelligence agency. Stuxnet represented a significant escalation in the third major threat: cyber warfare. This piece of malware was so complicated that researchers estimated it must have taken in the region of several man-years to develop, which means that a dedicated team of coding engineers must have been working on it for an extended period.

The only entity capable of developing Stuxnet was a nation state with a lot of resources to devote to the design and manufacture of both defensive and offensive cyber weapons. Nonetheless, whoever designed Stuxnet borrowed huge amounts of computer code and techniques from the many tens of thousands of blackhat or greyhat hackers out in cyberspace. Criminal hackers are a great driver of creativity in all areas of the Web’s darkside. Military, private-sector, police and intelligence agencies are always quick to adopt the tools that crackers and hackers are developing. When Stuxnet was successfully infiltrated into the control system of several nuclear facilities in Iran, the authorities admitted that it led to a major breakdown in the operation of a highly sensitive station.

This means that even if a hacker is working on behalf of a boss (be it a capo, a CEO or a Commander), he will still need to know a great deal about the intended target if he is to design the right product. Whichever team of hackers designed Stuxnet, for example, had to know not just about the Iranian nuclear facilities that were the presumed targets; they also needed to understand the Siemens PLC network that ran it and the very specific compressor designed by Vachon, a Finnish company (although manufactured in China), as well as the Taiwanese company whose RealTek digital certificate was spoofed to fool the Iranian system’s anti-virus program. Anyone smart enough to work on Stuxnet would have been smart enough to work out its intended victim. In this respect, hackers are the key to cyber security as they hold the solution to the conundrum.


pages: 330 words: 83,319

The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder by Sean McFate

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, drone strike, escalation ladder, European colonialism, failed state, fake news, false flag, hive mind, index fund, invisible hand, John Markoff, joint-stock company, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, nuclear taboo, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technoutopianism, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, yellow journalism, Yom Kippur War, zero day, zero-sum game

Inflated cyber threats to U.S. electrical grid: Transforming the Nation’s Electricity System: The Second Installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review (Washington, DC: Department of Energy, January 2017), S-15. On varmint threat, see: Cyber Squirrel 1, 31 January 2018, http://cybersquirrel1.com. 9. Stuxnet hype: Michael Joseph Gross, “A Declaration of Cyber-War,” Vanity Fair, 21 March 2011, www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/03/stuxnet-201104; Kim Zetter, “An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon,” Wired, 3 November 2014, www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet. 10. Billy Mitchell predicts age of air power: William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power—Economic and Military (New York: G.

However, cyber experts demur and showcase Stuxnet as proof that cybertechnology is not just a new weapon of war, but a new way of war. Stuxnet was an American-Israeli computer worm injected into Iran’s nuclear facility network at Natanz in 2010. The worm took control of some computers and ordered the nuclear centrifuges to spin apart, reportedly destroying a fifth of them. Many asserted (without evidence) that this caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and everyone else weirdly believed this. A much-read Vanity Fair article claimed the episode represented the future of war, declaring: “Stuxnet is the Hiroshima of cyber-war.”9 In reality, Stuxnet had no effect on the Iranian nuclear program.

A much-read Vanity Fair article claimed the episode represented the future of war, declaring: “Stuxnet is the Hiroshima of cyber-war.”9 In reality, Stuxnet had no effect on the Iranian nuclear program. It did not destroy it or even meaningfully delay it. The Iranians simply replaced the broken centrifuges, ran an antivirus program, and went back to developing nuclear weapons. Stuxnet is pure hype. Cyber is important, but not in ways people think. It gives us new ways of doing old things: sabotage, theft, propaganda, deceit, and espionage. None of this is new. Cyberwar’s real power in modern warfare is influence, not sabotage. Using the internet to change people’s minds is more powerful than blowing up a server, and there’s nothing new about propaganda.


pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

If they spin too fast, the centrifuges begin to vibrate and shake uncontrollably until the pressure becomes so severe the motors burn out, requiring the centrifuge to be replaced. The authors of Stuxnet understood that no centrifuges meant no enrichment, thus no bomb and no threat. The Siemens PLCs were key to the attack, but the authors of Stuxnet were not impetuous cyber warriors with a pillage-and-burn mentality. They were patient, strategic, and cunning in their attack on Natanz. In the first phase of the assault on Natanz, Stuxnet did nothing but observe, sitting there silently, stealthily gathering information to understand how the enrichment centrifuges worked.

A USB thumb drive. To sabotage the centrifuges at Natanz, a new class of cyber weapon was created, one that could leap from the virtual world of computers and enter the physical world of industrial control systems. Enter Stuxnet, a highly sophisticated computer worm widely believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to keep a notorious foe in check. The authors of Stuxnet copied the worm onto a simple USB flash drive, now locked and loaded, ready to seek out its quarry. How the drive came to be smuggled into Natanz and who inserted it into the computer network at the facility remain unknown, even today.

As it turned out, the Iranians had placed too much trust in the computer screens governing their prized secretive nuclear enrichment site. The data logging and computer recording of the industrial control systems stealthily perpetrated by the Stuxnet worm in phase one of the attack had a clear, if not immediately obvious, purpose: to fully document what the Siemens PLCs looked like when they were in full, proper working order. Rotors spinning according to plan and pressure at expected levels yielded all systems go, all maintenance lights green. Stuxnet captured all of those data and recorded it on the PLC equivalent of a VCR, carefully saved for posterity. What happened next was straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, portrayed many times in films such as Ocean’s Eleven and National Treasure.


pages: 547 words: 160,071

Underground by Suelette Dreyfus

airport security, Free Software Foundation, invisible hand, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Loma Prieta earthquake, military-industrial complex, packet switching, PalmPilot, pirate software, profit motive, publish or perish, RFC: Request For Comment, Ronald Reagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, uranium enrichment, urban decay, WikiLeaks, zero day

Now there is Stuxnet which, after WikiLeaks, was probably the biggest technology story of 2010 and certainly the biggest worm of the year. WikiLeaks created an international news sensation on 16 July 2010 by announcing that a major nuclear incident had occurred in Iran.5 This incident turned out to be not a political worm but a military worm with destructive intent – Stuxnet. It seems all sorts of worms had turned. About the same time, Julian was prosecuting the case for peace – a defiant ex-hacker presenting evidence from Afghanistan on the ‘squalor of war’ (July 25).6 The Stuxnet story illustrates how worms have transformed from youthful experiments to potent weapons of the military, and how it is the intelligence agencies who are now the hackers.

Alternatively, a hacker working for the criminal underworld might have used the vulnerabilities to write a worm that stole credit cards from thousands of home PCs, instead of disabling an obscure Siemens controller associated with operating centrifuges. Although no country has taken responsibility for Stuxnet, the media reports about the worm smell of gloating by the US and Israeli governments – the kind of gloating that comes from the pleasure of a job well done. While Stuxnet garnered the headlines, a much darker element of the worm-as-cyber-weapon story has received less attention in the hacker community. At the same time Stuxnet was weaving through Iran’s nuclear facility computers, someone was assassinating university professors and scientists in Iran. On 29 November 2011, someone tried to murder two senior Iranian nuclear scientists with similarly timed bombs.13 Dr Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University, was killed.

pagewanted=3&_r=1 8. Ibid. 9. CBS News, ‘Iran Confirms Stuxnet Worm Halted Centrifuges’, 29 November, 2010. See: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/29/world/main7100197.shtml 10. William J. Broad, John Markoff and David E. Sanger, ‘Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay’, New York Times online, 15 January, 2011. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1 11. Ibid. 12. Ryan Naraine, ‘Stuxnet attackers used 4 Windows zero-day exploits’, Zdnet, 14 September, 2010. See: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/stuxnet-attackers-used-4-windows-zero-day-exploits/7347 13.


pages: 447 words: 111,991

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

Correll, ‘Air Strike at Osirak’, Air Force Magazine, 1 April 2012 <https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0412osirak/> [accessed 26 April 2020]. 10 Patrick Jackson, ‘Osirak: Over the Reactor’, BBC News, 5 June 2006 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4774733.stm> [accessed 12 January 2021]. 11 Ralph Langner, To Kill a Centrifuge: A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet’s Creators Tried to Achieve (The Langner Group, November 2013) <https://www.langner.com/to-kill-a-centrifuge/> [accessed 26 March 2020]. 12 Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, ‘Stuxnet Was Work of U.S. and Israeli Experts, Officials Say’, Washington Post, 2 June 2012 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/stuxnet-was-work-of-us-and-israeli-experts-officials-say/2012/06/01/gJQAlnEy6U_story.html> [accessed 26 March 2021]. 13 Matthew Gooding, ‘Cyber Attacks: Damaging Breaches Hit 96 per cent of UK Businesses Last Year’, Computer Business Review, 5 August 2020 <https://www.cbronline.com/news/uk-businesses-cyber-attacks> [accessed 17 September 2020]. 14 ‘37 Billion Data Records Leaked in 2020, a Growth of 140 per cent YOY – Atlas VPN’ <https://atlasvpn.com/blog/37-billion-data-records-leaked-in-2020-a-growth-of-140-yoy> [accessed 24 February 2021]. 15 Azeem Azhar, ‘Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: My Conversation with Nicole Eagen’, Exponential View, 27 December 2019 <https://www.exponentialview.co/p/cybersecurity-in-the-age-of-ai> [accessed 3 August 2020]. 16 Matt Burgess, ‘To Protect Putin, Russia Is Spoofing GPS Signals on a Massive Scale’, Wired, 27 March 2019 <https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-gps-spoofing> [accessed 14 September 2020]. 17 Andy Greenberg, ‘The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History’, Wired, 22 August 2018 <https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/> [accessed 3 August 2020]. 18 Donghui Park, ‘North Korea Cyber Attacks: A New Asymmetrical Military Strategy’, Henry M.

Starting in early 2010, the site suffered a series of perplexing mishaps – around 1,000 centrifuges, a tenth of the site’s contingent, were destroyed. But the perpetrator was not a squadron of Israel’s feared top guns and their 20-ton aircraft. It was Stuxnet, a piece of malicious software code. The bug had buried into Iranian firms’ networks for a few days before arriving in Natanz. Designed specifically to target the software running on electronics made by the German firm Siemens, Stuxnet spent a month gently tampering with the operation of Iran’s computers. The goal was to damage the delicate centrifuges that were being used to purify uranium for military use.11 The effects went far beyond the digital world, destroying much of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The goal was to damage the delicate centrifuges that were being used to purify uranium for military use.11 The effects went far beyond the digital world, destroying much of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And it all happened without a ‘kinetic’ attack – that is, lobbing a bomb at an enemy. While nobody has ever officially claimed responsibility for Stuxnet, it has been widely alleged to be a joint creation of the Israeli and US governments.12 All states have vulnerabilities similar to the Natanz nuclear site. Today, everything has – or will soon have – a digital interface, probably connected to the internet. One effect of this transformation is to increase the number of attack surfaces within governments – be they nuclear reactors or military databases.


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Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard

Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brian Krebs, British Empire, butter production in bangladesh, call centre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, digital map, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Google Earth, Hacker News, Howard Rheingold, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Internet of things, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, packet switching, pension reform, prediction markets, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stuxnet, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day

One attack crippled the world’s most valuable company, the $10 trillion Saudi oil firm Aramco. Hackers wiped out data on three-quarters of the company’s computers.9 The attack was probably launched by Iran, and it came on a carefully chosen day when the impact would be severe. Stuxnet, the virus that crippled Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges, was probably developed by the United States and Israel.10 The same team that produced Stuxnet probably also produced the viruses Flame and Gauss, all of which have some shared code.11 These more recent viruses have basic data-mining goals, and Gauss seems to be targeting Lebanese banks. China is only one of several countries that have a full-time, professional cohort of hackers who aggressively attack information infrastructure in other countries and steal intellectual property.

Erik Kirschbaum, “Snowden Says NSA Engages in Industrial Espionage: TV,” Reuters, January 26, 2014, accessed September 30, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/26/us-security-snowden-germany-idUSBREA0P0DE20140126. 9. Nicole Perlroth, “Cyberattack on Saudi Oil Firm Disquiets U.S.,” The New York Times, October 24, 2012, accessed September 30, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/global/cyberattack-on-saudi-oil-firm-disquiets-us.html. 10. “Stuxnet,” Wikipedia, accessed June 30, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet. 11. Nicole Perlroth, “Virus Seeking Bank Data Is Tied to Attack on Iran,” Bits, August 9, 2012, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/researchers-find-possible-state-sponsored-virus-in-mideast/. 12. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Wanted by the FBI: Wang Dong,” FBI, accessed June 30, 2014, http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/wang-dong. 13.

Andrei Aliaksandrau and Alaksiej Lavoncyk, “Belarus: Pulling the Plug,” Xindex: The Voice of Free Expression (Budapest, HU, January 2013), accessed September 30, 2014, http://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IDX_Belarus_ENG_WebRes.pdf. 12. “Stuxnet,” Wikipedia, accessed June 30, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet. 13. “Türk Genelkurmay Başkanlığı 27 Nisan 2007 Tarihli Basın Açıklaması,” Wikisource, accessed June 30, 2014, accessed September 30, 2014, http://tr.wikisource.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrk_Genelkurmay_Ba%C5%9Fkanl%C4%B1%C4%9F%C4%B1_27_Nisan_2007_tarihli_bas%C4%B1n_a%C3%A7%C4%B1klamas%C4%B1. 14.


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Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro

3D printing, 4chan, active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, availability heuristic, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business logic, call centre, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, evil maid attack, facts on the ground, false flag, feminist movement, Gabriella Coleman, gig economy, Hacker News, independent contractor, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Linda problem, loss aversion, macro virus, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Minecraft, Morris worm, Multics, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, pirate software, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, SQL injection, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological solutionism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the new new thing, the payments system, Turing machine, Turing test, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, young professional, zero day, éminence grise

Seligman, “Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience,” Psychological Review 123, no. 4 (2016): 349–67, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4920136/. five hacks: Some hacks have been extensively discussed by others, so I did not tell those stories again; e.g., STUXNET, in Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: STUXNET and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (New York: Crown, 2014); Conficker, in Mark Bowden, Worm: The First Digital World War (New York: Grove Press, 2012); Dark Energy, in Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers (New York: Doubleday, 2019). 1.

States disseminate propaganda on social media. In cyber-dependent war, by contrast, states use computers to attack the computers of another state. When Russia launched a three-week DDoS on Estonia in 2007, it was waging a cyber-dependent war. The United States also engaged in cyber-dependent war when, in partnership with Israel, it used the Stuxnet worm to infiltrate the computer networks at the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz. Richard Clarke’s apocalyptic scene is also cyber-dependent. He imagines a terrorist hacking into the computer networks of oil refineries, power plants, airports, and banks to wreak havoc. These attacks target “critical infrastructure,” resources so vital to the physical security, economic stability, and public health or safety that their incapacitation or destruction would have debilitating effects on a society.

Cyber-dependent war has worried analysts because “cyber-physical” systems—systems that use computers to control physical devices so as to maximize efficiency, reliability, and convenience—have become commonplace. The Internet of Things that Mirai exploited is a cyber-physical internetwork, as are industrial control systems used in power plants, chemical processing, and manufacturing, which were exploited by Stuxnet. By hacking into computer networks, attackers can now cause physical destruction and disruption using only streams of zeros and ones. Hyperspecialized Weapons With the exception of Live Free or Die Hard, the 2007 movie in which Bruce Willis saves the United States from a cyberterrorist who shuts down the entire country, the world has not seen anything like Clarke’s doomsday fantasy.


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The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future by Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, deep learning, DeepMind, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, gigafactory, Google bus, Hyperloop, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, life extension, longitudinal study, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, microbiome, military-industrial complex, mobile money, new economy, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Davenport, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero day

As high-speed, ubiquitous connectivity among all manner of devices binds us more tightly to technology and to the Internet, a crucial and frightening mega-trend for the next two decades is that cyber security will become a more important domestic-security issue. In 2007, the Stuxnet computer worm sent costly and critically important centrifuges spinning wildly out of control at Natanz, a secret uranium-enrichment facility in Iran.2 In a matter of months, American and Israeli security forces were able to remotely destroy 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium. The government program behind the virus, code-named “Olympic Games,” was developed during the Bush and Obama Administrations. Stuxnet was the first major publicly reported governmental cyber attack on industrial facilities of another nation.

Dan Kloeffler and Alexis Shaw, “Dick Cheney feared assassination via medical device hacking: ‘I was aware of the danger,’ ” ABC News 19 October 2013, http://abcnews.go.com/US/vice-president-dick-cheney-feared-pacemaker-hacking/story?id=20621434 (accessed 21 October 2016). 2. Kim Zetter, “An unprecedented look at Stuxnet, the world’s first digital weapon,” WIRED 3 November 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet (accessed 21 October 2016) 3. “What happened,” U.S. Office of Personnel Management (undated), https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents (accessed 21 October 2016). 4. Casey Newton, “The mind-bending messiness of the Ashley Madison data dump,” the Verge 19 August 2015, http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/19/9178855/ashley-madison-data-breach-implications (accessed 21 October 2016). 5.


Engineering Security by Peter Gutmann

active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, Asperger Syndrome, bank run, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, business process, call centre, card file, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, combinatorial explosion, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, domain-specific language, Donald Davies, Donald Knuth, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, false flag, fault tolerance, Firefox, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, GnuPG, Google Chrome, Hacker News, information security, iterative process, Jacob Appelbaum, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Conway, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, Laplace demon, linear programming, litecoin, load shedding, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Multics, Network effects, nocebo, operational security, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, post-materialism, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, random walk, recommendation engine, RFID, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, rolling blackouts, Ruby on Rails, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, semantic web, seminal paper, Skype, slashdot, smart meter, social intelligence, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain attack, telemarketer, text mining, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, Therac-25, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, Wayback Machine, web application, web of trust, x509 certificate, Y2K, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

[423] “Malware Increasingly Being Signed With Stolen Certificates”, Robert Lemos, 21 July 2011, http://www.darkreading.com/advancedthreats/167901091/security/application-security/231000129/malware-increasingly-being-signed-with-stolen-certificates.html. [424] “W32.Duqu: The Precursor to the Next Stuxnet”, ‘Symantec Security Response’, 18 October 2011, http://www.symantec.com/connect/w32_duqu_precursor_next_stuxnet. [425] “Win32/Stuxnet Signed Binaries”, Pierre-Marc Bureau, 19 July 2010, http://blog.eset.com/2010/07/19/win32stuxnet-signed-binaries. [426] “Another Signed Stuxnet Binary”, Sean Sullivan, 20 July 2010, http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001993.html. [427] “New Stuxnet-Related Malware Signed Using Certificate from JMicron”, Lucian Constantin, 20 July 2010, http://news.softpedia.com/news/NewStuxnet-Related-Malware-Signed-Using-Certificate-from-JMicron148213.shtml

action=dpl&char=s. [432] “A Quantitative Analysis of the Insecurity of Embedded Network Devices: Results of a Wide-Area Scan”, Ang Cui and Salvatore Stolfo, Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC’10), December 2010, p.97. [433] “Enumerating Stuxnet’s exploits”, Ralph Langner, 7 June 2011, http://www.langner.com/en/2011/06/07/enumeratingstuxnet%E2%80%99s-exploits/. [434] “Rise of “forever day” bugs in industrial systems threatens critical infrastructure”, Dan Goodin, 9 April 2012, http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/rise-of-ics-forever-day-vulnerabiliitiesthreaten-critical-infrastructure.ars. [435] “W32.Stuxnet Dossier“, Nicolas Falliere, Liam Murchu and Eric Chien, Symantec Corporation, September 2010, http://www.symantec.com/[436] content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf.

References 113 [419] “Signed Malware Used Valid Realtek Certificate”, Lucian Constantin, 16 July 2010, http://news.softpedia.com/news/Signed-Malware-Used-ValidRealtek-Certificate-147942.shtml. [420] “VeriSign working to mitigate Stuxnet digital signature theft”, Steve Ragan, 21 July 2010, http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201029/5921/VeriSignworking-to-mitigate-Stuxnet-digital-signature-theft. [421] “‘Want My Autograph?’: The Use and Abuse of Digital Signatures by Malware”, Mike Wood, presented at the 2010 Virus Bulletin Conference, October 2010, http://www.sophos.com/security/technicalpapers/digital_signature_abuse.pdf. [422] “AVG Community Powered Threat Report — Q2 2011”, 21 June 2011, http://www.avg.com/filedir/press/AVG_Community_Powered_Threat_Report_Q2_2011.pdf


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Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Andy Rubin, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, commoditize, corporate governance, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, Google Chrome, Haight Ashbury, independent contractor, information security, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Naomi Klein, NSO Group, Peter Thiel, pirate software, pre–internet, Ralph Nader, ransomware, Richard Stallman, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, tech worker, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero day

It rarely inducted new members, and when it did, cDc usually picked people already established through other groups, making it a supergroup in the rock-and-roll sense—a band formed of people from other bands. As cDc matured, its members became leaders in changing hacking from a hobby to a profession to a mode of warfare, or really several modes. That warfare has metastasized in the past decade, encompassing the US-led Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear program, Russia’s blackouts of electrical systems in Ukraine, and China’s methodical pillaging of Western trade secrets. The unstoppable, semiautomated propaganda that helped propel the 2016 election of Donald Trump was just the latest, most complicated, and most effective twist.

But they faced accusations of bias because their detection systems were only deployed in some countries, they had US government contracts, or they had marketing reasons for publishing what they did. Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, likewise, became the best in the world at ferreting out US-sponsored cyberespionage campaigns, beginning with Stuxnet, the pathbreaking weapon that defanged Iranian nuclear centrifuges before its exposure in 2010 opened everyone’s eyes to the new era of cyberwarfare. But Kaspersky found very little new to say about Russian malware. Citizen Lab could call things as it saw them. And it extended its reach by working with researchers inside other companies, including Google, who would have found it hard to publish under the name of their principal employer.

Inside, they had seen that the software was used to search for classified US documents, and they had warned the Americans. The consensus in the intelligence agencies was that the Russians had obtained at least some of the Shadow Brokers information in that manner. The disclosures badly hurt Kaspersky, which had enjoyed a remarkable run publicly exposing high-end US malware, starting with the Stuxnet virus, which had knocked out Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Kaspersky admitted it had taken some secret files from a US government employee, though it claimed that it had deleted them. The US banned it from federal government use. The Russians had the motive to steal US hacking tools, the means to do it, and the opportunity.


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The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines by William Davidow, Michael Malone

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, AlphaGo, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, Bob Noyce, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, holacracy, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, license plate recognition, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, QWERTY keyboard, ransomware, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skinner box, Snapchat, speech recognition, streetcar suburb, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, trade route, Turing test, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, zero day, zero-sum game, Zipcar

In 1988, another warning shot was fired when Robert Tappan Morris released the first computer worm into the Internet—an act, he claimed later, that was intended to call attention to the vulnerability of the system and the inadequacy of its security measures.41 A year later, he earned the dubious distinction of being the first person to be indicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.42 He was sentenced to three years of probation, community service, and a small fine. Over the subsequent thirty years, the United States has focused a great deal of its energy on building offensive cyber weapons. In 2009, Stuxnet was launched against the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Twenty-seven years after the pipeline explosion in Siberia, cyber experts nevertheless described Stuxnet as the world’s first digital weapon.43 The virus took control of the Natanz centrifuges and caused a thousand of them to self-destruct.44 The NSA has developed tool kits that can be used to engineer cyberattacks.

“Robert Tappan Morris,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris (accessed June 27, 2019); and “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act (accessed June 27, 2019). 43. Kim Zetter, “An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon,” Wired, November 3, 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/ (accessed June 28, 2019). 44. Gordon Corera, “21st Century Warfare,” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zq9jmnb#ztq6nbk (accessed June 28, 2019). 45. Steve Morgan, “Cybercrime Damages $6 Trillion by 2021,” Cybersecurity Ventures, October 16, 2017, https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/ (accessed June 28, 2019). 46.

Companies from Airbnb and Amazon to Starbucks, Twitter, Visa, and Zillow have been victims of these “denial of service” attacks. Then there are ransomware attacks, in which viruses seize control of computers and encrypt user files unless the user is willing to pay a ransom in a cryptocurrency. In some cases, malware can direct the system to shut down and erase itself, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, speed up until it destroys itself. Cyber weapons can disrupt or shut down power grids and communication, transportation, and financial networks, and bring commercial operations to a standstill. They can and do cause tremendous physical damage as well. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the cost of cybercrime at $3 trillion in 2015 and projects that it will rise to $6 trillion by 2021.45 To put this number in perspective, that represents about 4 percent of the gross domestic product for the world.46 To date, most of the damage done by cyber criminals/terrorists/warriors has been economic.


Demystifying Smart Cities by Anders Lisdorf

3D printing, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, behavioural economics, Big Tech, bike sharing, bitcoin, business intelligence, business logic, business process, chief data officer, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, congestion pricing, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, digital rights, digital twin, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, Google Glasses, hydroponic farming, income inequality, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Large Hadron Collider, Masdar, microservices, Minecraft, OSI model, platform as a service, pneumatic tube, ransomware, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, self-driving car, smart cities, smart meter, software as a service, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuxnet, Thomas Bayes, Turing test, urban sprawl, zero-sum game

FISMA defines it thus: “Guarding against improper information modification or destruction, and includes ensuring information non-repudiation and authenticity....” A loss of integrity is the unauthorized modification or destruction of information. In 2010 hackers used the Stuxnet worm to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program, more specifically the centrifuges made for creating nuclear material. Stuxnet works by faking signals to control the centrifuges. By compromising the integrity of the data from sensors the centrifuges malfunctioned. Availability refers to the extent to which data can be accessed and not just suddenly disappear.

Strogatz, Nature 393, 440–442 1998 https://web.archive.org/web/20140803231327/http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/downloads/pdf/payphone_rfi.pdf (October 2, 2019) the original RFI for what turned out to be LinkNYC from 2012 www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/923-14/de-blasio-administration-winner-competition-replace-payphones-five-borough (October 2, 2019) press release of the winner of the LinkNYC bid www.citylab.com/life/2015/04/de-blasios-vision-for-new-york-broadband-for-all-by-2025/391092/ (October 2, 2019) an article about Mayor of New York Bill De Blasio’s plan for broadband for all in New York by 2025 www1.nyc.gov/site/doitt/agencies/nycwin.page (October 2, 2019) a description of The New York City Wireless Network, known as NYCWiN www.thethingsnetwork.org (October 5, 2019) a project dedicated to building LoRaWAN solutions Chapter 3 https://dyn.com/blog/dyn-analysis-summary-of-friday-october-21-attack/ (October 2, 2019) the official analysis of the Dyn attack on October 21 https://citiesfordigitalrights.org (October 2, 2019) the official site for the Cities for Digital Rights coalition www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases (October 2, 2019) an article about the Strava fitness tracking incident involving a US Army base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet (October 2, 2019) a description from Wikipedia of the Stuxnet worm https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/NIST.FIPS.199.pdf (October 2, 2019) the official FIPS 199 standard for categorization of information and information systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_Management_Act_of_2002 (October 2, 2019) a description of the FISMA framework from Wikipedia https://arrayofthings.github.io/ (October 2, 2019) the official site of the Array of Things project http://maps.nyc.gov/snow/# (October 2, 2019) the PlowNYC site where New Yorkers can track the progress of snow plows during wintertime Chapter 4 https://scijinks.gov/air-quality/ www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics (October 2, 2019) definition of what particulate matter is https://brightplanet.com/2013/06/twitter-firehose-vs-twitter-api-whats-the-difference-and-why-should-you-care/ (October 2, 2019) a description of how the Twitter Firehose works www.waze.com/ccp (October 2, 2019) official site of the Twitter Connected Citizens Program The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing , Peter M.


pages: 339 words: 88,732

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Boston Dynamics, British Empire, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, congestion pricing, corporate governance, cotton gin, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, digital map, driverless car, employer provided health coverage, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, full employment, G4S, game design, general purpose technology, global village, GPS: selective availability, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, law of one price, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, mass immigration, means of production, Narrative Science, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-work, power law, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, six sigma, Skype, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, telepresence, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vernor Vinge, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Y2K

Such a cascade, which sociologist Charles Perrow labeled a ‘system accident’ or ‘normal accident,’ characterized the 1979 meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the August 2003 electrical blackout that affected forty-five million people throughout the U.S. Northeast, and many other incidents.1 Second, complex, tightly coupled systems make tempting targets for spies, criminals, and those who seek to wreak havoc. A recent example here is the Stuxnet computer worm, which may have been incubated in government labs. In 2010 Stuxnet hobbled at least one Iranian nuclear facility by perverting the control systems of its Siemens industrial equipment. The worm entered its target sites and spread through them by jumping harmlessly from PC to PC; when it spotted an opportunity, it crossed over to the Siemens machines and did its damage there.2 Until recently, our species did not have the ability to destroy itself.

Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Interim Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout (New York Independent System Operator, January 8, 2004), http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hepg/Papers/NYISO.blackout.report.8.Jan.04.pdf. 2. Steven Cherry, “How Stuxnet Is Rewriting the Cyberterrorism Playbook,” IEEE Spectrum podcast, October 13, 2010, http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/telecom/security/how-stuxnet-is-rewriting-the-cyberterrorism-playbook. 3. Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 2000, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. 4. The costs of gene sequencing are dropping even more quickly than those of computing.

Schreyer, Peter Schumpeter, Joseph science: effect of digitization on government support of prizes in rapid progress in science fiction robots in SCIgen Sears Second Industrial Revolution second machine age: career opportunities in characteristics of complementary innovations in economic data relevant to intangible assets of interventions for key advances of long-term recommendations for mental power boosted by metrics of second machine age (continued) policy recommendations for Power Law distributions in reality of values of see also digitization SecondMachineAge.com self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs) semiconductors Sen, Amartya senses, human sensorimotor skills sensors, digital Shabtai, Ehud Shakespeare, William Shannon, Claude Shapiro, Carl Shinar, Amir Siciliano, Francis SIGGRAPH conference Silicon Valley Simon, Herbert Simon, Julian Sims, Peter Singapore: education system in Electronic Road Pricing System in singularity Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil) Siri Siu, Henry Sixteenth Amendment Skype smartphone applications smartphones Smith, Adam Smith, Michael social media Social Progress Index Social Security Socrates software open source solar flares Solow, Robert Sony PlayStation 3 South Korea, education system in Soviet Union speech recognition Spence, Michael Spiegel, Eric Spotify Sprague, Shawn spread bounty vs. in education productivity consequences of in wages see also inequality SRI International standardized testing Star Trek Startup America Partnership steam engine Stern, Scott Stiglitz, Joseph Stiroh, Kevin Stuxnet Summers, Lawrence superstars social acceptability of taxation of see also “winner-take-all” markets Sweden, income inequality in Systrom, Kevin Syverson, Chad Tabarrok, Alex Taipale, Kim Taiwan, automation in Target TaskRabbit taxes consumption on economic rents negative income payroll Pigovian value-added Tea Party technological progress adjusting to combinatorial nature of digitization in economic theories about employment implications of exponential nature of; see also innovation; Moore’s Law future of halting of interventions suggested for side effects of technology: in developing world history of major advances in see also digitization; general purpose technologies (GPTs) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre teraflop Terenzini, Patrick Thackeray, William Makepeace Theory of Economic Development, The (Schumpeter) Thrun, Sebastian Time Tinbergen, Jan Tobin, James Tolkien, J.


pages: 234 words: 63,149

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World by Ian Bremmer

airport security, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, clean water, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, nuclear winter, Parag Khanna, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, trade route, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Yet these new players balk at assuming the risks and burdens that come with a share of global leadership, focusing instead on managing each delicate stage of their countries’ economic development. This reluctance is at the heart of the G-Zero. NUCLEAR DIFFUSION Few challenges illustrate the dangers of a world without leadership more vividly than the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons. In 2009, a previously unknown computer worm known as Stuxnet suddenly infected tens of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries. Though some experts called it the most sophisticated malicious computer program ever seen, this weapon did not draw much media attention until experts discovered that among its many features is an ability to send nuclear centrifuges spinning out of control.38 As a result, many analysts now believe it was designed as part of a joint U.S.

International politics and cybersecurity have begun to collide. Threats to stand-alone computer networks have existed for years, but a sophisticated 2007 attack on Estonia’s parliament, banks, ministries, newspapers, and broadcasters, suspected to have come from inside Russia, and the previously mentioned Stuxnet worm attack on Iran’s nuclear program have underscored the reality that offensive cybercapabilities are outpacing the construction of defenses. As infrastructure networks like power grids are digitized—i.e., made “smart”—and the number of entry points expands exponentially, entire systems will become more susceptible to cyberattack.

PwC, 2020: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/chinese-economy-to-be-worlds-largest-by-2020/story-e6frez7r-1225822120372. IMF, 2016: http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/index.php. 38. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Worm Was Perfect for Sabotaging Centrifuges,” New York Times, November 18, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/middleeast/19stuxnet.html?sq=stuxnet&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print. 39. Neil MacFarquhar, “189 Nations Reaffirm Goal of Ban on Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times, May 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/middleeast/29nuke.html. 40. While the IAEA acknowledged “concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities” for the first time in 2010, it stopped short of confirming Israel’s widely known nuclear status.


pages: 427 words: 127,496

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service by Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal

airport security, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Boeing 747, Dr. Strangelove, false flag, illegal immigration, Stuxnet, traveling salesman, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

.,” James Philips, Heritage Foundation, Heritage.org, January 15, 2010 “Facing Iran: Lessons Learned Since Iraq’s 1991 Missile Attack on Israel,” Moshe Arens, The Jerusalem Center for Public and State Matters, March 8, 2010 Segev, Shmuel, The Iranian Triangle, the Secret Relationship Between Israel, Iran, and USA, Maariv, 1981 (H) STUXNET AND ESPIONAGE “Computer Virus in Iran Actually Targeted Larger Nuclear Facility,” Yossi Melman, Haaretz, September 28, 2010 (H) “The Meaning of Stuxnet,” Economist, October 2, 2010 “Israel May or May Not Have Been Behind the Stuxnet ‘Worm’ Attack on Iran—and It Doesn’t Matter Whether It Was,” Yossi Melman, Tablet, October 5, 2010 “Iran Executes 2 Men, Saying One Was Spy for Israel,” William Yong, New York Times, December 28, 2010 “Iranian Citizen Hanged for Spying for Israel,” Yossi Melman, Haaretz, December 29, 2010 (H) “Iran: ‘We Hanged an Israeli Spy’—Ali Akbar Siadat Was Hanged for Spying for Israel, Which Paid Him US$60,000,” Smadar Perry, Yedioth Ahronoth, December 29, 2010 (H) “Tehran Demands UN Intervention, Accuses Israel of Killing Its Minister of Defense (Ali Riza Askari),” Yossi Melman, Haaretz, January 2, 2011(H) “Iran to the UN: Find Out What Happened to the Missing General,” YNET, December 31, 2010 (H) “Outgoing Mossad Head Delivers Farewell Words,” Jpost.com.staff, Jerusalem Post, January 7, 2011 “Netanyahu Bids Farewell to Mossad Chief,” Gil Ronen, Arutz Sheva, Israel National News.

Because of planes crashing, laboratories set on fire, explosions in the missile and nuclear installations, defection of senior officials, deaths of top scientists, revolts and upheaval among the minorities’ groups—all those events and phenomena that Iran (correctly and incorrectly) attributed to Dagan’s people? Or was it because of Dagan’s last “major coup,” according to the European press? In the summer of 2010, thousands of computers controlling the Iranian nuclear project were infected with the perfidious Stuxnet virus. Labeled one of the most sophisticated in the world, Stuxnet struck computers controlling the Natanz centrifuges and wreaked havoc. Its complexity left no doubt that it was the product of a large team of experts and considerable funds. One of the virus’s distinctive features was that it could be targeted to a specific system, causing no harm to others en route.

Once in the Iranian system, it could modify the speed of rotation of a centrifuge, making its product useless, without anyone being aware of it. Observers spoke of two countries as having the ability to carry out such cyber-attack: the United States and Israel. President Ahmadinejad tried to downplay the effect Stuxnet had had, and declared that Iran had the situation well in hand. The truth, though, was that at the beginning of 2011, about half of Iran’s centrifuges were immobilized. Dagan’s people allegedly delayed Iran’s nuclear weapons program with their incessant attacks on so many fronts over so many years: diplomatic pressure and sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council; counter-proliferation—keeping the Iranians from getting the materials needed to produce a bomb; economical warfare—prohibiting the banks in the free world from doing business with Iran; regime change, by supporting and fomenting political unrest and by fanning the ethnic divisions inside Iran, where Kurds, Azeris, Beloshis, Arabs, and Turkmen constitute 50 percent of the population; and most immediately, covert measures, black and special operations against the Iranian project.


pages: 592 words: 161,798

The Future of War by Lawrence Freedman

Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Boeing 747, British Empire, colonial rule, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global village, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Markoff, long peace, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, open economy, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, systematic bias, the scientific method, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, Valery Gerasimov, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, zero day

Given the resources allocated to this issue it could be assumed that the Americans were well able to interfere with the systems of others. Small but significant acts illustrated the possibilities. First Iraqi and then Serb air defences were degraded by messing with their software. The Israelis did something similar with Syrian air defences when they took out a nuclear reactor under construction in 2007. The Stuxnet virus, probably a joint US-Israeli project, was designed to set back uranium enrichment in Iran by disabling centrifuges.21 This had some effect but also showed how hard it was to stop these attacks spreading away from the original target. The virus was noticed when non-Iranian systems were hit. Every time national systems were tested to see how well they could defend against interference from others, they were found to be wanting, and for all types of networks, malevolent hacking became regular.

‘The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945–1993’. American Political Science Review 89.3 (1995): 681–690. Liddell Hart, Basil. Paris or the Future of War. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1925. . Europe in Arms. London: Faber & Faber, 1937. . The Revolution in Warfare. London: Faber, 1946. Lindsay, Jon R., ‘Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare’. Security Studies 22.3 (2013). Lischer, S. K. ‘Security and displacement in Iraq: responding to the forced migration crisis’. International Security 33.2 (2008): 95–119. Livermore, Thomas. Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–65. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1900.

Strategic Studies Institute: US Army War College, 2009. Zartman, William. Collapsed States: The disintegration and restoration of legitimate authority. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995. Zedong, Mao. On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Zetter, Kim. Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon. New York: Crown, 2014. Zimmerman, Warren. Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers. New York: Times Books, 1996. Zwierzchowski, Jan, and Ewa Tabeau. ‘The 1992–95 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Census-based Multiple System Estimation of Casualties’ Undercount’.


pages: 301 words: 85,263

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

AI winter, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, congestion charging, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Eyjafjallajökull, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fear of failure, Flash crash, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Greyball, Haber-Bosch Process, Higgs boson, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Bridle, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Leo Hollis, lone genius, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, oil shock, p-value, pattern recognition, peak oil, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social graph, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stem cell, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, Uber for X, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks

When researchers dug into Mirai, they discovered it targets poorly secured internet-connected devices – from security cameras to digital video recorders – and turns them into an army of bots capable of disrupting huge networks. In just a few weeks, Mirai infected half a million devices, and it needed just 10 per cent of that capacity to cripple major networks for hours.41 Mirai, in fact, looks like nothing so much as Stuxnet, another virus discovered within the industrial control systems of hydroelectric plants and factory assembly lines in 2010. Stuxnet was a military-grade cyberweapon; when dissected, it was found to be aimed specifically at Siemens centrifuges, and designed to go off when it encountered a facility that possessed a particular number of such machines. That number corresponded with one particular facility: the Natanz Nuclear Facility in Iran, the mainstay of the country’s uranium enrichment programme.

When activated, the programme would quietly degrade crucial components of the centrifuges, causing them to break down and disrupt the Iranian enrichment programme.42 The attack was apparently partially successful, but the effect on other infected facilities is unknown. To this day, despite obvious suspicions, nobody knows where Stuxnet came from, or who made it. Nobody knows for certain who developed Mirai either, or where its next iteration might come from, but it might be there, right now, breeding in the CCTV camera in your office, or the Wi-Fi-enabled kettle in the corner of your kitchen. Or perhaps the crash will look like a string of blockbuster movies pandering to right-wing conspiracies and survivalist fantasies, from quasi-fascist superheroes (Captain America and the Batman series) to justifications of torture and assassination (Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper).

., 116 ‘Rogeting,’ 88 Romney, Mitt, 206–7 Rosenblatt, Frank, 137 Roy, Arundhati, 250 Royal Aircraft Establishment, 188–9 Ruskin, John, 17–20, 195, 202 Rwanda, 243, 244, 245 S Sabetta, 48 SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment), 35, 38 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), 33, 34, 35 Samsung, 127 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 78 Schmidt, Eric, 241–5 The Scream (Munch), 202 Sedol, Lee, 149, 157–8 seed banks, 52–6 Seed Vault, 55 seismic sensors, 48 self-excitation, 145 ‘semantic analyser,’ 177 Semi-Automated Business Research Environment (SABRE), 35, 38 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 33, 34, 35 semiconductors, 82 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (Hayek), 138–9 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, 201 The Modern Prometheus, 201 SIGINT Seniors Europe, 174 simulation, conflating approximation with, 34–5 Singapore Exchange, 122–3 smart products, 127–8, 131 Smith, Robert Elliott, 152 smoking gun, 183–4, 186 Snowden, Edward, 173–5, 178 software about, 82–3 AlphaGo, 149, 156–8 Assistant, 152 AutoAwesome, 152 DeepFace, 140 Greyball programme, 119, 120 Hippo programme, 32 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 Optic Nerve programme, 174 PredPol, 144, 146 Translate, 146 Solnit, Rebecca, 11–2 solutionism, 4 space telescopes, 168–9 speed of light, 107 Spread Networks, 107 SSEC (IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 Stapel, Diederik, 87–8 Stapledon, Olaf, 20 steam engines, 77 Stellar Wind, 176 Stewart, Elizabeth ‘Betsy,’ 30–1, 31 Steyerl, Hito, 126 stock exchanges, 108 ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ lecture series, 17–9 Stratus homogenitus, 195–6 studios, 130 Stuxnet, 129–30 surveillance about, 243–4 complicity in, 185 computational excesses of, 180–1 devices for, 104 Svalbard archipelago, 51–2, 54 Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 52–3 Svalbard Treaty (1920), 52 Swiss National Bank, 123 Syed, Omar, 158–9 systemic literacy, 5–6 T Taimyr Peninsula, 47–8 Targeted Individuals, 210–1 The Task of the Translator (Benjamin), 147, 155–6 TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), 79 technology acceleration of, 2 complex, 2–3 opacity of, 119 Teletubbies, 217 television, children’s, 216–7 Tesco Clubcard, 245 thalidomide, 95 Thatcher, Margaret, 177 theory of evolution, 78 thermal power plants, 196 Three Guineas (Woolf), 12 Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov), 157 Tillmans, Wolfgang, 71 tools, 13–4 To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light exhibition, 143 totalitarianism, collectivism vs., 139 Toy Freaks, 225–6 transistors, 79, 80 Translate software, 146 translation algorithms, 84 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), 79 Tri Alpha Energy, 98–101 Trinity test, 25 trolling, 231 Trump, Donald, 169–70, 194–5, 206, 207, 236 trust, science and, 91 trusted source, 220 Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, 49 turbulence, 65–9 tyranny of techne, 132 U Uber, 117–9, 127 UberEats app, 120–1 unboxing videos, 216, 219 United Airlines, 66–7 Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act (USA FREEDOM Act), 178 USA FREEDOM Act (2015), 178 US Drug Efficacy Amendment (1962), 95 V van Helden, Albert, 102 Veles, objectification of, 235 Verizon, 173 VHF omnidirectional radio range (VOR) installations, 104 Vigilant Telecom, 110–1 Volkswagen, 119–20 von Neumann, John about, 25 ‘Can We Survive Technology?


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Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict by Max Brooks, John Amble, M. L. Cavanaugh, Jaym Gates

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, British Empire, data acquisition, false flag, invisible hand, Jon Ronson, risk tolerance, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, The future is already here, Yogi Berra

Operation Olympic Games is the name widely used by the media to refer to the operation that launched the first serious state-versus-state offensive cyberattack.4 It was the advent of a new way of warfare. The operation’s goal was to set back the Iranian nuclear-enrichment program. The weapon, the Stuxnet computer virus, was designed not only to damage the centrifuges Iran used in its enrichment efforts but also to hide from the centrifuge operators that there was anything amiss.5 The worm virus was introduced into the closed networks through the laptops and personal electronic devices of civilian scientists working on the program.

The employment of this new weapon was, based on the assessed aim, successful; however, the unintended consequence was that this new weapon was now also in an adversary’s hands (and due to a bug in the virus’s code that let it spread beyond the enrichment facility, in the hands of the wider public as well). In short, the target of the operation, or another potential adversary, could reverse engineer the weapon, strengthen their defenses, or even use it for their own ends. The parallel between the Death Star and the Stuxnet virus is not technological; rather, it is in the failure to identify the consequences of using the weapon in the first place. The destruction of the Death Star after its use against Alderaan was not simply a matter of the Rebels destroying a key weapon system. It was an example of Rebels removing the means with which the Empire intended to implement its new strategy of deterrence.

It was an example of Rebels removing the means with which the Empire intended to implement its new strategy of deterrence. The Rebel forces could, essentially, respond in kind to the destruction of Alderaan and score both a moral victory by avenging innocent lives lost and a political one by undermining the Empire’s new strategy. The employment of Stuxnet opened a discussion of the moral ambiguity of cyberweapons and endowed the target with the potential ability to re-create its capabilities, a possibility somewhat akin to how the Rebel destruction of the Death Star mirrored the destruction of Alderaan, on a smaller scale.6 In each case, a new weapon’s user had achieved tactical and operational goals, but with a strategy that did not account for second- and third-order effects.


pages: 326 words: 103,170

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo

air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, British Empire, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data science, deep learning, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Firefox, Google Chrome, growth hacking, Herman Kahn, income inequality, information security, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joi Ito, Laura Poitras, machine translation, market bubble, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, packet switching, paperclip maximiser, Paul Graham, power law, price stability, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Sand Hill Road, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social web, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Vernor Vinge, zero day

Complex Software Systems,” ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review—Proceedings of the 2006 EuroSys Conference 40, no. 4 (October 2006): 295 “We are not experts”: Stephen Cobb and Andrew Lee, “Malware Is Called Malicious for a Reason: The Risks of Weaponizing Code,” in 6th International Conference on Cyber Conflict: Proceedings 2014, ed. Pascal Brangetto, Markus Maybaum, and Jan Stinissen (Tallinn, Estonia: NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence Publications, 2014), 71–82. And “Stuxnet: Tsunami of Stupid or Evil Genius?” (June 1, 2012) by Ali-Reza Anghaie at http://infosecisland.com/blogview/21507-Stuxnet-Tsunami-of-Stupid-or-Evil-Genius.html. What makes a city: Colin McFarlane, “The Geographies of Urban Density: Topology, Politics, and the City,” Progress in Human Geography (October 7, 2015): 2. Such a possibility: Lindner and Gaycken, “Back to Basics,” 58.

These successors to the warez dudes work for cybercriminal billionaires, for intelligence agencies, and even (often) just for themselves. They help find and deploy the sorts of really deep system exploits that enable brazen cyberthefts of millions of pieces of personal data or attacks such as the Stuxnet virus, which caused thousands of Iranian nuclear centrifuges to vibrate themselves apart. And they do still more: Most of the attacks we’ve talked about so far occur in installed, running boxes. But the companies that make those boxes oversee a whole process of design, testing, manufacturing, and installation.

Not surprisingly, hackers have mimicked the design of the technology companies they aim to exploit. What was once done by a single warez dude is now often handled with a division of labor, technical specialization, and intensive pre-attack research. Every innovation in “righteous malware” is quickly copied and transformed into attack tools. Criminals examined the clever modular design of Stuxnet, for instance, and years later similar features popped up in attacks against banks, credit card companies, and health insurance firms. “We are not experts in military history, doctrine, or philosophy,” cybersecurity researchers Stephen Cobb and Andrew Lee have written, “so we are unaware of the correct word for the following category of weapons: the ones you deliver to your enemies in re-usable form.”


pages: 252 words: 75,349

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door by Brian Krebs

barriers to entry, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, cashless society, defense in depth, Donald Trump, drop ship, employer provided health coverage, independent contractor, information security, John Markoff, mutually assured destruction, offshore financial centre, operational security, payday loans, pirate software, placebo effect, ransomware, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stuxnet, the payments system, transaction costs, web application

That blog post was the first widely read story about a piece of malware of unprecedented sophistication that would become known as “Stuxnet”—a computer worm that experts later discovered was a cyberweapon created by Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies in a successful bid to delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But I filed the Stuxnet post just as I was leaving for a week-long vacation with my wife and mother in York, Maine, and I’d promised to give work a rest. While follow-up reporting on Stuxnet would take dozens of telephone interviews, delving into the scoop that my anti-spam source was handing me could be done without letting my family know I was back on the clock.


pages: 268 words: 76,702

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, cryptocurrency, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, financial engineering, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, Leonard Kleinrock, lock screen, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, packet switching, patent troll, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Crocker, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, The Chicago School, the long tail, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, yield management, zero day

The reality of life online is a complex set of battles between states, businesses, criminal hackers and regular internet users – with companies turning essentially to the online equivalent of mercenaries to defend their systems. One of those online defenders is Symantec, the company who discovered the Stuxnet worm targeted at Iran’s nuclear-enrichment facilities. Symantec is US-based but keeps facilities across the world, and works to protect clients there. Brands like Symantec and Kaspersky are familiar to regular users as our anti-virus software – if we’ve heard of them at all – but behind the scenes these companies work in a much more sophisticated way, operating war rooms to look out for major events and tackle them when they occur.

v=XEVlyP4_11M 8Optic Nerve was first disclosed in a 2014 Snowden story, reported with Spencer Ackerman: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo 9https://www.ft.com/content/93fe2e28-d83c-11e2-b4a4-00144feab7de 10https://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence 11https://www.npr.org/2018/12/28/677414459/in-chinas-push-for-high-tech-hackers-target-cutting-edge-u-s-firms?t=1550197762515 12To learn more about Stuxnet, and the massive cyber-programme it was part of, the best source is Alex Gibney’s documentary Zero Days. I reported some of its revelations, with independent corroboration, here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jamesball/us-hacked-into-irans-critical-civilian-infrastructure-for-ma 13https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-09-13/bureau-wins-case-to-defend-press-freedom-at-the-european-court-of-human-rights 14https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls 15As with other stories, they did agree to redact certain specific details (for example, particular models of software, or company names, when specific reasons were given). 16The Guardian version of this story can be viewed here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security 17This was helpfully tweeted by the BBC’s technology editor, Rory Cellan-Jones: https://twitter.com/ruskin147/status/1096327971131088896/photo/1 18The following account of WannaCry is based on interviews with the Symantec staff in the chapter, my own reporting from the time (https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/heres-why-its-unlikely-the-nhs-was-deliberately-targeted-in, https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/gchq-is-facing-questions-over-last-weeks-ransomware-attack, https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/a-highly-critical-report-says-the-nhs-was-hit-by-the), and some details from this later Washington Post report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-set-to-declare-north-korea-carried-out-massive-wannacry-cyber-attack/2017/12/18/509deb1c-e446-11e7-a65d-1ac0fd7f097e_story.html?

That digital divide will only widen. 7https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets Index Aadhaar, here Abramson, Jill, here Ackerman, Spencer, here Acquisti, Alessandro, here ad blockers, here, here advertising, online, here, here, here, here, here, here complexity of, here, here and consumer benefits, here CPM (cost per mille), here programmatic advertising, here, here, here see also surveillance airspace spectrum, here Al Shabab, here Alexander, General Keith, here, here, here Alibaba, here al-Qaeda, here Amazon, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and advertising, here and centralisation of power, here and regulation, here Andreessen, Marc, here, here Android, here, here angel investors, here, here, here, here, here antitrust laws, here AOL, here, here, here Apple, here, here, here, here, here, here AppNexus, here, here, here ARPANET, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here separation of military elements, here, here see also DARPA Ars Technica, here artificial intelligence (AI), here, here, here Associated Press, here AT&T, here, here, here, here Atlantic, here Baidu, here Barlow, John Perry, here, here, here batch processing, here Bell, Emily, here, here Berners-Lee, Tim, here, here, here betaworks, here, here Bezos, Jeff, here bit.ly, here Bitcoin, here, here, here blackholing, here blockchains, here Bomis, here book publishers, here Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), here Borthwick, John, here, here, here, here, here, here botnets, here Brandeis, Louis, here broadband customers, here, here BT, here, here BuzzFeed, here cable companies, here lobbying, here peering agreements, here profits, here, here reputation and trust, here tier one providers, here, here traffic blocking, here transit fees, here cable TV, here, here, here Cambridge Analytica, here Carnegie, Andrew, here celebrities, here Cerf, Vint, here, here, here, here Certbot, here Chicago School of Economics, here China, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Chrome, here CIA, here Cisco, here Clinton, Hillary, here ‘cloud, the’, here CNN, here Cohn, Cindy, here, here Cold War, here, here Comcast, here, here, here, here, here CompuServe, here computers, early, here content farms, here, here cookies, here, here, here, here, here Cox, Ben, here credit cards, here Crimea, here Crocker, Steve, here, here, here, here, here, here, here cryptocurrencies, here, here, here, here Daily Caller, here, here Daly, Tom, here, here, here DARPA, here, here, here, here, here data brokers, here, here, here Defense Communications Agency, here del.icio.us, here Deliveroo, here ‘digital colonialism’, here DirecTV, here distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, here, here, here Dolby, here Domain Name System (DNS), here, here, here, here, here, here Dots and Two Dots, here DoubleClick, here duolingo, here Duvall, Bill, here Dyn attack, here eBay, here, here Eisenstein, Elizabeth, here elections, interference in, here Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), here, here Eliason, Frank, here, here, here, here, here Encarta, here encryption, here, here Engelbart, Doug, here Etsy, here European Union (EU), here, here, here, here, here, here see also General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Facebook, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here acquisition of WhatsApp, here, here, here, here and advertising, here, here, here, here, here, here and centralisation of power, here and ‘digital colonialism’, here and government entities, here influence on elections, here Menlo Park campus, here privacy scandals, here and regulation, here, here, here, here Facetime, here facial recognition, here FakeMailGenerator, com, here Fastclick, here Fastly, here FBI, here, here Federal Communications Commission (FCC), here, here, here financial crash, here, here FireEye, here First World War, here, here Five Eyes, here, here, here Flickr, here Flint, Michigan, here Foreign Policy, here, here Fotolog, here, here, here Foursquare, here Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, here Free Basics, here free speech, here, here, here, here, here Freedom of Information Act, here GCHQ, here, here, here, here, here and encryption, here General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), here, here, here George V, King, here Ghonim, Wael, here Gibson, Janine, here, here, here Gilded Age, here, here, here Gilmore, John, here Gimlet media, here Giphy, here Gizmodo blog, here Gmail, here Goodwin, Sir Fred, here Google, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and advertising, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and centralisation of power, here London headquarters, here and regulation, here, here, here Grateful Dead, here Greene, Jeff, here, here, here Greenwald, Glenn, here Grindr, here Guardian, here, here, here, here and Snowden leaks, here, here Guo Ping, here Gutenberg press, here Heatherwick, Thomas, here Herzfeld, Charles, here Hoffman, Reid, here Hong Kong, here HOSTS.TXT, here Hotmail, here HTML, here HTTP, here, here HTTPS Everywhere, here Huawei, here, here Hutchins, Marcus, here IBM, here identity, here India, here, here Industrial Revolution, here Instagram, here intellectual property, here, here internet, origins of, here, here commercialisation and globalisation, here gradual expansion, here logging and security, here the name, here origins of networking, here separation of military elements, here, here see also ARPANET Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), here, here, here, here Internet Hall of Fame, here, here Internet of Things, here internet service providers (ISPs), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and Pakistan/YouTube incident, here intranets, here IP (Internet Protocol), here IP addresses, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and blackholing attacks, here iPhones, here, here Iran, here, here, here, here Stuxnet worm attack, here, here ISIS, here Jackson, Steve, here Jarvis, Jeff, here journalism, here see also newspapers Kaspersky, here key cards, here Kickstarter, here, here, here Kidane v. Ethiopian government, here Kleinrock, Leonard, here, here, here, here, here Kline, Charley, here Knight Foundation, here Kunlun, here Leigh, David, here LinkedIn, here London Olympics, here Lukasik, Steve, here Lumley, Joanna, here Luther, Martin, here MacAskill, Ewen, here machine learning, here, here Marby, Göran, here, here, here, here Markota, Martina, here Mastering the Internet programme, here Meckl, Steve, here, here Medium, here Menwith Hill, here MI5, 146 Microsoft, here, here, here see also Encarta; Windows Millar, Stuart, here Minecraft, here Morgan, J.P., here music publishers, here MySpace, here NASA, here National Health Service (NHS), here National Science Foundation, here National Security Agency (NSA), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and encryption, here NBC, here net neutrality, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Netflix, here, here, here, here Netscape, here network effects, here network slicing, here neurolinguistic programming, here New York magazine, here New York Times, here, here, here, here New Yorker, here newspapers, here, here, here, here see also journalism North Korea, here nuclear weapons and warfare, here, here, here Obama, Barack, here, here, here O’Kelley, Brian, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Oliver, John, here, here OpenSecrets database, here Opera, here Optic Nerve programme, here Outbrain, here, here packet switching, here, here Page, Larry, here Pai, Ajit, here, here, here Pakistan Telecom, here Panopticlick 3.0, here Parker, Sean, here PayPal, here, here, here, here, here People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), here Philippines, human rights violations, here pinging, here Pizzagate conspiracy, here Poitras, Laura, here populism, here, here pornography, here, here Postel, Jon, here privacy, here, here, here, here see also surveillance Privacy Badger, here Prodigy, here ProPublica, here, here publishers, and advertising, here, here, here railways, here, here, here, here, here Read, Max, here Reagan, Ronald, here Reddit, here Register, The, here Rekhter, Yakov, here, here Requests for Comments (RFCs), here, here, here, here Right Media, here, here Roberts, Brian, here, here, here Rockefeller, John D., here Roosevelt, Franklin D., here routers, here, here Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), here, here Rubenstein, Michael, here Rusbridger, Alan, here Russia, here, here, here, here Sainsbury’s/Asda merger, here Schneidermann, Eric, here secure operations centres (SOCs), here sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs), here Shaw, Mona, here Silicon Valley, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Sinclair Broadcast Group, here Skype, here, here, here, here Snapchat, here, here Snowden, Edward, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here ‘social credit’, here Soundcloud, here South Korea, here sovereign immunity, here Spotify, here Stanford Research Institute (SRI), here, here, here, here, here, here, here Stripe, here Sun, The, here Sun Microsystems, here surveillance, here, here, here, here resistance to, here Symantec, here, here, here Syria, here, here Taboola, here, here TCP/IP, here, here Telefonica, here Telegram, here telephone networks, here, here, here Tempora, here, here TenCent, here, here terror plots, foiled, here Texas A&M, here Thatcher, Margaret, here Thiel, Peter, here, here Tibet, here Time Warner, here, here Times, The, here Tishgart, Barry, here Topolski, Robb, here traceroute, here, here tracking, see cookies trade unions, here, here, here trademark law, here transatlantic cables, here Tribune newspaper group, here Trump, Donald, here, here, here, here Tuchman, Barbara, here Tumblr, here, here Turkey, bans Wikipedia, here Tweetdeck, here Twitter, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Uber, here Ukraine, here Union Square Ventures (USV), here Universal Declaration of Human Rights, here Universal Studios, here University College, London, here University of California, Los Angeles UCLA, here, here, here, here University of Maryland Law School, here US Congress, here US Constitution, here, here US culture, and internet regulation, here US Department of Commerce, here, here US Department of Defense, here, here, here, here, here, here, here US Department of Energy, here US internet infrastructure, here, here US Supreme Court, here venture capital, here, here, here, here funding phases, here funding series, here, here Verizon, here, here Wales, Jimmy, here WannaCry attack, here Washington Post, here, here, here, here, here web addresses (URLs), here, here, here top-level domains (TLDs), here and WannaCry attack, here WeChat, here Wenger, Albert, here, here, here, here, here WhatsApp, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Wheeler, Tom, here, here, here WikiLeaks, here, here, here Wikipedia, here, here Williams, Evan, here Windows, vulnerability in, here wired.com, here wireless internet, here, here wiretapping, here Woodward, Bob, here World Economic Forum, here World Wide Web, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Wu, Tim, here Yahoo, here, here, here YouTube, here, here, here, here, here, here Zittrain, Jonathan, here Zuckerberg, Mark, here, here, here, here, here, here Zynga, here BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1b 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 This electronic edition published 2020 Copyright © James Ball, 2020 James Ball has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work All rights reserved.


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Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield by Robert H. Latiff

Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, CRISPR, cyber-physical system, Danny Hillis, defense in depth, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, failed state, friendly fire, Howard Zinn, Internet of things, low earth orbit, military-industrial complex, Nicholas Carr, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, post-truth, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, VTOL, Wall-E

Cyber Command have to date successfully defended critical national security networks from intrusions and attacks. In cyber operations, the vulnerabilities of weapons platforms, as well as a nation’s infrastructure, are exploited or destroyed. Such techniques loom large as expertise grows and proliferates. The ability to destroy equipment and possibly military capability was evident in the Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear centrifuges. The ability to destroy information, reputation, and financial resources was evident in the North Korean attack on Sony Pictures. There have been instances of passengers hacking into aircraft flight systems from their coach seats, and it was recently determined that control systems for a dam in upstate New York had been penetrated by Iranian hackers.

Is it ethical to attack when the identity of parties is uncertain? In classical combat and decision making, the identity of your opposing force is relatively well understood. Experts say that once a weapon is “released into the wild” it is difficult to predict exactly where it will propagate. The Stuxnet virus targeting the Iran nuclear program is a case in point. That software was looking across networks for a specific type of industrial controller and found its way onto systems all over the world. Even then, it was designed to damage only a specific configuration. While it did not damage any other systems, there was a cost, in time or money, to innocent users to have it removed.


pages: 466 words: 127,728

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, complexity theory, computer age, credit crunch, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, G4S, George Akerlof, global macro, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jitney, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market design, megaproject, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, operational security, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, risk-adjusted returns, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Stuxnet, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, working-age population, yield curve

. : Leading documented studies and white papers on the scope and pervasiveness of cyberattacks on U.S. systems, including financial systems, originating from various sources including China and Iran, are: “Global Energy Cyberattacks: ‘Night Dragon,’” McAfee Foundstone Professional Services and McAfee Labs White Paper, February 10, 2011, http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/white-papers/wp-global-energy-cyberattacks-night-dragon.pdf; Nicolas Falliere, Liam O. Murchu, and Eric Chien, “W.32.Stuxnet Dossier Version 1.4,” Symantec, February 2011, http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf; and Mandiant, “APT1: Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units,” 2013, Mandiant Intelligence Center Report, http://intelreport.mandiant.com. The official was Mary Shapiro . . . : Senior SEC official, conversation with author, September 2012.

“Japan’s Shinzo Abe Prepares to Print Money for the Whole World.” Telegraph, December 17, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9751609/Japans-Shinzo-Abe-prepares-to-print-money-for-the-whole-world.html. Falliere, Nicolas, Liam O. Murchu, and Eric Chien. “W.32.Stuxnet Dossier Version 1.4,” Symantec, February 2011, http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf. Farchy, Jack. “Iran Bought Gold to Cut Dollar Exposure.” Financial Times, March 20, 2011, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc350008-5325-11e0-86e6-00144feab49a.html. Farchy, Jack, and Roula Khalaf. “Gold Key to Financing Gaddafi Struggle.”


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I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict by Kenneth Payne

Abraham Maslow, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, classic study, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, functional programming, Geoffrey Hinton, Google X / Alphabet X, Internet of things, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, machine translation, military-industrial complex, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, semantic web, side project, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, Stuxnet, technological determinism, TED Talk, theory of mind, TikTok, Turing machine, Turing test, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, V2 rocket, Von Neumann architecture, Wall-E, zero-sum game

Questions of attribution feature prominently in the debate about cyber warfare. How do you know who has attacked you? But attribution seems not to be the conundrum that many suppose—if high quality investigative reporters can glean insights as to who was responsible for an attack (the US and Israel for Stuxnet; North Korea for the WannaCry ransomware), then the extensive resources of state security apparatus will often be able to do likewise. The Mueller inquiry into foreign interference in the 2016 US Presidential election provided an insight into these formidable capabilities, as US investigators indicted a number of Russian nationals on charges of hacking American computers.

A-10 Warthog abacuses Abbottabad, Pakistan Able Archer (1983) acoustic decoys acoustic torpedoes Adams, Douglas Aegis combat system Aerostatic Corps affective empathy Affecto Afghanistan agency aircraft see also dogfighting; drones aircraft carriers algorithms algorithm creation Alpha biases choreography deep fakes DeepMind, see DeepMind emotion recognition F-117 Nighthawk facial recognition genetic selection imagery analysis meta-learning natural language processing object recognition predictive policing alien hand syndrome Aliens (1986 film) Alpha AlphaGo Altered Carbon (television series) Amazon Amnesty International amygdala Andropov, Yuri Anduril Ghost anti-personnel mines ants Apple Aristotle armour arms races Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Arnalds, Ólafur ARPA Art of War, The (Sun Tzu) art Artificial Intelligence agency and architecture autonomy and as ‘brittle’ connectionism definition of decision-making technology expert systems and feedback loops fuzzy logic innateness intelligence analysis meta-learning as ‘narrow’ needle-in-a-haystack problems neural networks reinforcement learning ‘strong AI’ symbolic logic and unsupervised learning ‘winters’ artificial neural networks Ashby, William Ross Asimov, Isaac Asperger syndrome Astute class boats Atari Breakout (1976) Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) Space Invaders (1978) Athens ATLAS robots augmented intelligence Austin Powers (1997 film) Australia authoritarianism autonomous vehicles see also drones autonomy B-21 Raider B-52 Stratofortress B2 Spirit Baby X BAE Systems Baghdad, Iraq Baidu balloons ban, campaigns for Banks, Iain Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Fleurus (1794) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) batwing design BBN Beautiful Mind, A (2001 film) beetles Bell Laboratories Bengio, Yoshua Berlin Crisis (1961) biases big data Bin Laden, Osama binary code biological weapons biotechnology bipolarity bits Black Lives Matter Black Mirror (television series) Blade Runner (1982 film) Blade Runner 2049 (2017 film) Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire blindness Blunt, Emily board games, see under games boats Boden, Margaret bodies Boeing MQ-25 Stingray Orca submarines Boolean logic Boston Dynamics Bostrom, Nick Boyd, John brain amygdala bodies and chunking dopamine emotion and genetic engineering and language and mind merge and morality and plasticity prediction and subroutines umwelts and Breakout (1976 game) breathing control brittleness brute force Buck Rogers (television series) Campaign against Killer Robots Carlsen, Magnus Carnegie Mellon University Casino Royale (2006 film) Castro, Fidel cat detector centaur combination Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) centre of gravity chaff Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Chauvet cave, France chemical weapons Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) chess centaur teams combinatorial explosion and creativity in Deep Blue game theory and MuZero as toy universe chicken (game) chimeras chimpanzees China aircraft carriers Baidu COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) D-21 in genetic engineering in GJ-11 Sharp Sword nuclear weapons surveillance in Thucydides trap and US Navy drone seizure (2016) China Lake, California Chomsky, Noam choreography chunking Cicero civilians Clarke, Arthur Charles von Clausewitz, Carl on character on culmination on defence on genius on grammar of war on materiel on nature on poker on willpower on wrestling codebreaking cognitive empathy Cold War (1947–9) arms race Berlin Crisis (1961) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) F-117 Nighthawk Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) joint action Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons research and SR-71 Blackbird U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN Cole, August combinatorial creativity combinatorial explosion combined arms common sense computers creativity cyber security games graphics processing unit (GPU) mice Moore’s Law symbolic logic viruses VRYAN confirmation bias connectionism consequentialism conservatism Convention on Conventional Weapons ConvNets copying Cormorant cortical interfaces cost-benefit analysis counterfactual regret minimization counterinsurgency doctrine courageous restraint COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) creativity combinatorial exploratory genetic engineering and mental disorders and transformational criminal law CRISPR, crows Cruise, Thomas Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culmination Culture novels (Banks) cyber security cybernetics cyborgs Cyc cystic fibrosis D-21 drones Damasio, Antonio dance DARPA autonomous vehicle research battlespace manager codebreaking research cortical interface research cyborg beetle Deep Green expert system programme funding game theory research LongShot programme Mayhem Ng’s helicopter Shakey understanding and reason research unmanned aerial combat research Dartmouth workshop (1956) Dassault data DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) dead hand system decision-making technology Deep Blue deep fakes Deep Green DeepMind AlphaGo Atari playing meta-learning research MuZero object recognition research Quake III competition (2019) deep networks defence industrial complex Defence Innovation Unit Defence Science and Technology Laboratory defence delayed gratification demons deontological approach depth charges Dionysus DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) dodos dogfighting Alpha domains dot-matrix tongue Dota II (2013 game) double effect drones Cormorant D-21 GJ-11 Sharp Sword Global Hawk Gorgon Stare kamikaze loitering munitions nEUROn operators Predator Reaper reconnaissance RQ-170 Sentinel S-70 Okhotnik surveillance swarms Taranis wingman role X-37 X-47b dual use technology Eagleman, David early warning systems Echelon economics Edge of Tomorrow (2014 film) Eisenhower, Dwight Ellsberg, Daniel embodied cognition emotion empathy encryption entropy environmental niches epilepsy epistemic community escalation ethics Asimov’s rules brain and consequentialism deep brain stimulation and deontological approach facial recognition and genetic engineering and golden rule honour hunter-gatherer bands and identity just war post-conflict reciprocity regulation surveillance and European Union (EU) Ex Machina (2014 film) expert systems exploratory creativity extra limbs Eye in the Sky (2015 film) F-105 Thunderchief F-117 Nighthawk F-16 Fighting Falcon F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning F/A-18 Hornet Facebook facial recognition feedback loops fighting power fire and forget firmware 5G cellular networks flow fog of war Ford forever wars FOXP2 gene Frahm, Nils frame problem France Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) Future of Life Institute fuzzy logic gait recognition game theory games Breakout (1976) chess, see chess chicken Dota II (2013) Go, see Go Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) poker Quake III (1999) Space Invaders (1978) StarCraft II (2010) toy universes zero sum games gannets ‘garbage in, garbage out’ Garland, Alexander Gates, William ‘Bill’ Gattaca (1997 film) Gavotti, Giulio Geertz, Clifford generalised intelligence measure Generative Adversarial Networks genetic engineering genetic selection algorithms genetically modified crops genius Germany Berlin Crisis (1961) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Russian hacking operation (2015) World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Ghost in the Shell (comic book) GJ-11 Sharp Sword Gladwell, Malcolm Global Hawk drone global positioning system (GPS) global workspace Go (game) AlphaGo Gödel, Kurt von Goethe, Johann golden rule golf Good Judgment Project Google BERT Brain codebreaking research DeepMind, see DeepMind Project Maven (2017–) Gordievsky, Oleg Gorgon Stare GPT series grammar of war Grand Challenge aerial combat autonomous vehicles codebreaking graphics processing unit (GPU) Greece, ancient grooming standard Groundhog Day (1993 film) groupthink guerilla warfare Gulf War First (1990–91) Second (2003–11) hacking hallucinogenic drugs handwriting recognition haptic vest hardware Harpy Hawke, Ethan Hawking, Stephen heat-seeking missiles Hebrew Testament helicopters Hellfire missiles Her (2013 film) Hero-30 loitering munitions Heron Systems Hinton, Geoffrey Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Adams) HIV (human immunodeficiency viruses) Hoffman, Frank ‘Holeshot’ (Cole) Hollywood homeostasis Homer homosexuality Hongdu GJ-11 Sharp Sword honour Hughes human in the loop human resources human-machine teaming art cyborgs emotion games King Midas problem prediction strategy hunter-gatherer bands Huntingdon’s disease Hurricane fighter aircraft hydraulics hypersonic engines I Robot (Asimov) IARPA IBM identity Iliad (Homer) image analysis image recognition cat detector imagination Improbotics nformation dominance information warfare innateness intelligence analysts International Atomic Energy Agency International Criminal Court international humanitarian law internet of things Internet IQ (intelligence quotient) Iran Aegis attack (1988) Iraq War (1980–88) nuclear weapons Stuxnet attack (2010) Iraq Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) Iran War (1980–88) Iron Dome Israel Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) Jaguar Land Rover Japan jazz JDAM (joint directed attack munition) Jeopardy Jobs, Steven Johansson, Scarlett Johnson, Lyndon Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) de Jomini, Antoine jus ad bellum jus in bello jus post bellum just war Kalibr cruise missiles kamikaze drones Kasparov, Garry Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) Kennedy, John Fitzgerald KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) Khrushchev, Nikita kill chain King Midas problem Kissinger, Henry Kittyhawk Knight Rider (television series) know your enemy know yourself Korean War (1950–53) Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie Kubrick, Stanley Kumar, Vijay Kuwait language connectionism and genetic engineering and natural language processing pattern recognition and semantic webs translation universal grammar Law, Jude LeCun, Yann Lenat, Douglas Les, Jason Libratus lip reading Litvinenko, Alexander locked-in patients Lockheed dogfighting trials F-117 Nighthawk F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning SR-71 Blackbird logic loitering munitions LongShot programme Lord of the Rings (2001–3 film trilogy) LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) Luftwaffe madman theory Main Battle Tanks malum in se Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marcus, Gary Maslow, Abraham Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Matrix, The (1999 film) Mayhem McCulloch, Warren McGregor, Wayne McNamara, Robert McNaughton, John Me109 fighter aircraft medical field memory Merkel, Angela Microsoft military industrial complex Mill, John Stuart Milrem mimicry mind merge mind-shifting minimax regret strategy Minority Report (2002 film) Minsky, Marvin Miramar air base, San Diego missiles Aegis combat system agency and anti-missile gunnery heat-seeking Hellfire missiles intercontinental Kalibr cruise missiles nuclear warheads Patriot missile interceptor Pershing II missiles Scud missiles Tomahawk cruise missiles V1 rockets V2 rockets mission command mixed strategy Montezuma’s Revenge (1984 game) Moore’s Law mosaic warfare Mueller inquiry (2017–19) music Musk, Elon Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) MuZero Nagel, Thomas Napoleon I, Emperor of the French Napoleonic France (1804–15) narrowness Nash equilibrium Nash, John National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Security Agency (NSA) National War College natural language processing natural selection Nature navigation computers Nazi Germany (1933–45) needle-in-a-haystack problems Netflix network enabled warfare von Neumann, John neural networks neurodiversity nEUROn drone neuroplasticity Ng, Andrew Nixon, Richard normal accident theory North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) North Korea nuclear weapons Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) dead hand system early warning systems F-105 Thunderchief and game theory and Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Manhattan Project (1942–6) missiles Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) second strike capability submarines and VRYAN and in WarGames (1983 film) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Obama, Barack object recognition Observe Orient Decide and Act (OODA) offence-defence balance Office for Naval Research Olympic Games On War (Clausewitz), see Clausewitz, Carl OpenAI optogenetics Orca submarines Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) pain Pakistan Palantir Palmer, Arnold Pandemonium Panoramic Research Papert, Seymour Parkinson’s disease Patriot missile interceptors pattern recognition Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) Pentagon autonomous vehicle research codebreaking research computer mouse development Deep Green Defence Innovation Unit Ellsberg leaks (1971) expert system programme funding ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story intelligence analysts Project Maven (2017–) Shakey unmanned aerial combat research Vietnam War (1955–75) perceptrons Perdix Pershing II missiles Petrov, Stanislav Phalanx system phrenology pilot’s associate Pitts, Walter platform neutrality Pluribus poker policing polygeneity Portsmouth, Hampshire Portuguese Man o’ War post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Predator drones prediction centaur teams ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story policing toy universes VRYAN Prescience principles of war prisoners Project Improbable Project Maven (2017–) prosthetic arms proximity fuses Prussia (1701–1918) psychology psychopathy punishment Putin, Vladimir Pyeongchang Olympics (2018) Qinetiq Quake III (1999 game) radar Rafael RAND Corporation rational actor model Rawls, John Re:member (Arnalds) Ready Player One (Cline) Reagan, Ronald Reaper drones reciprocal punishment reciprocity reconnaissance regulation ban, campaigns for defection self-regulation reinforcement learning remotely piloted air vehicles (RPAVs) revenge porn revolution in military affairs Rid, Thomas Robinson, William Heath Robocop (1987 film) Robotics Challenge robots Asimov’s rules ATLAS Boston Dynamics homeostatic Shakey symbolic logic and Rome Air Defense Center Rome, ancient Rosenblatt, Frank Royal Air Force (RAF) Royal Navy RQ-170 Sentinel Russell, Stuart Russian Federation German hacking operation (2015) Litvinenko murder (2006) S-70 Okhotnik Skripal poisoning (2018) Ukraine War (2014–) US election interference (2016) S-70 Okhotnik SAGE Said and Done’ (Frahm) satellite navigation satellites Saudi Arabia Schelling, Thomas schizophrenia Schwartz, Jack Sea Hunter security dilemma Sedol, Lee self-actualisation self-awareness self-driving cars Selfridge, Oliver semantic webs Shakey Shanahan, Murray Shannon, Claude Shogi Silicon Valley Simon, Herbert Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) singularity Siri situational awareness situationalist intelligence Skripal, Sergei and Yulia Slaughterbots (2017 video) Slovic, Paul smartphones Smith, Willard social environments software Sophia Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The (Goethe) South China Sea Soviet Union (1922–91) aircraft Berlin Crisis (1961) Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War collapse (1991) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) early warning systems Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons radar technology U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN World War II (1939–45) Space Invaders (1978 game) SpaceX Sparta Spike Firefly loitering munitions Spitfire fighter aircraft Spotify Stanford University Stanley Star Trek (television series) StarCraft II (2010 game) stealth strategic bombing strategic computing programme strategic culture Strategy Robot strategy Strava Stuxnet sub-units submarines acoustic decoys nuclear Orca South China Sea incident (2016) subroutines Sukhoi Sun Tzu superforecasting surveillance swarms symbolic logic synaesthesia synthetic operation environment Syria Taliban tanks Taranis drone technological determinism Tempest Terminator franchise Tesla Tetlock, Philip theory of mind Threshold Logic Unit Thucydides TikTok Tomahawk cruise missiles tongue Top Gun (1986 film) Top Gun: Maverick (2021 film) torpedoes toy universes trade-offs transformational creativity translation Trivers, Robert Trump, Donald tumours Turing, Alan Twitter 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 film) Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle U2 incident (1960) Uber Uexküll, Jacob Ukraine ultraviolet light spectrum umwelts uncanny valley unidentified flying objects (UFOs) United Kingdom AI weapons policy armed force, size of Battle of Britain (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Cold War (1947–9) COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) DeepMind, see DeepMind F-35 programme fighting power human rights legislation in Litvinenko murder (2006) nuclear weapons principles of war Project Improbable Qinetiq radar technology Royal Air Force Royal Navy Skripal poisoning (2018) swarm research wingman concept World War I (1914–18) United Nations United States Afghanistan War (2001–14) Air Force Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Battle of Midway (1942) Berlin Crisis (1961) Bin Laden assassination (2011) Black Lives Matter protests (2020) centaur team research Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culture cyber security DARPA, see DARPA Defense Department drones early warning systems F-35 programme Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) IARPA Iran Air shoot-down (1988) Korean War (1950–53) Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marines Mueller inquiry (2017–19) National Security Agency National War College Navy nuclear weapons Office for Naval Research Patriot missile interceptor Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Pentagon, see Pentagon Project Maven (2017–) Rome Air Defense Center Silicon Valley strategic computing programme U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) universal grammar Universal Schelling Machine (USM) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), see drones unsupervised learning utilitarianism UVision V1 rockets V2 rockets Vacanti mouse Valkyries Van Gogh, Vincent Vietnam War (1955–75) Vigen, Tyler Vincennes, USS voice assistants VRYAN Wall-e (2008 film) WannaCry ransomware War College, see National War College WarGames (1983 film) warrior ethos Watson weapon systems WhatsApp Wiener, Norbert Wikipedia wingman role Wittgenstein, Ludwig World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Pearl Harbor attack (1941) radar technology V1 rockets V2 rockets VRYAN and Wrangham, Richard Wright brothers WS-43 loitering munitions Wuhan, China X-37 drone X-drone X-rays YouTube zero sum games

A-10 Warthog abacuses Abbottabad, Pakistan Able Archer (1983) acoustic decoys acoustic torpedoes Adams, Douglas Aegis combat system Aerostatic Corps affective empathy Affecto Afghanistan agency aircraft see also dogfighting; drones aircraft carriers algorithms algorithm creation Alpha biases choreography deep fakes DeepMind, see DeepMind emotion recognition F-117 Nighthawk facial recognition genetic selection imagery analysis meta-learning natural language processing object recognition predictive policing alien hand syndrome Aliens (1986 film) Alpha AlphaGo Altered Carbon (television series) Amazon Amnesty International amygdala Andropov, Yuri Anduril Ghost anti-personnel mines ants Apple Aristotle armour arms races Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Arnalds, Ólafur ARPA Art of War, The (Sun Tzu) art Artificial Intelligence agency and architecture autonomy and as ‘brittle’ connectionism definition of decision-making technology expert systems and feedback loops fuzzy logic innateness intelligence analysis meta-learning as ‘narrow’ needle-in-a-haystack problems neural networks reinforcement learning ‘strong AI’ symbolic logic and unsupervised learning ‘winters’ artificial neural networks Ashby, William Ross Asimov, Isaac Asperger syndrome Astute class boats Atari Breakout (1976) Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) Space Invaders (1978) Athens ATLAS robots augmented intelligence Austin Powers (1997 film) Australia authoritarianism autonomous vehicles see also drones autonomy B-21 Raider B-52 Stratofortress B2 Spirit Baby X BAE Systems Baghdad, Iraq Baidu balloons ban, campaigns for Banks, Iain Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Fleurus (1794) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) batwing design BBN Beautiful Mind, A (2001 film) beetles Bell Laboratories Bengio, Yoshua Berlin Crisis (1961) biases big data Bin Laden, Osama binary code biological weapons biotechnology bipolarity bits Black Lives Matter Black Mirror (television series) Blade Runner (1982 film) Blade Runner 2049 (2017 film) Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire blindness Blunt, Emily board games, see under games boats Boden, Margaret bodies Boeing MQ-25 Stingray Orca submarines Boolean logic Boston Dynamics Bostrom, Nick Boyd, John brain amygdala bodies and chunking dopamine emotion and genetic engineering and language and mind merge and morality and plasticity prediction and subroutines umwelts and Breakout (1976 game) breathing control brittleness brute force Buck Rogers (television series) Campaign against Killer Robots Carlsen, Magnus Carnegie Mellon University Casino Royale (2006 film) Castro, Fidel cat detector centaur combination Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) centre of gravity chaff Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Chauvet cave, France chemical weapons Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) chess centaur teams combinatorial explosion and creativity in Deep Blue game theory and MuZero as toy universe chicken (game) chimeras chimpanzees China aircraft carriers Baidu COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) D-21 in genetic engineering in GJ-11 Sharp Sword nuclear weapons surveillance in Thucydides trap and US Navy drone seizure (2016) China Lake, California Chomsky, Noam choreography chunking Cicero civilians Clarke, Arthur Charles von Clausewitz, Carl on character on culmination on defence on genius on grammar of war on materiel on nature on poker on willpower on wrestling codebreaking cognitive empathy Cold War (1947–9) arms race Berlin Crisis (1961) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) F-117 Nighthawk Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) joint action Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons research and SR-71 Blackbird U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN Cole, August combinatorial creativity combinatorial explosion combined arms common sense computers creativity cyber security games graphics processing unit (GPU) mice Moore’s Law symbolic logic viruses VRYAN confirmation bias connectionism consequentialism conservatism Convention on Conventional Weapons ConvNets copying Cormorant cortical interfaces cost-benefit analysis counterfactual regret minimization counterinsurgency doctrine courageous restraint COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) creativity combinatorial exploratory genetic engineering and mental disorders and transformational criminal law CRISPR, crows Cruise, Thomas Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culmination Culture novels (Banks) cyber security cybernetics cyborgs Cyc cystic fibrosis D-21 drones Damasio, Antonio dance DARPA autonomous vehicle research battlespace manager codebreaking research cortical interface research cyborg beetle Deep Green expert system programme funding game theory research LongShot programme Mayhem Ng’s helicopter Shakey understanding and reason research unmanned aerial combat research Dartmouth workshop (1956) Dassault data DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) dead hand system decision-making technology Deep Blue deep fakes Deep Green DeepMind AlphaGo Atari playing meta-learning research MuZero object recognition research Quake III competition (2019) deep networks defence industrial complex Defence Innovation Unit Defence Science and Technology Laboratory defence delayed gratification demons deontological approach depth charges Dionysus DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) dodos dogfighting Alpha domains dot-matrix tongue Dota II (2013 game) double effect drones Cormorant D-21 GJ-11 Sharp Sword Global Hawk Gorgon Stare kamikaze loitering munitions nEUROn operators Predator Reaper reconnaissance RQ-170 Sentinel S-70 Okhotnik surveillance swarms Taranis wingman role X-37 X-47b dual use technology Eagleman, David early warning systems Echelon economics Edge of Tomorrow (2014 film) Eisenhower, Dwight Ellsberg, Daniel embodied cognition emotion empathy encryption entropy environmental niches epilepsy epistemic community escalation ethics Asimov’s rules brain and consequentialism deep brain stimulation and deontological approach facial recognition and genetic engineering and golden rule honour hunter-gatherer bands and identity just war post-conflict reciprocity regulation surveillance and European Union (EU) Ex Machina (2014 film) expert systems exploratory creativity extra limbs Eye in the Sky (2015 film) F-105 Thunderchief F-117 Nighthawk F-16 Fighting Falcon F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning F/A-18 Hornet Facebook facial recognition feedback loops fighting power fire and forget firmware 5G cellular networks flow fog of war Ford forever wars FOXP2 gene Frahm, Nils frame problem France Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) Future of Life Institute fuzzy logic gait recognition game theory games Breakout (1976) chess, see chess chicken Dota II (2013) Go, see Go Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) poker Quake III (1999) Space Invaders (1978) StarCraft II (2010) toy universes zero sum games gannets ‘garbage in, garbage out’ Garland, Alexander Gates, William ‘Bill’ Gattaca (1997 film) Gavotti, Giulio Geertz, Clifford generalised intelligence measure Generative Adversarial Networks genetic engineering genetic selection algorithms genetically modified crops genius Germany Berlin Crisis (1961) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Russian hacking operation (2015) World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Ghost in the Shell (comic book) GJ-11 Sharp Sword Gladwell, Malcolm Global Hawk drone global positioning system (GPS) global workspace Go (game) AlphaGo Gödel, Kurt von Goethe, Johann golden rule golf Good Judgment Project Google BERT Brain codebreaking research DeepMind, see DeepMind Project Maven (2017–) Gordievsky, Oleg Gorgon Stare GPT series grammar of war Grand Challenge aerial combat autonomous vehicles codebreaking graphics processing unit (GPU) Greece, ancient grooming standard Groundhog Day (1993 film) groupthink guerilla warfare Gulf War First (1990–91) Second (2003–11) hacking hallucinogenic drugs handwriting recognition haptic vest hardware Harpy Hawke, Ethan Hawking, Stephen heat-seeking missiles Hebrew Testament helicopters Hellfire missiles Her (2013 film) Hero-30 loitering munitions Heron Systems Hinton, Geoffrey Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Adams) HIV (human immunodeficiency viruses) Hoffman, Frank ‘Holeshot’ (Cole) Hollywood homeostasis Homer homosexuality Hongdu GJ-11 Sharp Sword honour Hughes human in the loop human resources human-machine teaming art cyborgs emotion games King Midas problem prediction strategy hunter-gatherer bands Huntingdon’s disease Hurricane fighter aircraft hydraulics hypersonic engines I Robot (Asimov) IARPA IBM identity Iliad (Homer) image analysis image recognition cat detector imagination Improbotics nformation dominance information warfare innateness intelligence analysts International Atomic Energy Agency International Criminal Court international humanitarian law internet of things Internet IQ (intelligence quotient) Iran Aegis attack (1988) Iraq War (1980–88) nuclear weapons Stuxnet attack (2010) Iraq Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) Iran War (1980–88) Iron Dome Israel Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) Jaguar Land Rover Japan jazz JDAM (joint directed attack munition) Jeopardy Jobs, Steven Johansson, Scarlett Johnson, Lyndon Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) de Jomini, Antoine jus ad bellum jus in bello jus post bellum just war Kalibr cruise missiles kamikaze drones Kasparov, Garry Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) Kennedy, John Fitzgerald KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) Khrushchev, Nikita kill chain King Midas problem Kissinger, Henry Kittyhawk Knight Rider (television series) know your enemy know yourself Korean War (1950–53) Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie Kubrick, Stanley Kumar, Vijay Kuwait language connectionism and genetic engineering and natural language processing pattern recognition and semantic webs translation universal grammar Law, Jude LeCun, Yann Lenat, Douglas Les, Jason Libratus lip reading Litvinenko, Alexander locked-in patients Lockheed dogfighting trials F-117 Nighthawk F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning SR-71 Blackbird logic loitering munitions LongShot programme Lord of the Rings (2001–3 film trilogy) LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) Luftwaffe madman theory Main Battle Tanks malum in se Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marcus, Gary Maslow, Abraham Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Matrix, The (1999 film) Mayhem McCulloch, Warren McGregor, Wayne McNamara, Robert McNaughton, John Me109 fighter aircraft medical field memory Merkel, Angela Microsoft military industrial complex Mill, John Stuart Milrem mimicry mind merge mind-shifting minimax regret strategy Minority Report (2002 film) Minsky, Marvin Miramar air base, San Diego missiles Aegis combat system agency and anti-missile gunnery heat-seeking Hellfire missiles intercontinental Kalibr cruise missiles nuclear warheads Patriot missile interceptor Pershing II missiles Scud missiles Tomahawk cruise missiles V1 rockets V2 rockets mission command mixed strategy Montezuma’s Revenge (1984 game) Moore’s Law mosaic warfare Mueller inquiry (2017–19) music Musk, Elon Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) MuZero Nagel, Thomas Napoleon I, Emperor of the French Napoleonic France (1804–15) narrowness Nash equilibrium Nash, John National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Security Agency (NSA) National War College natural language processing natural selection Nature navigation computers Nazi Germany (1933–45) needle-in-a-haystack problems Netflix network enabled warfare von Neumann, John neural networks neurodiversity nEUROn drone neuroplasticity Ng, Andrew Nixon, Richard normal accident theory North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) North Korea nuclear weapons Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) dead hand system early warning systems F-105 Thunderchief and game theory and Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Manhattan Project (1942–6) missiles Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) second strike capability submarines and VRYAN and in WarGames (1983 film) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Obama, Barack object recognition Observe Orient Decide and Act (OODA) offence-defence balance Office for Naval Research Olympic Games On War (Clausewitz), see Clausewitz, Carl OpenAI optogenetics Orca submarines Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) pain Pakistan Palantir Palmer, Arnold Pandemonium Panoramic Research Papert, Seymour Parkinson’s disease Patriot missile interceptors pattern recognition Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) Pentagon autonomous vehicle research codebreaking research computer mouse development Deep Green Defence Innovation Unit Ellsberg leaks (1971) expert system programme funding ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story intelligence analysts Project Maven (2017–) Shakey unmanned aerial combat research Vietnam War (1955–75) perceptrons Perdix Pershing II missiles Petrov, Stanislav Phalanx system phrenology pilot’s associate Pitts, Walter platform neutrality Pluribus poker policing polygeneity Portsmouth, Hampshire Portuguese Man o’ War post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Predator drones prediction centaur teams ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story policing toy universes VRYAN Prescience principles of war prisoners Project Improbable Project Maven (2017–) prosthetic arms proximity fuses Prussia (1701–1918) psychology psychopathy punishment Putin, Vladimir Pyeongchang Olympics (2018) Qinetiq Quake III (1999 game) radar Rafael RAND Corporation rational actor model Rawls, John Re:member (Arnalds) Ready Player One (Cline) Reagan, Ronald Reaper drones reciprocal punishment reciprocity reconnaissance regulation ban, campaigns for defection self-regulation reinforcement learning remotely piloted air vehicles (RPAVs) revenge porn revolution in military affairs Rid, Thomas Robinson, William Heath Robocop (1987 film) Robotics Challenge robots Asimov’s rules ATLAS Boston Dynamics homeostatic Shakey symbolic logic and Rome Air Defense Center Rome, ancient Rosenblatt, Frank Royal Air Force (RAF) Royal Navy RQ-170 Sentinel Russell, Stuart Russian Federation German hacking operation (2015) Litvinenko murder (2006) S-70 Okhotnik Skripal poisoning (2018) Ukraine War (2014–) US election interference (2016) S-70 Okhotnik SAGE Said and Done’ (Frahm) satellite navigation satellites Saudi Arabia Schelling, Thomas schizophrenia Schwartz, Jack Sea Hunter security dilemma Sedol, Lee self-actualisation self-awareness self-driving cars Selfridge, Oliver semantic webs Shakey Shanahan, Murray Shannon, Claude Shogi Silicon Valley Simon, Herbert Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) singularity Siri situational awareness situationalist intelligence Skripal, Sergei and Yulia Slaughterbots (2017 video) Slovic, Paul smartphones Smith, Willard social environments software Sophia Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The (Goethe) South China Sea Soviet Union (1922–91) aircraft Berlin Crisis (1961) Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War collapse (1991) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) early warning systems Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons radar technology U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN World War II (1939–45) Space Invaders (1978 game) SpaceX Sparta Spike Firefly loitering munitions Spitfire fighter aircraft Spotify Stanford University Stanley Star Trek (television series) StarCraft II (2010 game) stealth strategic bombing strategic computing programme strategic culture Strategy Robot strategy Strava Stuxnet sub-units submarines acoustic decoys nuclear Orca South China Sea incident (2016) subroutines Sukhoi Sun Tzu superforecasting surveillance swarms symbolic logic synaesthesia synthetic operation environment Syria Taliban tanks Taranis drone technological determinism Tempest Terminator franchise Tesla Tetlock, Philip theory of mind Threshold Logic Unit Thucydides TikTok Tomahawk cruise missiles tongue Top Gun (1986 film) Top Gun: Maverick (2021 film) torpedoes toy universes trade-offs transformational creativity translation Trivers, Robert Trump, Donald tumours Turing, Alan Twitter 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 film) Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle U2 incident (1960) Uber Uexküll, Jacob Ukraine ultraviolet light spectrum umwelts uncanny valley unidentified flying objects (UFOs) United Kingdom AI weapons policy armed force, size of Battle of Britain (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Cold War (1947–9) COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) DeepMind, see DeepMind F-35 programme fighting power human rights legislation in Litvinenko murder (2006) nuclear weapons principles of war Project Improbable Qinetiq radar technology Royal Air Force Royal Navy Skripal poisoning (2018) swarm research wingman concept World War I (1914–18) United Nations United States Afghanistan War (2001–14) Air Force Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Battle of Midway (1942) Berlin Crisis (1961) Bin Laden assassination (2011) Black Lives Matter protests (2020) centaur team research Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culture cyber security DARPA, see DARPA Defense Department drones early warning systems F-35 programme Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) IARPA Iran Air shoot-down (1988) Korean War (1950–53) Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marines Mueller inquiry (2017–19) National Security Agency National War College Navy nuclear weapons Office for Naval Research Patriot missile interceptor Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Pentagon, see Pentagon Project Maven (2017–) Rome Air Defense Center Silicon Valley strategic computing programme U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) universal grammar Universal Schelling Machine (USM) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), see drones unsupervised learning utilitarianism UVision V1 rockets V2 rockets Vacanti mouse Valkyries Van Gogh, Vincent Vietnam War (1955–75) Vigen, Tyler Vincennes, USS voice assistants VRYAN Wall-e (2008 film) WannaCry ransomware War College, see National War College WarGames (1983 film) warrior ethos Watson weapon systems WhatsApp Wiener, Norbert Wikipedia wingman role Wittgenstein, Ludwig World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Pearl Harbor attack (1941) radar technology V1 rockets V2 rockets VRYAN and Wrangham, Richard Wright brothers WS-43 loitering munitions Wuhan, China X-37 drone X-drone X-rays YouTube zero sum games


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On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin J. Rees

23andMe, 3D printing, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, carbon tax, circular economy, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Dennis Tito, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Great Leap Forward, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, quantitative hedge fund, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart grid, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supervolcano, technological singularity, the scientific method, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Walter Mischel, William MacAskill, Yogi Berra

Chapter 2 will address the twenty-first-century sciences—bio, cyber, and AI—and what they might portend. Their misuse looms as an increasing risk. The techniques and expertise for bio- or cyberattacks will be accessible to millions—they do not require large special-purpose facilities like nuclear weapons do. Cybersabotage efforts like ‘Stuxnet’ (which destroyed the centrifuges used in the Iranian nuclear weapons programme), and frequent hacking of financial institutions, have already bumped these concerns up the political agenda. A report from the Pentagon’s Science Board claimed that the impact of cyberattack (shutting down, for instance, the US electricity grid) could be catastrophic enough to justify a nuclear response.4 But before that let’s focus on the potential devastation that could be wrought by human-induced environmental degradation, and by climate change.

See also planets; Sun space, threats to stability of, 112–13, 118 space elevator, 148–49 spaceflight: fuel as impediment to, 148–49; manned, 143–52; pioneering exploits, 138–40 (see also Apollo programme); private companies in, 146–48 space shuttle, 145, 148 space technology: international regulation of, 219; satellites, 140–42 space telescopes, 137, 142, 143 space tourism, 148 SpaceX, 146, 149 speech recognition, 85, 88 spiritual values, environmentalist, 33 Sputnik 1, 138 squirrels, genetic alteration of, 74 stars: as fairly simple objects, 173; in modern cosmology, 214 stem cells, 65 Stern, Nicholas, 42 strangelets, 112, 114 string theory, 169, 180, 187 Stuxnet, 20 Sun: ancient and modern understanding of, 3; eventual doom of Earth due to, 2; galactic location of, 124; life cycle of, 177–78; magnetic storms caused by, 16; nuclear fusion in, 54, 122; origin of, 122. See also solar system Sundback, Gideon, 202 superconductors, 190–91 sustainability, Vatican conference on, 34 sustainable development, 26–27, 28 sustainable intensification of agriculture, 23, 24 technology: improvement in most people’s lives due to, 6, 60, 215; need for appropriate deployment of, 4, 26, 60; optimism about, 5, 225–26; as practical application of science, 202; preserving basic methods for the apocalypse, 216–17; for scientific experiments, 206–7; timescales for advance of, 152; unintended destructive consequences of, 215 telescopes: on far side of Moon, 144; optical Earth-based, 134–35, 137; radio telescopes, 134, 144, 157, 207; space telescopes, 137, 142, 143 Teller, Edward, 110 telomeres, 79 terrorism: biological techniques and, 73, 75, 77–78; in interconnected world, 215; new technology and, 100; nuclear weapons and, 20 Thomas, Chris, 74 thorium-based reactor, 54 3D printing: making consumer items cheaper, 31; of replacement organs, 72 tidal energy, 50–51 timescales: of planning for global challenges, 3–4, 59–60, 217.


pages: 414 words: 101,285

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

National e-government services as well as the national infrastructure, including power plants, electricity grids, and oil pipelines, use networked control systems to decrease their operational costs. The concentration of information and power in these digital systems creates points of vulnerability that are open to attack by malevolent forces. One example of such an attack is the deployment of the Stuxnet virus, discovered in 2010, which is widely thought to have caused damage to a uranium enrichment plant in Iran. The virus is believed to have been developed for this purpose by experts with detailed knowledge of Iranian systems and with the involvement of at least one government. Another threat to the virtual integrity of the Internet is cybercrime.

See trade Internet: access to, 14, 180, 196; business use of, 75–77, 112, 114, 118, 193; complexity of, 117–18; cyberaggression on, 40, 114–16, 122, 193; cyberattacks on, 113–16; governance of, 122; growth of, 11, 13, 112, 113f, 114f, 224n22; information spread through, 148–49, 193, 194; infrastructure risks, 112–18, 122, 193–94; managing risks on, 122, 193–94, 195; mobile access to, 14; pandemic monitoring on, 165–66; physical infra structure of, 14, 112, 117, 118, 196; servers for, 118, 120f; social risks of, 118–19; traffic on, 112, 114f; users by income bracket, 119, 119f; viruses and worms on, 114–15, 117; vulnerability of, 112–17, 118, 122, 193. See also information technology intuition, 68–69 invasive species, 29, 137, 158 inventories: accounting for, 97; buffer stocks, 84, 85, 95, 98, 207, 208, 213, 214. See also supply chains investment banks. See banks; financial sector Iran, Stuxnet virus, 114–15 IT. See information technology Italy: government debt of, 188; social mobility in, 186; transportation in, 103 Jackson, Michael, 117 Japan: sarin gas attacks, 194; tsunami and earthquake in, 30, 80, 126 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 145 just-in-time manufacturing, 78, 79, 85 Kennedy, John F., 34–35 Keohane, Robert O., 201, 211 Kilbourne, Edwin D., 152 Kilpatrick, A.

See also inequality; political stability SoftLayer, 118 Spanish flu, 149, 150–51. See also influenza spatial risks, 29, 102–4 special-purpose vehicles (SPVs), 42b, 45 Squire, Lynn, 176 Stanford Research Institute, 11 Starbucks, 181, 205 Stern, Nicholas H., 134 Stiglitz, Joseph E., 195 stock markets, 24, 29, 40. See also financial markets Stuxnet virus, 114–15 subcontracting. See outsourcing subsidiarity, 202 Suez Canal, 105–6, 117, 239n14 supply chain risk: complexity of, 92–93; contagion, 92–93, 93f; counterparty, 96–97; definition of, 94; management of, 79, 90–97, 98; systemic, 80–81, 84, 91–93, 95 supply chains: accountability in, 67; accounting issues in, 97–98; connectivity of, 70; definition of, 70; disruptions of, 79–81, 84, 91; diversification of, 96; emergency plans for, 97; financial links, 90, 92; flexibility of, 214; fragmentation of, 78, 81, 84, 91, 92; global, 12, 70–72, 73, 75, 93–94; local, 91; management of, 72, 78, 80, 84–85, 93–99; modular, 91, 95; resilience of, 70, 80–81, 91, 94, 95–96, 213–14; shocks in, 92–93, 93f.


pages: 437 words: 113,173

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Dava Sobel, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Doha Development Round, double helix, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental economics, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, full employment, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johannes Kepler, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahbub ul Haq, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Max Levchin, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, open economy, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, post-Panamax, profit motive, public intellectual, quantum cryptography, rent-seeking, reshoring, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, Snapchat, special economic zone, spice trade, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, uber lyft, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, zero day

Symantec (2015). 2015 Internet Security Threat Report. Volume 20. Mountain View, CA: Symantec. Retrieved from www.symantec.com/security_response/publications/threatreport.jsp 89. Kushner, David (2013, February 26). “The Real Story of Stuxnet.” IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved from spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security. 90. Menn, Joseph (2015, May 29). “US Tried Stuxnet-Style Campaign against North Korea but Failed—Sources.” Reuters. Retrieved from www.reuters.com. 91. Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (2014). Die Lage Der IT-Sicherheit in Deutschland 2014. Berlin: German Federal Office for Information Security.

More recently, in mid-2015, personnel records of 21.5 million current and former employees of the US government, including 5.6 million fingerprint images, were stolen when the Office of Personnel Management was hacked—possibly by a foreign government aiming to recruit informants or identify spies.87 Other highly sophisticated malware initiatives, likely state-sponsored, have likewise penetrated embassies, research institutes and other sensitive targets of governments around the world.88 The rising scale of critical infrastructure connected to the Internet—including defense, chemical, food, transportation, nuclear, water, financial, energy and other systems—means that not just cybercrime, but cyber warfare is now possible. As of 2016, two major cyber attacks causing physical infrastructure damage have been publicly confirmed. In 2010, the Stuxnet worm sabotaged Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure by infecting control systems and causing the uranium centrifuges to tear themselves apart.89 (A similar worm had been aimed at North Korea’s facilities, but failed to reach its target because of the country’s extreme isolation.)90 And in 2014, a German steel mill suffered “massive damage” after cyber attackers gained access to the plant’s control systems and caused critical components to fail.91 Many more such strikes are being attempted.


pages: 453 words: 114,250

The Great Firewall of China by James Griffiths;

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, bike sharing, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, borderless world, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mitch Kapor, mobile money, Occupy movement, pets.com, profit motive, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, undersea cable, WikiLeaks, zero day

Within months of Mandiant’s first report on Unit 61398, former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, flew to Hong Kong, from where he began making dramatic revelations about the extent of US government surveillance and spying. The US had also allegedly built and deployed – along with Israeli intelligence – the Stuxnet virus, a carefully designed cyber-weapon that wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear energy programme. But to the Americans, this type of espionage was wholly different to the Chinese hacking, which often targeted private companies and appeared to be done for the benefit of Chinese businesses. It was one thing to steal plans for a fighter jet in order to better defend against it, and quite another to hack a company to uncover information about civil suits against a Chinese competitor, or steal files relating to a merger to undermine negotiations, as Unit 61398 was accused of doing.

Wu, X. (2005) Chinese Cyber Nationalism: evolution, characteristics and implications, Lanham MD: Lexington Books. Xin, X. (2012) How the Market Is Changing China’s News: the case of Xinhua news agency, Lanham MD: Lexington Books. Yang, G. (2009) The Power of the Internet in China: citizen activism online, New York NY: Columbia University Press. Zetter, J. (2014) Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the launch of the world’s first digital weapon, New York NY: Crown/Archetype. Zhu, Y. (2012) Two Billion Eyes: the story of China Central Television, New York NY: The New Press. Zittrain, J. and B. Edelman (2003) ‘Empirical analysis of internet filtering in China’, Cambridge MA: Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, https://cyber.harvard.edu/filtering/china/.

., 183 Nigeria, 232 Noah, Trevor, 302 NoGuGe.com, 126 non-aggression, cyber pact, 251 Northrop Grumman, 170 Nossik, Anton, 257, 262 Nur Bekri, 146, 148 Nureli, 157 Nyanzi, Stella, 286–7, 303, 305; imprisoned, 301–2; Stella, persecution of, 300 Obama, Barack, 157, 165, 191, 228, 246; ‘pivot to Asia’, 192 Obote, Milton, 292; overthrow of, 285 Occupy movement, 9 Office of Personnel Management (OPM), 190, Chinese hacked, 191 “Operation Fungua Macho”, 293 Ownby, David, 55, 98 Page, Larry, 116, 168, 171 Palmer, David, 50 Palmer, Mark, 107–9 Pan Shiyi, 180–2 Pan Yiheng, 177 Panama Papers, 251 ‘patriotic hackers’,161 peer-to-peer software, Chinese, 101 Pegasus, early email software, 86 Pentagon, the, 161 perestroika, 75 Perhat, Dilshat, 157 Pfeifle, Mark, 110 Philippines, 161; China boycotts call, 77 Piccuta, Dan, 165–6 Pirate Bay, file-sharing website, 185 PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army), 22, 37, 132, 240, 242, 251, 312; Third Technical Department, 164; US indictment, 189 pornography, 91, 105–6 Postel, John, 219, 221–2, 228; ‘benevolent dictator’, 220 Press, Larry, 254–5 Prophet Muhammed, image forbidden, 209 proxies: sharing of, 102; use of, 101 ‘public opinion channellers’, 214 ‘public order’, CCP-speak, 72 Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet, 64 Public Security Bureau, 149 Putin, Vladimir, 228, 247, 249, 251, 257, 262–6; internet concern, 261 qigong, 55; enthusiasm for, 47; groups, 50 masters’ absurd claims, 49; opinion shift against, 48 Qin Yongmin, 42 Qin Zhihui, arrest, 182 Qing Gang, 35 QQ, 182, 277 Qzone, 182, 278 Radio Free Asia, 106, 147, 248, 311 Rajagopalan, Megha, 199 Rand Corporation, 192 Razak, Najib, 209 Reagan, Ronald, 248 Rebel Pepper, 212, 215 Red Guards, 133 Reincarnation Party, 209 Relcom see Demos/Relcom Ren Zhengfei, 251 RenRen, 182 Reporters Without Borders, 64 Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), 288 Reuters, 80–1 RFA, 108; 1994 launch, 107 riots, Urumqi, 148 ‘River Elegy’, TV programme, 20 Robinson, Michael, 30–2 Roldugin, Sergei, 251 root authority, 201 rootkit.com, 186, 188 Rosenberg, Jonathan, 117 Roskomnadzor, 266, 269, 270 Ross, Alec, 264 Rossiya Segodnya, 247–8 RSA, hacked, 187 RT, TV station, 247, 311 Runet, 257, 270 Russian Federation, 10, 237; early years of, 256; FAPSI, 257; firewall urgency of, 251; internet blacklist, 266; internet use surge, 257; liberal internet era, 262; Libertarian Party, 272 nationalised internet, 231; Safe Internet Forum, 248; 2012 election protests, 251 Sadikejiang Kaze, killing of, 146 Safe Internet League, 249–50 Safe Web, Triangle Boy, 108 Sakharov, Andrei, 270 Salkin.com, 157 Samdup, Thubten, 85–6, 160 Saudi Arabia, 230 Saulsbury, Brendan, 190 Schmidt, Eric, 116, 124, 127, 168; China strategy support, 126; Google outvoted, 171 Schneider, Rick, 87 Schrage, Elliot, 120–4 ‘secret backdoors’, 162 Seldon, Tenzin, 170 self-censorship, Google justification, 120 self-immolation, 58 SenseTime, 200 Sha Tin New Town, Hong Kong, 217 Shambaugh, David, 233 Shanghai, 29; Cooperation Organisation, 251; Cyberspace Administration, 308; European Jews haven, 205; Expo 2010, 180; police computer security, 35 Shaoguan incident see Xuri Toy factory Shchyogolev, Igor, 248, 250 Shen Yun, performance group, 97 Shenzhen, 143; public security bureau, surveillance division, 72–3 Shi Caidong, 51–3 Shi Tao, 64–5 67, 76, 116, 119; prison sentence, 66 Sichuan province, 201 Siemens BS2000 mainframe computer, 24 Signal, encryption app, 268 Silicon Valley, 1; biggest companies, 59; private enterprise victory, 7 Silk Road, dark web, 100 Sima Nan, 49 Sina Weibo, 182–3, 278; censors at, 75 Sino-Soviet split, 288 Sither, Lobsang Gyatso, 276–7, 283 Smirnov, Sergei, 266 Smith, Chris, 115 Smith, Craig, 90, 309 Snapchat, 260 Snowden, Edward, 190, 268, 269; revelations of, 313 Sobel, David, 245 social media, companies, 7 Soldatov, Alexey, 256, 261 solidarity: surveillance attention, 74; threat of, 10 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 5 Song Zheng, 235 South China Sea: Chinese ambitions, 192; international court ruling, 77 spammers, trading among, 39 ‘spear-phishing’, 159, 187 ‘spiritual pollution’, 35 Sprint, 30–1 St Petersburg: briefcase bomb 2017, 269; State University, 260 Stanford Research Institute, 220 State Commission of Machine Industry, 24 Steve Jackson Games, 245 Stevens, John Paul, 245 Students for a Free Tibet, 170 Stuxnet virus, 190 Sudan, 230, 290 Sullivan, Andrew, 110 Sulzberger Jr, Arthur Ochs, 89–90 supremacist ideology, Han, 133 Surkov, Vladislav, 262–3 Sweden, 232 Symantec, 108, 170 Syria, Uyghur fighters, 199 System of Operative Search Measures, Russia, 257 Taiwan see Republic of China Tanzania, 288; Tan–Zam railway line, 287 Tarim Basin, 136 Tarnoff, Ben, 317 tear gas, 18 tech giants, collaboration accusation, 119 techno-libertarians, 243, 246 Telegram app, 268, 272; banned, 269; blocked, 270 Tencent, 182, 235, 279, 281–2; data hoovering, 280; leg up, 278; WeChat, 277; Weibo, 278 The Atlantic, 110 The Gate of Heavenly Peace, subtitled version, 176 The New Republic, 110 The New York Times, 3, 89–90, 100, 111, 179, 211, 223, 257 The People’s Daily, 21, 79, 172, 178, 246 The Wall Street Journal, 110, 309 The Washington Post, 57, 110, 302 Third World Academy of Sciences, 24 Tian, David, 99 Tian, Edward, 30–1 Tiananmen Square, 9, 21, 25, 46, 62, 99, 175; anger, 38; crackdown, 89, 107; massacre, 22, 26, 3, 208; massacre 20th anniversary, 166; Mothers, 65; movement, 20, 76; Papers, 100; protests, 78; self-immolation, 56–7; Tianjin protest, 52–4 Tibet, 83–4, 98, 106, 138, 149, 210; Action Institute, 274, 276; Computer Resource Centre, 86, 161; diaspora battling cyberspies, 276; Freedom Movement fund for, 163; Institute of the Performing Arts, 85; PLA victory, 85; Youth Congress, 85 Tohti, Ilham, 132, 134, 140–1, 143, 150, 152, 158, 195, 199; detention, 157; father killing, 133; harassment experience, 135; trial of, 131, US exile, 140 Tor Browser, 100, 102 Touré, Hamadoun, 228, 231, 236 traffic spikes, websites, 2 Trivedi, Aseem, 209 trolls: Badiucao attacks, 211; pro-China government, 92, 212 Trump, Donald, 192 Tsai Ing-wen, 212 Tsang, Donald, 15 Tunis Agreement 2005, 237 Tunisia, 9; Facebook, 264 Turnbull, Malcolm, 203 Tusiime, Samson, 295–6, 304; arrest of, 300 Twitter, 111, 207, 211, 246, 296–7, 303, 307, 309, 311–12; banned, 183; blocked, 27; ‘Revolution’, 110 UAE (United Arab Emirates), 230 Uganda: Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, 293; Communications Commission, 303–4; Computer Misuse Act, 300; fake wireless hotspots, 294; security services, China learning, 295, 303; Special Investigations Unit, 300; Telecom, 304; Trojan horse viruses, 294; Twitter, 300; 2016 election, 296–8; ‘walk to work’ protests, 292 UgandaDecides, hashtag, 297 UglyGorilla, 187–8 UK (United Kingdom), 232 Ukraine, 250 Ulhaque, Zulkiflee Anwar (Zunar), 209 UltraSurf, 102, 105, 107–10, 112; programming, 106; successful, 104 Umbrella Movement/generation, 16, 19–20 United Nations, 10, 313; ‘cyber-sovereignty’, concept of, 224; ITU, 225, 227–32, 236; ITRs, 225, 233; WSIS, 222 Unit 61398, 190–1; indictment of, 189 United Arab Emirates, 230 United Russia party 2011 rally, 263 University of British Columbia, 309 University of California, Berkeley, 30 University of Edinburgh, 99 University of Helsinki, 253 University of Southern California, 220–1 University of Toronto, 159; Citizen Lab, 3–4 university servers, 35 URLs: blocking of, 29; proxies, 102–3 Urumqi, 132, 136, 153–4, 201; -Beijing link, 156; Han revenge attacks, 149; internet cut-off, 151; People’s Intermediate Court, 131; police attack, 148; proxies, 102–3; riots, 183; student protest, 146–7 USA: Chinese Embassy protests, 98; -China relationship, 112; Commerce Department, 222; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 219; Google Congressional hearing, 122; House Subcommittee on Human Rights, 115; imperialism internet use, 112; National Security Agency, 170, 244, 268, 293, 313; Republican Party, 244; Senate Sub-Committee on Human Rights, 108; State Department, 22, 81, 109–11, 166, 298 UseNet, 253 Usmanov, Alisher, 261, 267 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics): dissolution of, 256; 1990s internet start, 252 Uyghurs, Chinese language forums, 157, dangerous vagabonds characterised, 132; discrimination against, 138–9, 152; doppa headgear, 132; internet, 143, 150; pervasive unemployment, 134; stereotyping of, 140; terrorism label, 140; Uyghur Online, 131, 135, 139, 151, 157; websites control, 149 Villeneuve, Nart, 159–60, 162–3 VIP Reference, 35 virtual private networks (VPNs), 9, 103, 113, 157, 299; apps, 297; users, 28 VKontakte (VK), 259–60, 262, 267; customer support, 265; groups, 270; user base growth, 261 Voice of America, 106–8, 248, 311 Voice of China, 287 Voice of Russia, 247 “Walk to Work” protests, 294 Walton, Greg, 160–3, 276 Wang Baodong, 109 Wang Dong, 188–9 Wang Lequan, 152 Wang Liming, 209, 210 Wang Yongping, 178 Wang Youcai, 42 Wang Yunfeng, 24, 25 Wang Zhiwen, 54 Wang, Jack, 188 ‘War on Terror’, 290 WCITLeaks, 229–31, 233, 236 Weaver, Nicholas, 3 WeChat (Weixin), 207, 242, 277–8, 281–3; censorship challenge, 268; monopoly of, 278; payments system, 279–80 Weibo, 46, 177–9, 181, 184, 206–7, 210, 268, 277; failure, 215; ingenuity of, 182; microbloggers use, 180; muzzling of, 214; public offering, 182; surveillance sidestep attempts, 208; Weiboscope, 77 Weigel, Moira, 317 Weir, Bob, 244 Wen Jiabao, 79–80 Wenhui Daily, 173 Wenzhou train crash, 177, 179; internet revealed, 178 Westinghouse, 187 Wexler, Robert, 123 WhatsApp, 16, 268, 278, 296, 303, 316 Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, 244 WikiLeaks, 104, 185–6, 315–16 Wikipedia, specific pages blocked, 27 Wired, 84, 106, 243–4 World Bank, 24 World Conference on International Telecommunications, 227; Leaks see above World Internet Conference 2015, 241 World Uyghur Congress, 152 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 234 WSIS 10, 237; US victory, 224 WTO (World Trade Organization), 80–1; China joining, 42, 91–2 Wu, Dandan, 125 Wu, Tim, 30, 219, 241, 243 wumao, 212 wumaodang, recruited students, 213 Wuyi, Zhejiang province, 310 Wuzhen, 239–40 Xabnam.com, 157 Xi Jinping, 81, 181, 191, 203, 207, 238–40, 281, 312; internet clampdown, 78 Xia, Bill, 99–100, 102–3, 107, 112 Xiao Qiang, 76, 21 Xi’an, Shaanxi province, 154 Xinhua, 56–7, 64, 77, 78, 156, 181; commercial offerings, 80; Hong Kong bureau, 79; journalists’ watchdog role, 79; official line, 148 Xinjiang Autonomous Region, 107, 131–2, 135, 140, 148, 156, 195, 199, 210, 280; Beijing terrorism lens, 152; famine avoidance, 138; internet access, 156; internet blackout, 153; new policies of control, 200; Qing Empire, 137; Shanshan county, 201; University, 150 Xu Hong, 39 Xu Wendi, 42 Xue, Charles, 180, 181 Xuri Toy Factory/Shaoguan incident, 143, 146; footage of, 151; Uyghur workers, 144–5 Yahoo, 115, 119, 170; arrest responsibility, 116; China subsidiary, 63–4, 67; informer role criticised, 66 Yanayev, Gennady, 253 Yang Jisheng, 20 Yang, Jerry, 66–7 Yanukovych, Viktor, 267 Yeltsin, Boris, 75, 254–5, 257; resignation, 261 YouTube, 167, 246, 274, 303, 314, 316; blocked, 183 Yu Jie, China’s Best Actor, 80 Yu Wanli, 173–4, 246 Yuan Zengxin, 138 Zambia, 304 Zara, 309 Zhang Zhenhuan, 49 Zhang Jianchuan, 235 Zhang, Shawn, 309 Zhao Houlin, 236–7 Zhao Jing, 36 Zhao Ziyang, 80, 889; house arrest, 21–2 Zhongnanhai complex, 45; 1999 protest, 46, 52–3, 55 Zhou Yongkang, 171 Zhu Rongji, 53 Zhu, Julie, 62 Zhuan Falun, 50; text banned, 52 Zimbabwe, 10, 290, 304 Zorn, Werner, 24–5 ZTE, 288 Zuckerberg, Mark, 260, 312 Zed is a platform for marginalised voices across the globe.


pages: 350 words: 115,802

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Laurent Richard, Sandrine Rigaud

activist lawyer, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, centre right, Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, corporate governance, COVID-19, David Vincenzetti, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Snowden, food desert, Jeff Bezos, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mohammed Bouazizi, NSO Group, offshore financial centre, operational security, Stuxnet, Tim Cook: Apple, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero day

Unlike any other Mexican governmental office I have been to, there are no plants, no decoration, no grass, nothing. Basic waste of money.” Vincenzetti and his acolytes had a good laugh at that, and as this confirmed their suspicions that Pegasus was a horse that didn’t hunt, they breathed a little easier. But not entirely easy. Because, first of all, NSO was an Israeli company, and recent press about Stuxnet, the spectacular malware that single-handedly set back Iran’s nuclear program by years (if not decades), suggested the exploit was built on the brain power of Israeli techs. Israeli technology, Vincenzetti occasionally lamented, was “invariably overvalued.” More worrisome, NSO’s real strength was in selling, and at enormously inflated prices.

The cyberintelligence specialists in 8200 worked long and hard—sometimes full twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour shifts during special operations. The young techs might spend their days and nights listening in on suspected terrorist cells, disabling an enemy’s early-warning system before an Israeli airstrike, helping to engineer the Stuxnet malware that crippled Iran’s nuclear program, or providing eyes and ears (by remote) for a secret combat mission. A young cybersoldier could find herself on the phone with a curious cabinet minister or an Israeli general or a commander whose troops were, at that very moment, in a life-and-death firefight.

See Amnesty International, Security Lab Security Tracking Devices, SA de CV (STDi) Security Without Borders Sempra Shackleton, Fiona Signal 60 Minutes Smith, Matthew Noah SMS messages Snowden, Edward SoCalGas social media Le Soir Somalia sources, protection of South Sudan spyware. See cybersurveillance software Stahl, Lesley Stark, Holger State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) Stuxnet Sudan Süddeutsche Zeitung Sullivan, Drew the Sun Sunray, Shmuel Susumo Azano SwissLeaks scandal Switzerland Symbian cell phones Syria Szabó, András Tahrir Square, occupation of Tajikistan Tehelka Tel Aviv, Israel terrorism Thakurta, Paranjoy Guha Timberg, Craig Time magazine Togo Tolfi, Lahcen Tor Travère, Audrey Truecaller Trump, Donald Trump, Donald, Jr.


pages: 503 words: 131,064

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together by Bruce Schneier

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, commoditize, corporate governance, crack epidemic, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, desegregation, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunbar number, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, hydraulic fracturing, impulse control, income inequality, information security, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, iterative process, Jean Tirole, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Julian Assange, language acquisition, longitudinal study, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, microcredit, mirror neurons, moral hazard, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nick Leeson, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, patent troll, phenotype, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, security theater, shareholder value, slashdot, statistical model, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, technological singularity, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, UNCLOS, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Other cities followed J.L. Lyman (1964), “The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829: An Analysis of Certain Events Influencing the Passage and Character of the Metropolitan Police Act in England,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, & Police Science, 55:141–54. Internet worm Stuxnet Kim Zetter (2011), “How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History,” Threat Level blog, Wired.com. salami attacks Michael E. Kabay (24 Jul 2002), “Salami Fraud,” Network World. just use software Bruce Schneier (2000), Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, John Wiley & Sons. delayed publishing Eric Lichtblau (26 Mar 2008), “The Education of a 9/11 Reporter: The Inside Drama Behind the Times' Warrantless Wiretapping Story,” Slate.

We've seen music and movie piracy grow from a minor annoyance to an international problem due to the ease of distributing pirated content on the Internet. We've seen Internet worms progress from minor annoyances to criminal tools to military-grade weapons that cause real-world damage, like the Internet worm Stuxnet, the first military-grade cyberweapon the public has seen. All this has come about because information technology increases the scope of defection in several ways: Migration of all data onto the Internet. As data moves onto computer networks, there are more—and, more importantly, different—risks.


pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

In this large-scale bandwidth, provision and access becomes a core spatial planning strategy, whether for small market cities like Kansas City, Missouri, the first test bed for Google's 100 megabyte fiber network, or for large market actors like traders who relocate their offices farther down the island in Manhattan to get closer to the central switches on Wall Street and shave nanoseconds off high-speed trading cycles. Despite its global spread and horizontal ubiquity, for Stack urbanism, proximity to the center, as defined by supermassive concentrations of bit flows, is seen as essential. 12.  See David Kusner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum, February 23, 2013, http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. 13.  As well as simulations of all of these, as evidenced by the imaginary ISIS attack on Louisiana as invented by Russian mischief makers. See Cory Doctorow, “Imaginary ISIS Attack on Louisiana and the Twitterbots Who Loved It,” http://boingboing.net/2015/03/08/imaginary-isis-attack-on-louis.html. 14. 

We will see that this integration of one into the other looks less like Leon Battista Alberti's organismic city, all parts fitting into natural wholes, than gory multispecies nested parasitism, one organism living inside another, itself perhaps living inside yet another, and shuttling energy in and out, through skins and interfaces. For this figure, the City layer is an urbanism of catalytic digestion more than settled homeostasis; its appetites are computational but no less violent for it. The Stack is also expressed in City versus City remote warfare, as dramatized by the launching of the Stuxnet virus into Iranian nuclear facilities (perhaps physically installed there by hand, perhaps inadvertently downloaded), where the software took hold of specific centrifuges and tricked them into malfunctioning but reporting themselves as fully operational.12 This sort of weaponized transurban code is not so unlike a parasitoid fungus, Orphiocordyceps unilateralis, for example, which infects the brain of a species of ant and directs its zombie to crawl to the precise height in the jungle canopy suitable by temperature and humidity for the fungus to fully spore and where the ant husk becomes a factory for the production of more fungus.

A User could be as “small” as an algorithm executed on a particular server or as “large” as the human population of a City combined over the span of a year. A Stack will work just as well with a tight scalar fit between what is situated at different layers (i.e., a human User and a standard keyboard Interface) or a loose scalar fit (i.e., a tiny algorithm and a distant megastructure, such as for Stuxnet). The Stack, and therefore also the design of The Stack, is qualified by these kinds of simultaneities, correspondences, parallels, desynchronizations, mismatches, and phase shifts. As far as geodesign is concerned, that blur between one Stack and another is not a symptom to be clarified and cured; rather, the blur is a high-resolution image of what is actually happening, which itself is blurry.


Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

., “The Cornell Commission: On Morris and the Worm,” Communications of the ACM 32, no. 6 (June 1989): 706–709, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/63526.63530. 282spread far beyond its intended target: Nicolas Falliere, Liam O. Murchu, and Eric Chien, W32.Stuxnet Dossier (Symantec Security Response, February 2011), https://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf (page discontinued). 282an instrumental goal that intelligent systems adopt: Stephen M. Omohundro, The Basic AI Drives (wordpress.com, n.d.), httpsaselfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf; Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, May 5, 2015), 131–139, https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111/. 284variation, selection, and replication: Joel Lehman et al., “The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities,” Artificial Life 26, no. 2 (2020). 284artificial general intelligence (AGI): Vincent C.

It is possible to envision in the future advanced forms of adaptive and intelligent malware that are able to replicate, acquire resources, evade defenses, and cause significant harm without any human intent behind them. Such systems could be released by accident or, even if released intentionally, proliferate or evolve beyond human control. The computer worm Stuxnet appears to have spread far beyond its intended target, despite multiple protocols in place to limit its proliferation. If a future form of malware was adaptive, intelligent, or evolving, attempts to combat it could look like a form of warfare, with violence and fights to control resources. Yet it would be a conflict against a nonhuman entity.

., 179–80 Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), 178, 181, 184 semiconductor(s) fabrication of, 32 foundries, 27–28 improvements in, 325 manufacturing equipment, 179 market, 27 as strategic asset, 300 Seminar on Cyberspace Management, 108–9 SenseNets, 91, 156, 357 SenseTime, 37, 88–89, 91, 156, 160, 169, 353–54, 357, 388 SensingTech, 88 Sensity, 130–33 Sentinel, 132 Sequoia, 157 Serbia, 107, 110 Serelay, 138 servicemember deaths, 255 Seven Sons of National Defense, 161–62 “shallow fakes,” 129 Shanahan, Jack on automated nuclear launch, 289 on international information sharing, 258, 291–92 and JAIC, 66, 201, 203, 205–6, 214 and Project Maven, 57–58 on risks, 254, 256 Sharp Eyes, 88, 91 Shenzhen, China, 37 Shield AI, 66, 196, 222, 224 shortcuts, 254–56 Silk Road, 110 SIM cards, 80, 89 Singapore, 106, 107, 158 singularity in warfare, 279–80 Skyeye, 99 Skynet, 87–88, 90, 91 Slashdot, 120 Slate, 120 smartphones, 26, 80 SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), 178, 181, 184 Smith, Brad, 159, 163, 166, 167 social app dominance, 149–50 social credit system, 99–100 social governance, 97–104 social media, 126, 141–51 socio-technical problems, 65 soft power, 317 SOFWERX (Special Operations Forces Works), 214 SolarWinds, 246 South Africa, 107 South China Sea militarization, 71, 74 South Korea, 27, 40, 182, 185, 187 Soviet Union, 287, 289, 447 Spain, 40, 107 SparkCognition, 66, 224 Spavor, Michael, 177 Special Operations Command, 218 Special Operations Forces Works (SOFWERX), 214 speech recognition, 91 “Spider-Man neuron,” 295 Springer Nature, 158 Sputnik, 33, 71–72 Stability AI, 125, 295 stability, international, 286–93 Stable Diffusion, 125, 139, 295 Stallone, Sylvester, 130 Stanford Internet Observatory, 139 Stanford University, 31, 32, 57, 162 Starbucks, 92 StarCraft, 180, 298 StarCraft II, 267, 271, 441 Status-6, 289; See also Poseidon Steadman, Kenneth A., 192 STEM talent, 30–34 sterilization and abortion, 81 Strategic Capabilities Office, 56 strategic reasoning, 49 Strategy Robot, 44–45, 49, 51 Strike Hard Campaign, 79–80 Stuxnet, 283 subsidies, government, 179–80 Sullivan, Jake, 186 Sun Tzu, 45 superhuman attentiveness, 269–70 superhuman precision, 270 superhuman reaction time, 277 superhuman speed, 269, 271 supervised learning, 232 supply chain(s), 300 attacks, 246 global, 76, 179, 183 “Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution, The,” 235 surveillance, 79–90 cameras, 6, 86–87, 91 laws and policies for, 108–9 throughout China, 84–90 in Xinjiang, 79–83 Sutskever, Ilya, 210 Sutton, Rich, 299, 455 swarms and swarming, 277–79 autonomous systems, 50, 220 demonstrations, 257 Sweden, 108, 158, 187 Switch-C, 294 Synopsys, 162 synthetic aperture radar, 210 synthetic media, 127–34, 138–39 criminal use, 128–29 deepfake detectors, 132–33 deepfake videos, 130–32 geopolitical risks, 129–30 watermarks, digital, 138–39 Syria, 58 system integration, 91 tactics and strategies, 270 Taiwan, 27, 71, 76, 100, 175, 178, 185–86 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), 27–28, 179, 181, 184 Taiwan Strait, 71, 75–76 talent, 30–34, 304 Tang Kun, 393 tanks, 192 Tanzania, 109 targeting cycle, 263 target recognition, 210 Target Recognition and Adaptation in Contested Environments (TRACE), 210–12 Tay, chatbot, 247 TDP (thermal design power), 454 TechCrunch, 120 technical standards Chinese, 171–75 international, 169–71 techno-authoritarianism, 79–110, 169 China’s tech ecosystem, 91–96 global export of, 105–10, 106f social governance, 97–104 throughout China, 83–90 in Xinjiang, 79–83 technology ecosystem, Chinese, 91–96 platforms, 35 and power, 11 transfer, 33, 163–64 Tektronix, 162 Tencent, 37, 143, 160, 169, 172 Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), 180 Terregator, 193 Tesla, 65, 180 TEVV (test and evaluation, verification and validation), 251–52 Texas Instruments, 162 text generation, 117–21, 123 text-to-image models, 125, 295 Thailand, 107, 109 thermal design power (TDP), 454 Third Offset Strategy, 53, 61 “Thirteenth Five-Year Science and Technology Military-Civil Fusion Special Projects Plan,” 73 Thousand Talents Plan, 32, 164 “Three-Year Action Plan to Promote the Development of New-Generation AI Industry,” 73 Tiananmen Square massacre, 68, 97–98, 103, 148, 160, 341, 359 tic-tac-toe, 47, 336 TikTok, 146–49 Tortoise Market Research, Inc., 15, 40 TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), 180 TRACE (Target Recognition and Adaptation in Contested Environments), 210–12 Trade and Technology Council (TTC), 187 training costs, 296–97 training datasets, 19–23 attacks on, 238–40, 244–45 of drone footage, 203 “radioactive,” 139 real world environments, vs., 58, 64, 233, 264 size of, 294–96 transistor miniaturization, 28 transparency among nations, 258–59, 288 Treasury Department, 246 Trump, Donald, and administration; See also “Donald Trump neuron” budget cuts, 39–40 and COVID pandemic, 74 and Entity List, 166 GPT-2 fictitious texts of, 117–19 graduate student visa revocation, 164 and Huawei, 182–84 and JEDI contract, 215–16 national strategy for AI, 73 relations with China, 71 and TikTok, 147 Twitter account, 150 trust, 249–53 Trusted News Initiative, 138–39 “truth,” 130 Tsinghua University, 31, 93, 173, 291 TSMC, See Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) TTC (Trade and Technology Council), 187 Turkey, 107, 108, 110 Turkish language, 234 Twitter, 139–40, 142, 144, 149, 247 Uganda, 108, 109 Uighurs; See also Xinjiang, China facial recognition, 88–89, 158, 353–55 genocide, 79, 304 mass detention, 74, 79–81, 102, 175 speech recognition, 94 surveillance, 82, 155–56 Ukraine, 108, 129, 196, 219, 288 United Arab Emirates, 107, 109 United Kingdom, 12, 76, 108, 122, 158, 187, 191–92 United States AI policy, 187 AI research of, 30 Chinese graduate students in, 31 competitive AI strategy, 185 United States Presidential election, 2016, 122 United States Presidential election, 2020, 128, 131, 134, 150 University of Illinois, 157 University of Richmond, 123 Uniview, 89, 355 unsupervised learning, 232 Ürümqi, 80, 84 Ürümqi Cloud Computing Center, 156 U.S.


pages: 530 words: 154,505

Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu by Anshel Pfeffer

Ayatollah Khomeini, British Empire, centre right, different worldview, Donald Trump, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, full employment, high net worth, illegal immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mount Scopus, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, pre–internet, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Stuxnet, Thomas L Friedman, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

The prime suspect, Israel, never took responsibility. The United States was a partner in the secret campaign against Iran. Bush had authorized the cooperation, which continued, and even intensified, under Obama. Their most famous success was Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm that found its way into the operating system of Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges. According to the New York Times, Stuxnet had been developed by a joint American-Israeli team in “Operation Olympic Games” to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.8 Contrary to the “throwing Israel under the bus” narrative pushed by Netanyahu’s people in Jerusalem and Washington, Obama authorized taking the intelligence-sharing and operational coordination between the two countries to unprecedented levels.

Begin’s resignation, 152–153 direct election law, 183–184 Gulf War, 178 Hebron Agreement controversy, 246 Madrid Conference, 182 national unity government, 153–154, 161–163, 169 replacing Moshe Dayan, 139 resignation as Likud leader, 185 Revisionist movement, 19 right-wing coalition government, 175–178 Soviet Jewish emigration, 181–182 US foreign policy under Bush, 174–175 Wye River Agreement, 268 Shapiro, Dan, US ambassador, 345–346 Shaqaqi, Fathi, 214 Sharansky, Natan, 230–231, 299 Sharon, Ariel advocating a Palestinian state, 288–289 Barak’s declining government, 285 defense minister, 139 disdain for Netanyahu, 329–330 dissolving the Knesset, 296 entry into politics, 108–109 foreign minister, 263–264 Gaza disengagement, 293–296, 349 illness and death, 297, 331 Lebanon war, 143 Likud’s financial crisis, 192 national unity government, 163, 169–170 Netanyahu’s boasting about, 101 Netanyahu’s first cabinet, 239 1992 elections, 184, 186 1999 elections, 278–279 private income, 283–284 recruiting the Chabad rabbis for Netanyahu’s campaign, 233 resignation from the military, 108 special election after Barak’s loss of mandate, 286–287 strike on Iran’s nuclear installments, 327 US policy on settlements, 315 war in Lebanon, 142–144, 149 War of Attrition with Egypt, 83 Wye River summit negotiations, 265–266 Yoni’s military service, 65 Shas party, 193, 207, 220–221, 248, 258, 275, 286 Shavit, Ari, 252 Shaw, Tanya, 241 Sheves, Shimon, 252 Shimron, David, 189, 191–192, 381 Shin Bet, 87, 211–212, 218, 221, 323, 329–330 Shnitzer, Shmuel, 109 Shomron, Dan, 121 Shultz, George, 147, 159, 165, 171 shuttle diplomacy, Kissinger’s, 110–111 Sinai Campaign, 58–59 al-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 379 Six-Day War, 69–72, 74, 76, 78, 105–106, 152 social media, 365 socialism, combining Zionism with, 24 Solov, Larry, 372–373 Soviet Union, 57–58, 85, 105, 171, 176, 180–182 Spanish Inquisition, 54 statehood, Israel’s, 40–45 Stengel, Richard, 337 Stern, Avraham, 29–30 Stern Gang, 29–30, 40–41 Sternhell, Zeev, 200 Stewart, Jon, 355 Stuxnet, 329 Suez Canal, 58–59, 73, 78, 81–83, 86, 93, 95–96 suicide attacks, 203–204, 207, 221–222, 250–251, 292 Summit of Peacemakers, 228 Syria as the source of conflict in the Middle East, 176 Barak’s summit with, 281 chemical weapons, 346–348 Hamas’s prisoner exchange, 322 Israeli air strikes, 324–325, 347–348 Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, 110 plan to retake the Golan Heights, 255–256 Rabin’s negotiations over territory, 205–206 Six-Day War, 70–71 Soviet support, 58 Summit of Peacemakers, 228 Trump’s lack of interest in foreign policy, 376–378 water rights conflict, 68–69 Yom Kippur War, 96–99 A Tale of Love and Darkness (Oz), 53 temporary government, 49–50 Terrorism: How the West Can Win (Netanyahu, ed.), 159–160 terrorist activities American embassy in Beirut, 146 Baruch Goldstein’s attack on the Tomb of the Patriarchs, 202–203 Black September group, 93–94 informing the 1999 election campaigns, 274 Jerusalem Conference, 134–136 Netanyahu’s hardline policy towards Hamas, 250–251 Netanyahu’s Wye River summit demands regarding, 265 raid on Entebbe, 118 Sabena airliner hijacking, 87–89 September 11, 2001, 287–288 US air strike on Libya, 159–160 Time magazine, 337 Truman, Harry, 41–42 Trump, Donald, 3–4, 157, 372–378 Turkish-Israeli relations, 345–346 Tzomet party, 183, 226–227 Uganda Plan, 10–11 United Kingdom.


pages: 329 words: 95,309

Digital Bank: Strategies for Launching or Becoming a Digital Bank by Chris Skinner

algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, augmented reality, bank run, Basel III, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, cashless society, clean water, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, demand response, disintermediation, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial innovation, gamification, Google Glasses, high net worth, informal economy, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, margin call, mass affluent, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, new economy, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Pingit, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, pre–internet, QR code, quantitative easing, ransomware, reserve currency, RFID, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social intelligence, software as a service, Steve Jobs, strong AI, Stuxnet, the long tail, trade route, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, We are the 99%, web application, WikiLeaks, Y2K

McAfee Labs researchers recently debated the leading threats for the coming year and show that it’s only going to get worse: “Hacking as a Service”: Anonymous sellers and buyers in underground forums exchange malware kits and development services for money The decline of online hacktivists Anonymous, to be replaced by more politically committed or extremist groups Nation states and armies will be more frequent sources and victims of cyberthreats Large-scale attacks like Stuxnet, an attack on Iranian nuclear plants, will increasingly attempt to destroy infrastructure, rather than make money Mobile worms on victims’ machines that buy malicious apps and steal via tap-and-pay NFC Malware that blocks security updates to mobile phones Mobile phone ransomware “kits” that allow criminals without programming skills to extort payments Covert and persistent attacks deep within and beneath Windows Rapid development of ways to attack Windows 8 and HTML5 A further narrowing of Zeus-like targeted attacks using the Citadel Trojan, making it very difficult for security products to counter Malware that renews a connection even after a botnet has been taken down, allowing infections to grow again The “snowshoe” spamming of legitimate products from many IP addresses, spreading out the sources and keeping the unwelcome messages flowing SMS spam from infected phones.

When governments engage in cyberwars that focus upon the bank system first, there’s going to be a meltdown at some point, and potentially these developments are far more threatening than those of the paltry hacktivists. For example, just as pure speculation, here is a short fiction about a cyberattack on Wall Street: Shaiming Zheng had finally finished his masterpiece. He had created a worm that would infiltrate the heart of the American dream: Wall Street. Like the Israeli Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, Shaiming had been hired to achieve the same result on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). NYSE claim that their servers are bullet proof, and can survive attacks that are even more viral and malevolent than those that would target the US defence systems, but they were wrong and Shaiming had the means to prove it.


pages: 568 words: 164,014

Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat by John P. Carlin, Garrett M. Graff

1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, air gap, Andy Carvin, Apple II, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, business climate, cloud computing, cotton gin, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, eat what you kill, Edward Snowden, fake news, false flag, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Hacker Ethic, information security, Internet of things, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, millennium bug, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, Morris worm, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, South China Sea, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, The Hackers Conference, Tim Cook: Apple, trickle-down economics, Wargames Reagan, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, zero-sum game

While we’ve spent the last decade primarily thinking about cybersecurity as the theft or leaking of data, increasingly the threat comes from the alteration and destruction of data. Cybersecurity’s next great fear is about undermining confidence—banks unsure their records are correct, military commanders unsure their positions or radars are correct, citizens unsure their votes are correctly tallied. We’ve seen this in the real world with Stuxnet, a piece of malware targeting Iran’s nuclear system that made machines go haywire and led its scientists to think they made errors, and now with Twitter and Facebook, where the efforts of groups like the Russian Internet Research Agency have made us wonder: Is that voice online a real human and is that a real news story or headline?

Written quickly, with minimal research and with no response from an attempt to ask Sony for comment, the nine-paragraph story alluded only in passing to the hack’s unknown origins, referencing briefly that Sony was “reportedly investigating whether North Korea could be involved,” in part because of the controversial movie, The Interview, about North Korea that Sony soon planned to release.8 Kim Zetter at Wired magazine, one of the industry’s most knowledgeable security writers and the author of a book about the Stuxnet Worm, all but dismissed the North Korea theory—the attack was just too bizarre, too showy, and too unprofessional: “If that sounds outlandish, that’s because it likely is. The focus on North Korea is weak and easily undercut by the facts.”9 The “likely culprits,” she wrote, “are hacktivists—or disgruntled insiders.”

., on hack of, 338 Soofi, Nadir, 20 Sorkin, Aaron, 334 South Korea, 316, 319, 321 Space Rogue, 124 spam, 116–117, 119–121 SpamHaus, 121 spear phishing, 161–163, 193, 247, 305 Spy Schools (Golden), 259 SpyEye, 202 Stallman, Richard, 86 Stanley, Sara, 36 State Department, spear phishing attacks against, 161–162 state-controlled media, 5 Stephens, Paul, 349 Stimpy, 102, 103 Stokes, Bruce, 161 Stokes, Mark, 275 Stoll, Clifford, 76 Stone-Gross, Brett, 292, 294, 295, 300, 301 Storm Worm, 117 The Story of an American Jihadi: Part One (Hammami), 9 Strait of Hormuz, 212 Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC), 144, 307 study abroad policy, 260 Stuxnet, 56, 311 Su Bin, 62, 272–277, 381 Sullivan, Justin Nojan, 21 Sun Army, 230 Sun Kailiang, 265 supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), 229 Surespot, 20 surveillance programs, 252–254 Sushchin, Igor Anatolyevich, 302, 303 Swartz, Aaron, 94n Symantec, 220, 247, 356–357 Syrian Computer Society, 375 Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), 47, 62, 64, 374–381 System Account Manger database (SAM database), 124 Taddeo, Leo, 291 Tan, 124 tax law, 75 Taylor, Francis, “Frank,” 101, 101n TCP/IP, 84 TeaMp0isoN, 2, 3, 19 Tenenbaum, Ehud, “The Analyzer,” 102, 103 Tenet, George, 193 terror groups, 59 terrorism, 5, 8, 176n terrorists: “flash-to-bang” time, 20; franchises, 5; tracking signatures of, 17–18.


pages: 339 words: 99,674

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War by James Risen

air freight, airport security, banking crisis, clean water, drone strike, Edward Snowden, greed is good, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, large denomination, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Stanford prison experiment, Stuxnet, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, WikiLeaks

But a fact rarely mentioned in the rush to grant the NSA more power over cybersecurity—and greater access to the Internet—is that the NSA is now one of the world’s leaders in the use of offensive cyberattacks. The NSA has been behind some of the most sophisticated and damaging cyberattacks ever mounted, including the Stuxnet and Flame viruses that targeted the Iranian nuclear program. But when the New York Times reported the fact that the NSA was behind Stuxnet in 2012, the government reacted in a depressingly familiar fashion. It launched a leak investigation, one that this time turned on Obama’s inner circle. Afterword One day in the summer of 2007, my wife, Penny, called me to say that a FedEx envelope had arrived at our home.


pages: 484 words: 104,873

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, artificial general intelligence, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bernie Madoff, Bill Joy: nanobots, bond market vigilante , business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer age, creative destruction, data science, debt deflation, deep learning, deskilling, digital divide, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Freestyle chess, full employment, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gunnar Myrdal, High speed trading, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, large language model, liquidity trap, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, McJob, moral hazard, Narrative Science, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, optical character recognition, passive income, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, precision agriculture, price mechanism, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, reshoring, RFID, Richard Feynman, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Sam Peltzman, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, strong AI, Stuxnet, technological singularity, telepresence, telepresence robot, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, very high income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce

For example, if automated trucks and trains eventually move food and other critical supplies under centralized control, such a system might create extreme vulnerabilities. There is already great concern about the vulnerability of industrial machinery, and of vital infrastructure like the electrical grid, to cyber attack. That vulnerability was demonstrated by the Stuxnet worm that was created by the US and Israeli governments in 2010 to attack the centrifuges used in Iran’s nuclear program. If, someday, important infrastructure components are dependent on centralized machine intelligence, those concerns could be raised to an entirely new level. Robots in Agriculture Of all the employment sectors that make up the US economy, agriculture stands out as the one that has already undergone the most dramatic transformation as a direct result of technological progress.

See also basic income guarantee Social Security disability program, 43, 262 Social Security income, 222 solar power, 282 Solow, Robert, 65, 203 Sony Corporation, 4 Soviet Union, 161n Spain, 221 Sprague, Shawn, 281 Spread Networks, 114 stagflation, 33 stagnant wages, 34–38 Stanek, Roman, 107 Stanford University, 6, 70n, 182 MOOCs and, 132, 133, 135–136, 142 Staples, 17 Star Trek (television program), 246, 247 “StatsMonkey” software, 84 Stiglitz, Joseph, 203 student identification, online courses and, 136, 137 student loans, 124, 126, 140, 196, 214, 217, 251 Suitable Technologies, Inc., 8 Summers, Larry, 274n Sun Microsystems, 243 Super Crunchers (Ayres), 125 super-intelligence, 236, 236n Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 201–202 surgical robots, 154–155 Stuxnet worm, 22 Switzerland, 268 SyNAPSE, 72, 80n Taibbi, Matt, 56 Target, Inc., 88, 159 taxes, 271–273, 275, 277–278 Taylor, John B., 37 Teamsters Union, 17 techno-feudalism, 204n, 266 technological change/progress economic growth and, 65 productivity and, 33 S-curves of, 66–67, 68 skill biased, 48 welfare of American workforce and, x technology disruptive, xviii, 66 golden era of, 51 graying workforce and, 220–223 historical narrative of modern, 51–58 investment in labor-saving, 227–228 manufacturing jobs and, 55 relationship between employment and, 175–176 unskilled worker wages and, 208–209 Tegmark, Max, 229, 237 telepresence robots, 119–120, 157 Terminator movies, 22, 157n Tesla, 3 textile industry, US, 8–9 Thatcher, Margaret, 258 “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” (Feynman), 241 Thiel, Peter, 64, 236 thinking machine, 229–233.


pages: 349 words: 114,038

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens

4chan, Aaron Swartz, airport security, AltaVista, anti-communist, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, bread and circuses, business climate, business intelligence, business process, Chelsea Manning, clean water, commoditize, congestion charging, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, Debian, decentralized internet, disinformation, Edward Snowden, failed state, financial independence, Firefox, full text search, gamification, German hyperinflation, global village, GnuPG, Google Chrome, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, independent contractor, informal economy, intangible asset, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, M-Pesa, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, no silver bullet, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, packet switching, patent troll, peak oil, power law, pre–internet, private military company, race to the bottom, real-name policy, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, selection bias, Skype, slashdot, software patent, spectrum auction, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, transaction costs, twin studies, union organizing, wealth creators, web application, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, Zipf's Law

It's estimated that 40-90% of Windows PCs are infected by some kind of rogue software -- viruses, trojans, worms, and so on. The measured level is 42%, for known vulnerabilities. What about unknown holes in Windows, a so-called "zero-day attack"? In June 2010, the Stuxnet worm was found to be sabotaging Iran's nuclear program in a very sophisticated attack that looked for specific Siemens industrial control hardware, and interfered with it when it found it. Stuxnet is significant for several reasons, two of which are worth paying particular attention to. It was built by the NSA's hackers, and it used no less than four Windows zero-days. Zero-days are very rare in theory.


pages: 179 words: 43,441

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Defence, military and national security strategists focused on a limited number of traditionally hostile states, now they must consider a near-infinite and indistinct universe of hackers, terrorists, activists, criminals, and other possible foes. Cyber warfare can take many different forms – from criminal acts and espionage to destructive attacks such as Stuxnet – that remain largely underestimated and misunderstood because they are so new and difficult to counter. Since 2008, there have been many instances of cyber attacks directed at both specific countries and companies, yet discussions about this new era of warfare are still in their infancy and the gap between those who understand the highly technical issues of cyber warfare and those who are developing cyber policy widens by the day.


pages: 428 words: 121,717

Warnings by Richard A. Clarke

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, active measures, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, carbon tax, cognitive bias, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, corporate governance, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Elon Musk, failed state, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, forensic accounting, friendly AI, Hacker News, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge worker, Maui Hawaii, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, mouse model, Nate Silver, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart grid, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y2K

The wear and tear destroyed them from the inside out. Yet all the while, the sensors that should have reported the variations in spin rate to the control room showed that all equipment was performing nominally. Thus did the United States slow the Iranian nuclear weapons program for a time, using a hack, a piece of malware known as Stuxnet. Why Natanz is important, says Weiss, is that it showed how corrupting digital control system software allows a hacker to send the wrong signals to a programmable logic controller (PLC), the computer inside machines that controls what that machine does and how it does it. Digital control system software packages are running millions of PLCs throughout the U.S. infrastructure, not just in the power grid, but also in pipelines, refineries, and manufacturing facilities.

., 213 Roper, William, 214 Ross, Bill, 136 Ross, Lee, 184 Royal Academy, 345 Royal Air Force, 10 Royal Navy, 9 Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, 253 Rubenstein, Ariel, 380n Ruby, Jack, 99 Rumsfeld, Donald, 28–29 Russo, Rene, 219 Rutgers University, 261 Sagan, Carl, 273–77 Sago Mine disaster, 129–30 Salling, John Peter, 122 Samuel, Arthur, 381n San Bruno pipeline explosion of 2010, 293–94 Sandler O’Neill & Partners, 154 Sandworm, 285 Sanriku earthquake of 869, 77–81, 91, 97–98 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), 157 Sarin, 23, 230 Satisficing, 116, 117, 180–81, 319, 322, 359 Savage, Stefan, 297–98 Scacco, Gus, 149 Scanning for problems, 354–56 Scarface (movie), 99 Scenario modeling, 360, 363–64 Schapiro, Mary, 118–19 Schlesinger, Michael, 240–41 Schneider, Stephen, 241 Science (journal), 242 Science Story (show), 226 Scientific American, 278–79 Scientific method, 248–49 Scientific reticence, 79–80, 186–87, 234, 248–49, 259, 335 “Scope neglect,” 174 Sea-level rise, 238, 244–60, 360 Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), 304 Seawalls, and Fukushima nuclear disaster, 77, 85, 89–90, 92–93 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 100, 105–12, 114–20, 189–90 Security by obscurity, 270 Seismologist Warns, A (Ishibashi), 91–92 Selection effect, 380n Self-confidence, 184, 240, 365 Self-interest, of critics, 187–88 Sendai, Japan, 80, 81, 82 Sentinel intelligence, 3, 16, 356 “Separation of parts” policy, 270 September 11 attacks, 7–9, 230, 361–62 Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (Lawrence), 57 Sextus Empiricus, 185 Shearson Lehman, 162 Shia Muslims, 63 Shoemaker, Gene, 306–7 Shultz, George, 280 Siberian Unified Dispatch Control Center (SUDCC), 290 Siegel, Jeremy, 157–58 Siegfried Line, 10 Sieur de Bienville, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, 41 Signal and the Noise, The (Silver), 15 Signal from noise, separating, 356–58 Silver, Nate, 13, 15 Silver mining, 128–29 Simon, Herbert, 180–81, 322 Simons, Daniel, 175 Singularity, the, 209 60 Minutes (TV show), 119, 162, 244 Skepticism, 151–53, 168, 185, 240, 248–49 Skynet, 205 Smith & Wesson, 99, 109 Snowden, Edward, 211 Solid rocket boosters, and Challenger disaster, 11–13 Somalia, 65 Soothsayers, 1–2 “Sophistication effect,” 187 South Africa, 42–43 Soviet Union, 25–26, 266, 267–68, 271, 273–74, 277–78 Spaceguard goal, 312–17, 319 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, 11–13 SpaceX, 202 Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, 195, 198, 217, 221–24 Spielberg, Steven, 101 Split-strike conversion, 103–5 SSH (Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydro), 289–2917 Stalin, Joseph, 174, 213 Standard project hurricane (SPH), 52–53 “Standing start,” 266 Stanford University, 89, 184, 192, 226, 337, 338 Steam engine, 174–75 Stock trading. See also Financial crisis of 2008 weak AI and, 211–12 Storm, The (van Heerden), 51 Stuxnet, 291–92 Subprime mortgage crisis, 147–48, 153–54, 157, 162 Suh, Simona, 117–18 Sunni Muslims, 63 Sunshine Mine disaster of 1972, 128–29 Sun Yat-sen University, 340 SUNY Downstate Medical Center, 186 Super Aegis II, 214 Superintelligence, 201, 203–16 Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), 292, 293 Surveillance, 359–60 “Swarm boats,” 214 Swine flu, 195–98, 218 Symposium Greek Restaurant (New York City), 237, 252–53 Syria, 57–74 Ford scenario, 65–66, 67–69 slippery slope of intervention, 70–74 Syrian Civil War, 60–61, 62–64, 72–73 Szostak, Jack, 327 Tactical nuclear weapons, 267–69 “Take It Easy” (song), 305 Tamiflu, 225, 233 Taubenberger, Jeffery, 222 Team Louisiana Report, 55 Technical expertise, 182–83 Technological evolution, 212–13 Technological singularity, 209 Tectonic plates, 80, 81 “Tells,” 25–27, 29–30, 36–37 Tenet, George, 8 Terminator, The (movie), 205 Tesla, 202 Tetlock, Philip, 13–15 Thierry de la Villehuchet, René, 102–3, 109, 113 “Tickling the dragon’s tail,” 83 Titan III rockets, 11–12 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, 81–82, 84–85 Tohoku Electric Power Co., 91 Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), 76–78, 86–98, 92–98 Toon, Owen, 273, 278–79 Trenberth, Kevin, 253 Troy, 1–2 Truman, Harry, 127 TTAPS, 273–77 Tunguska event, 301–3, 316 Tunisia, 57, 58 Turco, Richard P., 273, 276–77 Turkey, 62–63 Tyrosinemia, 332, 334 UBS, 149 Ukraine power grid cyber attack of 2015, 283–85, 287–88, 289, 291 Umea University, 329 Unemployment, 212–13 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 28 United Nations Climate Change Conference (2015), 247–50 United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), 88 Universal hackability, 296–300 University of California, Berkeley, 13–14, 226, 327, 329 University of California, San Diego, 297 University of Colorado, 254, 328 University of Hawaii, 256, 315, 326 University of Iowa, 238, 243 University of Massachusetts, 296 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 332 University of Tokyo School of Engineering, 92 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, 121–22, 130–37 accident report, 133 Cassandra system, 137–38, 140–41 ventilation system, 133–37 Van Allen, James, 238 Van Heerden, Ivor, 41–55 background of, 41, 42–43 coastal restoration program, 43–44, 53 government failures and, 50–55 New Orleans Scenario, 45, 46–50, 52 resignation of, 44 Veracode, 295 Vinge, Vernor, 202 Vulnerabilities, and complexity, 366–67 Wall Street Journal, 115, 119, 154, 158, 163 Ward, Grant, 106 Warfare and AI, 199, 200, 213–14 Warning, the, 168, 170, 170–76 Warsaw Pact, 278 Washington Post, 243, 340 Waterman Award, 328–29 Watson (computer), 202, 209 Watson, James, 328 Watt, James, 174–75 Weak AI, 201, 210–13 Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 30–31, 358 Webster, Robert G., 223–25, 231–32, 235–36 Weidner, David, 158, 163 Weiss, Joe, 283–84, 286–89, 291–96, 298–300 West Antarctic Ice Sheet, 239, 246, 360 West Berlin, 25 Wharton School, 157–58 White, Ryan, 227, 384n White House National Warning Office, 355–56 Principals Committee, 29 Situation Room, 26–27, 181 Whitney, Meredith, 143–46, 148–54, 160–65 background of, 151, 153–54 Citigroup downgrade, 143–46, 154, 156–60, 164–65 Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), 315–16 Wiesel, Elie, 113 Wilson, E.


pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Cyber war is a quantum type of conflict: Weapons are intangible, their power can be observed but not measured, and there are no fixed stockpiles or arsenals. There are also no laws of war for cyber war, nor is deterrence simply a matter of correlating forces. It is a perpetual war of hack attacks to damage military hardware (as the Stuxnet virus did to the Iranian nuclear program), steal corporate data (as Russian hackers have done to Western banks), or access government data and advanced technological intellectual property (as China’s PLA cyber unit 61398 has successfully done against prominent American companies). The alleged Chinese hack of the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management, in which data on up to four million federal employees was lifted from federal servers, shows that data is as susceptible to invasion as borders.

The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World. Scribner, 1992. Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. W. W. Norton, 2007. Zeihan, Peter. The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder. Twelve, 2015. Zetter, Kim. Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon. Penguin Random House, 2014. Zhang Weiwei. The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State. World Century, 2012. Zheng, Y. De Facto Federalism in China: Reforms and Dynamics of Central-Local Relations. World Scientific, 2007. ———. “Institutional Economics and Central-Local Relations in China: Evolving Research.”


pages: 219 words: 63,495

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know by Richard Watson

23andMe, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, Charles Babbage, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, computer age, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, digital Maoism, digital map, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, gamification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, hive mind, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, life extension, Mark Shuttleworth, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peak oil, personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Florida, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, smart transportation, space junk, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, telepresence, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Turing test, urban decay, Vernor Vinge, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, women in the workforce, working-age population, young professional

Many people nowadays cannot even wire a plug or fix a broken vehicle let alone kill an animal for food or deal with dead bodies. We would eventually recover from any such incident, I imagine, but in the shorter term, chaos and lunacy would almost certainly reign. the condensed idea Beware terrorists with nuclear materials timeline 1995 Terrorists attempt to detonate dirty bomb in Moscow 2010 Stuxnet virus attacks nuclear facilities in Iran 2018 Man arrested after attempting to sell radioactive materials on eBay 2022 Al-Qaeda attempts to detonate dirty devices on three subway systems 2030 Tactical nuclear weapons used in Georgia 2060 25 percent of nations found to have secret nuclear programs 2080 Nuclear development abandoned in favor of dark-matter weapons 44 Volcanoes & quakes In 1815, a volcano known as Tambora erupted on an island called Sumbawa in Indonesia.


pages: 407

Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy by Rory Cormac

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Etonian, fake news, false flag, illegal immigration, land reform, Malacca Straits, Mikhail Gorbachev, operational security, precautionary principle, private military company, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, union organizing, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

After 9/11, disruption focused on terrorist networks but it extended to other areas too. Sawers has admitted, for example, that SIS ran a series of covert operations to slow down Iranian nuclear development in the late 2000s.121 And it appears that senior intelligence personnel in SIS and GCHQ contributed to the US–Israeli cyberattack on Iranian nuclear facilities, known as Stuxnet, whilst GCHQ may have been involved in the espionage precursor to the sabotage known as Flame.122 Facing a gap between capabilities and the desire to play a global role, Britain is still turning to covert action. The past decade has witnessed a growing fusion between intelligence and special forces, as well as SIS and GCHQ working proactively and operationally in their own right.

D. 55 Jackson, Geoffrey 186 Jagan, Cheddi 144, 148, 149 Jamaat-i-Islami group 225 Japan, covert action in 136 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi I n de x387 Jay, Michael 253 Jebb, Gladwyn 24, 33, 58, 60, 62–3, 65–6, 68 Jebb Committee see AC(O) JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) 13, 19, 22, 26, 52, 80, 82, 84, 91, 123, 156, 157, 163, 183, 190, 217, 242, 253 John Paul II, Pope 228, 229 Johnson, Jim 167, 235 Jones, R.V. 220 Jordan, covert action in 113 Josey, Alex 146 Kabbah, Tejan 247–8 Kane, Ray 191 Kashmir dispute 36 Kaunda, Kenneth 147 Kedourie, Elie 219 Keenie-Meenie Services 235, 237, 242 Kellar, Alex 144 Kelly, Oliver 214 Kennan, George 27–8 Kennedy, John F. 141, 148–9, 150, 157, 158 Kenya, insurgency in 6, 110, 142 Khalil, Isameddine Mahmoud 122 Khmer Rouge guerrillas 241–2 Khrushchev, Nikita 80, 81–2, 85, 129, 143, 151 kidnapping 87, 185–6, 237–8 Killearn, Lord 31 King, Tom 202, 213–14 Kirkpatrick, Ivone 22, 30, 32, 82, 110, 114, 135, 143, 144–5, 285 Kissinger, Henry 193 Kitson, Frank 204, 207 Kock, Stephan 239–40 Korean War 60, 66, 69, 70, 72 Kupi, Abas 45 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of 243 Labour Party International Department 25–6 Lamb, Graeme 250, 255–6 Lambton, Ann Nancy 92–3, 95, 97 Landon, Tim 190, 220 Latin America, UK covert operations in 4 Latvia, SIS and partisans 34 Lebanon covert action in 113, 128 elections in 2, 128 Lee Kuan Yew 146 Lennox-Boyd, Alan 142, 143 liberation policy, UK 32–56, 57, 85 failure of 49–51 value of 51–6 Libya civil war in 258–9 covert action in 184–5, 258–60 Libyan Oil Cell 259 Lipsey, David 195 Lisburn Lie Machine 201 Lloyd, Selwyn 95, 115, 118, 124, 132–3, 134, 139 Lobban, Ian 258 Lonrho 239 Louis, Roger 107 Luce, William 188–9 Lumumba, Patrice 6, 150–3, 275 Lyautey Principle 74–5, 82, 85, 87 McColl, Colin 243, 245 McDermott, Geoffrey 124 McFarlane, Bud 238 McGregor, Hamish 205, 207 McGrory, Paddy 214 Maclean, Donald 41 McLean, Neil (Billy) 44–6, 121–2, 153, 166, 167, 217, 220, 234–5, 239, 271, 278 Macmillan, Harold 81, 88, 109, 112, 115, 120, 127–8, 131, 132, 135–7, 137, 139–40, 148–51, 156, 158, 165, 267, 271, 272 McNeil, Hector 27, 28 Maginn, Loughlin 212 Major, John 213–14, 242, 244 Makins, Roger 42–3 Malaya, insurgency in 110, 142 Mallaby, Christopher 218 Mann, Simon 248 Manning, David 253 Marshall Plan 24 Masaryk, Jan 24 Maskey, Alex 211 Mason, Roy 208 Massoud, Ahmed Shah 232–3, 235, 251 Matrix Churchill 239 Maudling, Reginald 191 Mau Mau (Kenya) 6, 110 May, Theresa 257, 262–3 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi 388 I n de x Menzies, Stewart 8, 26, 29, 30, 40, 46–7, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 70, 71, 77, 112, 202–3 mercenary activity 248 in Africa 9 and SIS 185 MI5 10, 113, 143, 148, 155, 202, 211, 213, 268 MI6 see SIS Miami Showband 212 Middle East and CIA 92 oil 91–108 UK policy/SIS operations 2, 3, 21–2, 30–2, 91–141 Middleton, George 95–6 Military Reaction Force (Northern Ireland) see MRF Ministry of Defence (UK) 155, 162, 189, 224, 254, 259, 262 Mitchell, Colin 234 Mobutu, Joseph 152, 153 Montgomery, Bernard 12, 15 Mooney, Hugh 199, 200, 202 Morrison, Herbert 24, 62, 63, 92, 93, 94 Mossad 185, 264 Mossadeq, Mohammad 91–5, 96, 98–100, 101, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 185, 269, 272, 275 Mountbatten, Lord 165, 166 MRF (Military Reaction Force) (Northern Ireland) 203–8 Mulley, Fred 208 Murray, Ralph 26, 133 Muslim Brotherhood 121, 122, 123, 134, 231 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 6, 110–11, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119–29, 150, 156, 157, 166, 168, 169, 177, 269, 274, 275, 280 National Council of Nigerian Citizens 147 national deviationism 59 nationalism, rise of 110–13, 142–3 National Liberation Front (Yemen) 155 national security advisor (UK) 251 National Security Council (UK) see NSC National Security Council (US) 227 NATO and Iceland 83 Soviet action against 87 NCFA (National Committee for a Free Albania) 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 55 Neguib, Mohammad 96, 122, 124 Nelson, Brian 211, 213 neutral countries, and economic warfare 69 Nicaragua Contras resistance 236–8, 240 covert operations in 236–8 Nicholls, Jack 156, 160 Nigeria covert action in 184 election rigging 147 9/11 terrorist attacks 250 Nkrumah, Kwame 146 Nobel Peace Prize, and Churchill 76 non-interventionism 3 Non-Proliferation Treaty (UN) 245 North, Oliver 237, 238 Northern Alliance 251 Northern Ireland black propaganda 198 CA (counter-action) activity 202 collusion allegations 210–14 effectiveness in 280 hit squad allegations 202–9 propaganda in 198, 200–1 SAS in 202–9, 212 troop deployment 197 UK covert operations in 4, 7, 9, 197–214 Ulsterization 211–12 see also IRA Northern People’s Congress Party (Nigeria) 147 North Yemen, covert action in 218 NSA (National Security Agency) (US) 261 NSC (National Security Council) (UK) 258–61, 263–4, 278 nuclear deterrence 80 Nuri al-Said 115, 117 Nutting, Anthony 123 Nyerere, Julius 147 Obama, Barack 264 Obote, Milton 185 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi I n de x389 Occupied Yemen 137 Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism 256 OID (Overseas Information Department) 195, 222 Oldfield, Maurice 110, 122, 124, 149, 181–2, 195–6, 216, 278 Oman covert action in 128, 137–8, 187–96 SAS in 138, 191–6 and SIS 128, 137–8, 187–96 Omand, David 251, 253, 277 online disruption operations 261–2 OPC (Office of Policy Coordination) 27, 43, 49 Operation Aileron 146 Operation Alismah 146 Operation Avalon 132–3, 137 Operation Boot 91–108, 109, 113, 114, 116, 121, 122, 138, 269 Operation Claret 170 Operation Climber 35 Operation Cupcake 262 Operation Dhib 193–4 Operation Dragon Return 65 Operation Embarrass 23 Operation Flame 266 Operation Flitter 67 Operation Haik 139–40 Operation Heaven 100 Operation Jungle 81 Operation Lightning 65 Operation Mask 126 Operation Mass Appeal 245 Operation RANCOUR 166, 168, 169 Operation Razzle 114 Operation Sawdust 120–1, 125, 129 Operation Scion 146 Operation Scream 128 Operation Sipony 129 Operation Storm 191–6 Operation Straggle 115–17, 276 Operation Trumpet 113 Operation Tutor 128 Operation Valuable 38–56, 57 Order Book (SIS charter) 244 organized crime, and SIS 243–5 Osborne, George 260 Overseas Planning Committee (UK Foreign Office) 112 Overseas Planning Section (UK Foreign Office) 59, 72, 77 Owen, David 182, 195, 215, 216 Pakistan covert action in 263, 264 independence for 142 Palestine 23, 110, 142, 204, 252 paramilitary activities, in Cold War 2 Park, Daphne 147, 151–2, 153, 238 Parker Hale arms company 169 Parti Populaire Syrien 116 Paulson, Paul 167 Peck, Edward 190 penetration operations 52 People’s Progressive Party (British Guiana) 144 Perkins, Harold 44–6 Permanent Under-Secretary’s Committee (UK Foreign Office) 41, 77, 159 Persia see Iran Peterson, Maurice 19 Philby, Kim 35, 50, 52–3, 65, 100 Pinay, Antoine 220 pinprick approach 59–70, 71–2, 73–4, 77, 79, 87, 88, 95, 108, 272, 280, 282 pixie teams 47–8 PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) 174–6 plausible deniability 138, 284 Poland anti-Soviet riots 83 dissent in 86 KGB concerns over 228 SIS airdrop into 76 SIS and resistance 34 Solidarity crisis 227–30 UK covert operations in 4 Political Intelligence Group (UK Foreign Office) 112 political intervention, criticisms of 1 political warfare 151 Political Warfare Executive see PWE Porter, Ivor 40 PREDATORS FACE online disruption 261–2 private security firms 235, 237, 242, 248 Production and Targeting, Counter-Proliferation section (SIS) 244 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi 390 I n de x Profumo affair 156 Project Wizard (CIA) 151 propaganda in Afghanistan 225 by al-Qaeda 256 anti-communist 27, 28, 29 anti-Soviet 6, 21–2, 25 black propaganda 6, 24, 31, 39, 102, 142, 151, 154, 186–7, 198, 201–2, 203, 214, 235 black radio stations 51, 125 and collusion 214 counter-propaganda 222, 257 covert 8, 22, 82 effectiveness of 279 false flag operations 102 in France 29 funding for 128 grey propaganda 6, 129 and internal disputes 134 by IRA 207 in Iran (Persia) 22, 104 in Italy 28, 29 MI5 202 in Middle East 128 in Northern Ireland 198, 200–1 and operations 7 radio 51, 83–4 RICU 256–7 and sabotage 23 in Second World War 3 SIS/CIA coordinated 51 in Southeast Asia 70 Soviet 24 and terrorism 250 unattributable 124, 199, 201–2 US anti-communist 27 in Yemen 168 see also IRD Provisional IRA see IRA psychics, use of 186–7 psychological warfare 28, 74, 133, 136, 198 PWE (Political Warfare Executive) 3, 6, 8, 25, 70, 220 Pym, Francis 220 Q patrols 204 Qavam, Ahmad 95, 96 Quilliam Foundation 257 Quinlan, Michael 244 Radio Free Europe 83–4 Radio Free Iraq 243 Rashidian brothers 94, 101, 104, 105, 107 Rayner, John 70 Reagan, Ronald 219, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 233, 236, 238, 281 Reddaway, Norman 174, 175, 199 Regional Information Office, Singapore 70 Reilly, Patrick 33, 39, 57, 62, 65, 68, 73–4, 76, 77, 79, 95 Rennie, John 181–2, 184–5 Revolutionary Movement of the 8th of October 186 Rhodesia, covert action in 183–4 Richards, David 260 RICU (Research, Information and Communications Unit) (UK) 256–7, 262–3, 279, 284 Robertson, James 147 Rogers, Philip 183–4 ROLLING THUNDER online disruption 261–2 Roosevelt, Kermit 101, 103, 104, 106–7, 108, 116, 137 Ross, Archibald 99 RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) 201, 204, 210 Special Branch 210, 211, 213, 214 Rumbold, Anthony 49 Rusk, Dean 148, 157 Russia, current threat 285–6 Russia Committee (UK Foreign Office) 20–1, 22, 32–3, 35, 40, 57 sabotage, by UK 7, 23 SAF (Sultan’s Armed Forces) 189, 190 Sakbout, Sheikh 188–9 Salisbury, Lord 102, 106, 108 Sanders, Arthur 62, 71 Sandline International 247–8 Sandys, Duncan 149, 156, 159 Saqr, Sheikh 188 Sargent, Orme 22–3, 26, 29, 30, 35–6, 40 SAS (Special Air Service) see special forces satire, use by SIS 199 Saudi Arabia covert action in 113 and Egypt 117–18 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi I n de x391 expansion by 118 importance as oil producer 117–18 SAVAK secret police (Iran) 113 Sawers, John 258, 259–60, 266 SBS (Special Boat Service) see special forces Scant 120–1, 125, 128 Scarlett, John 253, 255 Schapiro, Leonard 219 Scott, Ian 151, 153 Scott, Robert 139–40, 141 SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization) 158 Second World War, covert organizations in 2–3 Secret Vote (UK) 94, 112, 113, 159, 183 Security Service see MI5 Selborne, Lord 11–12 Services Liaison Department (UK Foreign Office) 20 Seymour, Horace 38 Shackleton, Lord 177 Sharjah, covert action in 188 Sharq-al-adna radio station 129 Shield Committee 219 Shishakli, Adib 116, 135, 274 shoot and scoot 205 Shuckburgh, Evelyn 109, 115, 119–20, 131 Sierra Leone, SIS covert action in 247–8 Sinclair, John 52, 77, 100, 102, 106–7, 112, 113 Singapore covert action in 146 strategic value of 158 SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) and Callaghan 216 and CIA 31, 35, 42, 51–6, 79, 96–108, 110, 113, 115–16, 119, 131–41, 147, 149–54, 185, 187, 219, 223–30, 235–42, 251–2, 264, 276–7 and CIA congressional enquiries 194–5 clear objectives of 282–3 and Communism 77, 82, 268 coordination failures 154–61 and counter-terrorism 250–66 covert propaganda 33, 222 and David Stirling 185 deniable operations 58–9, 128, 138, 164–9, 253, 261, 273–7, 284 Denial of Service attacks 261–2 domestic intelligence 183 and GCHQ 258, 261, 265–6 global thinking 183–7 gradualist approach 272 HAM fund 112–13, 130 Increment teams 232 integration with Whitehall 244 and liberation 35–6, 50, 52 and mercenary activity 185 and Mossad 264 and narcotics 243–5 new agenda for 243–9 online disruption operations 261–2 Order Book 244 and organized crime 243–5 and Pakistani Intelligence 235–6 paramilitary capabilities 164–5 pinprick approach see pinprick approach political control over 86 post-Cold War 243–9 and Project Wizard 151 psychological warfare 28–9 remit of 5, 7–15 and resistance movements 34–5 and second Cold War 215–22 secret funds 94, 112, 113, 130 SPA section 145 and special forces 165, 166 stink bombs 151–2 subversive role 143 use of satire 199 working with emigrés 50 in WW2 2, 8 see also UK SIS Directorate of Training and Development 12 SIS Directorate of War Planning 12, 13, 51 SIS General Support Branch 232 Slessor, John 24–5, 285 Slim, William 20 Smiley, David 23, 42, 44, 47, 50, 93, 138, 165, 166, 167, 169 Smith, Harold 147 Smith, Howard 153 Smith, Ian 184 Snowden, Edward 284 Social Democratic Party (West Germany) 64 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi 392 I n de x Socialist Unity Party (East Germany) 64, 66 SOE (Special Operations Executive) 2–3, 4, 6, 8, 11–12, 14, 23, 31, 33, 35, 38, 44, 58, 70, 164, 220, 274 Solidarity 227–30 Somalia airplane hijacking 216 al-Qaeda in 253 covert action in 263, 264 Southeast Asia pinprick approach 70–2 SIS in 36, 110 UK covert operations in 4, 36 South Yemen, covert action in 193–4, 224–5 Soviet Union in Afghanistan 222–3, 236 in Africa 215–16 after Stalin 80–8 and American dominance 19 assassinations by 24 being undermined in Europe 63–70 and China 35 clandestine economic action against 67–8 covert action against 74, 80–8 defectors from 29 defectors to 35, 41, 50, 52–3 and Eastern Europe 19, 24 and Indonesia 174 in Iran 22–3 KGB operations 24, 81 and Marshall Plan 24 in Middle East 110 military downsizing 82 pinprick approach to see pinprick approach propaganda 24 and SIS 22, 26–7, 29–30, 33, 34, 35, 67–8, 73–4, 79, 81, 87, 111, 160, 215–16, 222–30, 268 splits in dominance 34 terrorist acts by 87 twentieth Congress of the Communist Party 81 and United Arab Republic 129 see also Cold War Spain, Dutch protestant revolt against 2 SPA (Special Political Action) section (SIS) 145, 154, 156, 173, 182, 195, 215 special forces 4, 7, 10, 13, 276–7 Australian 162 E squadron 259 14th Intelligence Company 208, 209 SAS (Special Air Service) 13, 39, 123, 138, 156, 162, 165, 166–7, 170, 171–2, 176, 184, 186, 191–6, 204–9, 212, 213, 216, 217, 235, 240–2, 243, 246–7, 254–5, 261 SBS (Special Boat Service) 13, 162, 165, 170, 173, 191, 196, 208, 254–5, 261 Special Reconnaissance Regiment 259, 265 and terrorism 249 Special Forces Operations Sub-Committee (UK Ministry of Defence) 194 Special Reconnaissance Regiment see special forces Spedding, David 248 Sporborg, Harry 219 Sri Lanka, independence for 142 SRU (Special Reconnaissance Unit) 207–8 Stalin, Joseph 19, 24, 69, 80, 81–2, 103 Stasi 65, 66, 86 State Department (US) 43, 49, 52, 94–5, 97, 131, 135, 140, 141, 149, 157 Steele, Frank 145, 220 Stevens, Sir John 210 Stevenson, Ralph 36 Stewart, Brian 202, 203 Stewart, Michael 189–90 Stirling, David 166, 184–5 Stokes, Richard 92 Strang, William 40–1, 42, 58, 59, 74–7, 93, 99, 100, 105, 107, 112, 161 Strauss, Franz Josef 221 Straw, Jack 251 Strong, Kenneth 164 Stuxnet 266 Sudan covert action in 185 independence 146 Suez Canal Company 127 Suez crisis 84, 85, 86, 120, 127, 131 covert action after 127–41 covert action before 109–26 files, destruction of 123 Sukarno 139 Sylvester, Stanley 187 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi I n de x393 Syria civil war in 260 covert action in 113, 115–17, 119, 131–2, 137, 258–62 elections in 2 Syria Working Group 137 Taliban 252, 262 Tanganyika, covert action in 147 targeted killing policy 264, 270 see also assassination Tedder, Arthur 32–3 Templer, Gerald 58, 140 Tennant, Peter 220 terrorism and special forces 249 and UK 4–5, 250–66 Thatcher, Margaret 214, 217, 218–21, 222, 224, 225–6, 228–30, 231, 233–5, 236–7, 238, 239, 241–2, 243, 278 Thatcher, Mark 248 Thomas, Hugh 219 Thomson, George 188 Thorneycroft, Peter 159, 166 TIGER infiltration team 51 Tito, Josip 34, 41, 51, 53–4, 136 Transmission X 129 Transport and General Workers’ Union 229 Trend, Burke 113, 163–4, 182, 183–4, 202 Trevaskis, Kennedy 155–6 Trucial Oman Scouts 189 Trucial States 188 Truman, Harry 27, 39, 77, 79, 96 Tudeh Party 22, 23, 99, 104–5 Tugwell, Maurice 198 Tupamaros guerrilla group 186 Turkey 132–3 Turnbull, Andrew 251 Turnbull, Richard 147 Turner, Stansfield 223 UDA (Ulster Defence Association) 211, 212 UDR (Ulster Defence Regiment) 210, 211, 212 Uganda, covert action in 185 UK and Afghanistan 4 and Albania 4, 8 Anglo-American relationship 29 anti-communist activities 28, 31, 59 British understanding of covert action 4–10, 11 cautious approach to covert action 75–7 China policy 36 and Cold War see Cold War Conservative policy 75–7 coordination failures 154–61 counter-subversion 154 covert arms deals 8–9 and Cuba 149–50 decolonization 142–61 deniable interventions 2 discord/nuisance strategy 60–3 and Eastern Europe 3 and EEC membership 200 and election rigging 4, 7 empire and intelligence 142 and Great Game 2 influence after Empire 142–61 instigation of coups 4 and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions 136 and Iron Curtain countries 4 liberation policy 32–56, 57, 85 long-term policy 73–88 and Mau Mau (Kenya) 6 and mercenary activity in Africa 9 Middle East policy/operations 2, 3, 21–2, 30–2, 109–41 military policy 12, 15, 20, 26, 110 military resources in Far East 159 misinformation by 3–4 Northern Ireland see Northern Ireland oil profits, Iran 91 pinprick approach 59–77, 79, 87 post-war covert action 4–12 as proactive 270 regime change in Iran 91–108 responsibilities and resources 58 and rise in nationalism 110–13 in Second World War 2–3 secret wars 4, 161–77 and terrorism 4–5, 6, 250–66 training foreign security services 10 transition to independence 145–9 UK/US cooperation 42–6, 51–6, 74, 77–80, 83, 92, 96–108, 149–54, see also SIS/CIA OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/02/18, SPi 394 I n de x UK (cont.)


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The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson

Albert Einstein, Brownian motion, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, El Camino Real, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John von Neumann, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, music of the spheres, mutually assured destruction, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, Project Plowshare, Ralph Nader, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, Ted Sorensen, TED Talk, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, William Langewiesche, éminence grise

Abbasi and his wife escaped more or less unharmed, but one of his colleagues was killed by a similar attack, as was an Iranian particle physicist in January 2010, an electronics specialist in July 2011, and a manager at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in January 2012. Teheran blamed Tel Aviv and Washington for the assassinations, as well as for the malware viruses known as Flame and Stuxnet, which were discovered in the spring of 2012 infecting Iran’s uranium enrichment computers. Flame is lithe spyware that turns on computer microphones and Skypes the recorded conversations; scans the neighborhood’s Bluetooth gadgets for names and phone numbers; and takes pictures of the computer’s screen every fifteen to sixty seconds. Stuxnet infected Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges and sped them up until they committed suicide. A Russian nuclear executive summed up that after the fall of the USSR, “the great powers were stuck with arsenals they could not use, and nuclear weapons became the weapons of the poor. . . .


pages: 1,071 words: 295,220

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman

Ayatollah Khomeini, Boycotts of Israel, British Empire, card file, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Edward Snowden, facts on the ground, friendly fire, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Marshall McLuhan, operational security, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Stuxnet, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Matthew Cole, “Israeli Special Forces Assassinated Senior Syrian Official,” First Look, July 15, 2015. “total mutual striptease” Interview with “Oscar,” May 2014. launched a comprehensive campaign of economic measures Interviews with Dagan, June 19, 2013, and “the Prince,” March 2012. computer viruses, one of which became known as Stuxnet Even in the conservative estimate of the German BND, Stuxnet alone delayed the Iranian nuclear project by at least two years. Interview, together with Holger Stark, with “Alfred,” a high-ranking German intelligence official, February 2012. the targeted killing of scientists Interviews with Dagan, May 29, 2013, “Iftach,” March 2017, “Eldy,” September 2014, and “Luka,” November 2016.

Covertly, joint sabotage operations also managed to produce a series of breakdowns in Iranian equipment supplied to the nuclear project—computers stopped working, transformers burned out, centrifuges simply didn’t work properly. In the largest and most important joint operation by the Americans and the Israelis against Iran, dubbed “Olympic Games,” computer viruses, one of which became known as Stuxnet, caused severe damage to the nuclear project’s uranium enrichment machinery. The last component of Dagan’s plan—the targeted killing of scientists—was implemented by the Mossad on its own, since Dagan was aware that the United States would not agree to participate. The Mossad compiled a list of fifteen key researchers, mostly members of the “weapons group” that was responsible for developing a detonation device for the weapons, as targets for elimination.


pages: 1,373 words: 300,577

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, book value, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, clean tech, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial innovation, flex fuel, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, index fund, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, John Deuss, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Malacca Straits, market design, means of production, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, new economy, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, North Sea oil, nuclear winter, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technology bubble, the built environment, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, trade route, transaction costs, unemployed young men, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

A multitude of new entry points are provided by the proliferation of wireless devices and possibly by the smart meters that are part of the smart grid and that provide two-way communications between homes and the electrical distribution system.11 A test at a national laboratory in 2007 showed what happened when a hacker infiltrated an electric system. A SCADA system was used to take control of a diesel generator and cause it to malfunction; it shook and shuddered and banged until it eventually blew itself up in a cloud of smoke. The Stuxnet virus that slipped into the Iranian centrifuges in 2010 caused them to spin out of control until they self-destructed. It is not just the power system that is at risk. Obviously, other systems—involving energy production, pipelines, and water—share similar vulnerabilities, as do all the major systems across an economy.

In addition to their general impact on the economy, these sanctions have put pressure on Iran by retarding the modernization of Iran’s conventional military forces and by greatly constraining international investment in Iran’s oil and gas industry and Iran’s access to international finance and capital markets. Sabotage is another way, short of military action, of slowing Iran’s progress toward the red line. In 2010 a sophisticated Stuxnet computer virus was introduced into the software programs running the centrifuges, causing them to speed up, perform erratically, and self-destruck. Israel, the United States, or possibly a European country is considered the most likely author. After intense negotiation, Russia and China have supported the United Nations sanctions but not the unilateral sanctions.

Bureau of Intelligence and Research of Conoco’s briefing of Major Economies meeting at (2007) State Duma, Russia State Grid Corporation State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) state public utility commissions Statoil Stavins, Robert steamboats steam engine steamers steel Steinway, William Stern, Nicholas Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change Steward, Dan Stewart, Richard stock market, stock bubbles in Chinese IPOs and in Insull Internet 1929 crash of in pension funds Russian Strategic Petroleum Reserve, U.S. (SPR) Straubel, J. B. Strauss, Lewis Strauss-Kahn, Dominique Stuxnet computer virus submarines suburbs Sudan Suess, Hans Suez Canal Suez crisis (1956) suicide bombers sulfur dioxide sulfuric acid Sumatra Sumed Pipeline Summerland Summers, Lawrence Sundsvall meeting (1990) Sunnis in Iraq Sun Oil Suntech Sununu, John Sun Yat-sen supply chain, security of supply shock Supreme Court, U.S.


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The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, business climate, business cycle, circulation of elites, classic study, clean water, David Graeber, declining real wages, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, East Village, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, Google Glasses, Hyman Minsky, Hyperloop, income inequality, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, security theater, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, working-age population, World Values Survey

There is also the estimated $20 billion of lost time each year from the proliferation of spam, not necessarily an illegal act but unwelcome nonetheless. Illegal online pornography, often involving minors, is rife.2 It is hard to know how much cyberwarfare is going on, but it was used against Iran, with some success in the form of the Stuxnet virus, and it has become a major issue in U.S.–China relations. China has stolen a great deal of intellectual property from American companies, and who knows what the Americans might have done in return? Companies are investing more and more in their cyberdefenses, and they are reluctant to publicly admit those breaches that do happen, if they are even aware of them.


pages: 270 words: 79,992

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath by Nicco Mele

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Carvin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, bread and circuses, business climate, call centre, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative editing, commoditize, Computer Lib, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, death of newspapers, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, global supply chain, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Hacker Ethic, Ian Bogost, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lolcat, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Mohammed Bouazizi, Mother of all demos, Narrative Science, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peer-to-peer, period drama, Peter Thiel, pirate software, public intellectual, publication bias, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, satellite internet, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Ted Nelson, Ted Sorensen, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Zipcar

Yet we also must acknowledge, as Clarke at least attempted to do, that the balance of power has shifted away from traditional militaries toward small groups of sophisticated, dedicated troublemakers. Recent months have brought the revelation that the United States military, possibly with the Israeli military, has released at least one and perhaps two computer viruses into the world with the intent of crippling Iran’s slow march to nuclear capabilities. The first virus was called Stuxnet, and was targeted at specific kinds of machines that would be in use for uranium enrichment. The second virus is called Flame, and it has not been definitively linked to the United States, although the evidence is strong. These proactive acts of “cyber war,” while significant programming projects, hardly raise the scale of resource-intensive military operations such as designing, building, and maintaining an aircraft carrier.


pages: 297 words: 83,651

The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

4chan, anti-communist, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cal Newport, Californian Ideology, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, classic study, colonial rule, Comet Ping Pong, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark triade / dark tetrad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, Gabriella Coleman, gamification, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hive mind, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of writing, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, moral panic, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, packet switching, patent troll, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-truth, RAND corporation, Rat Park, rent-seeking, replication crisis, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skinner box, smart cities, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

While the greatest emphasis was placed on coordinated aerial bombardment, racking up tens of thousands of bodies according to the US Military, the Obama administration began to talk cyberwar. This was already in vogue in the administration. It had used cyber-sabotage against North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. It cooperated with Israeli intelligence in writing code for the Stuxnet worm – a viral attack that shut down Iran’s nuclear power facilities in Natanz. In 2015, State Department counterterrorism official Alberto Fernandez argued that the US, in a break from the ‘marketplace of ideas’ rhetoric, needed its own ‘troll army’ to combat ISIS.48 Later the same year, the US Air Force bombed a ‘command and control’ building discovered by combing ISIS’s social media streams and associated metadata.


pages: 1,034 words: 241,773

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

As the size of the team increases, so do the odds of detection, betrayal, infiltrators, blunders, and stings.49 Serious threats to the integrity of a country’s infrastructure are likely to require the resources of a state.50 Software hacking is not enough; the hacker needs detailed knowledge about the physical construction of the systems he hopes to sabotage. When the Iranian nuclear centrifuges were compromised in 2010 by the Stuxnet worm, it required a coordinated effort by two technologically sophisticated nations, the United States and Israel. State-based cyber-sabotage escalates the malevolence from terrorism to a kind of warfare, where the constraints of international relations, such as norms, treaties, sanctions, retaliation, and military deterrence, inhibit aggressive attacks, as they do in conventional “kinetic” warfare.

Wodehouse and, 446 spirituality, 433–5 sports Moneyball, 381 politics similar to, 359, 360, 366, 381, 383 Springsteen, Bruce, 284 Sri Lanka, 160, 203, 278 Stalin, Joseph, 78, 161, 203, 313, 445, 447 Starmans, Christina, 101–2 Star Trek, 427 Stein’s Law, 61, 241, 283, 327 Davies’s Corollary, 61, 327 Stenger, Victor, 423 Stephan, Maria, 405 Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth, 217–18, 339–40, 471n13, 482n44 Stern, Charlotta, 373 Stevenson, Betsey, 269, 270 stoves, cooking, 117, 144, 183, 251, 252 Strauss, Leo, 491n118 Stuxnet worm, 304 Subbiah, Ilavenil, xix subjectivity hard problem of consciousness and, 425, 426–8, 488n43 reason and, 351–2, 390 Sudan, 72, 73, 89, 160, 161, 162 suicide, 277–80 age, cohort, and period analyses, 278, 279 cohorts and, 279–80, 476n74 decreasing rates of, 277–80, 279, 476n74 as “self-murder,” 278 sex differences in, 278, 279 Sweden’s high rate of, as urban myth, 264, 280 See also mental health and illness Sullivan, James X., 116 Sultan, Wafa, 443 Summers, Lawrence, 67, 328, 461n8, 462nn62,65, 480n9, 490n106 Supreme Court, U.S., 212–13, 214–15, 374 sustainability, 127–9, 141 Sutherland, Rory, 135 Sweden child mortality and, 55, 56 depression and, 282 emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227 fallacious pessimism and, 53 famine in, 68 happiness ranking of, 475n30 maternal mortality in, 57, 58 nuclear power and, 148 per capita income of, 86 populism and, 341 secularization and, 436, 437, 489n68 social spending in, 108 suicide rate in, 263–4, 280 traffic death rates in, 178 Swift, Jonathan, 74–5, 162 Switzerland, 271, 278–9, 279, 475n30, 489n68 Syed, Muhammad, 443 sympathy (benevolence, compassion), 11 cosmopolitanism and, 221 humanism and, 415 and infectious disease improvement, 67 the meaning of life and, 3–4 pessimism and expanding circle of, 49 for the poor, 107 and psychopathology, awareness of, 282 standard-of-living improvements and, 34 syphilis, 306, 401 Syria civil war in, 49, 159, 160, 335 happiness ranking of, 475n30 terrorist deaths in, 193 Szilard, Leo, 308 Taiwan, 85, 85, 200 Taliban, 67, 240 Tan, Amy, 284 Taoism, 23, 204 taxes carbon tax, 139, 145–6, 149 economic freedom compatible with, 365, 483nn39,42 libertarians and, 364–5 poverty mitigated by, 107, 115–16 Trump and, 335 Taylor, Paul, 340 Taylor, Theodore, 308 technology advance of, and paradox of value, 82, 117, 332–3 and climate change, 143–5, 150, 153–4 and creation of wealth, 83, 94–5 delay in productivity growth due to, 330 dematerialization and, 135, 136, 332 democratization of platforms for, 332 demonetization and, 332–3 digital, Flynn effect and mastery of, 244 donated as foreign aid, 95 doomsday prophecies and, 293–4 for environmental protection, 124, 128–30, 132–6, 134–6 future advances in, 330–32 knowledge growth as exponentiated by, 233 mobile phones/smartphones, 94–5, 257, 331 nuclear power, 148–50 productivity dependent on, 328 science applied to, 82–3 Second Machine Age, 330–32 social embeddedness of, 302 technophilanthropists, 332 Trump and, 335 See also artificial intelligence (AI); consumer products; existential threats; Internet; safety; social media teenagers depression and, 476n74 drug use declining among, 184–5, 229 transgressive Web searches by, 218 Tegmark, Max, 308, 425 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 418 teleological systems, 21–2 telephone, 94–5, 257, 331 Terminator (films), 296 terrorism and terrorists, 191–8 Availability and Negativity biases, 42, 195, 302, 307, 404 bioterrorism, 300–302, 305, 306–7 civil wars as primary locations of, 193 cyber-sabotage, 300–302, 304–6, 335 historical trends, 193–5 media responses to curtail, 197–8 motives of killers, 196 nation-states’ reactions to, 197–8 nuclear terrorism, 197, 310–311, 313–14 number of potential competent, 302–5 objective assessment of threat, 195–7 panic as risk of, 191, 195, 197 right-wing American terrorism, 194, 196, 469n10 safety of society as enhancing threat of, 197, 198 success, lack of, 196–7, 198, 303–4, 404 See also hate crimes; rampage shootings; September 11, 2001, attacks —DEATHS FROM double-counted as war deaths, 193 number of, 192–5, 192, 194–5, 194, 469n10 vs. other causes, 191–2, 192, 193 Tetlock, Philip, 367–71, 373, 378–9, 404 Texas, capital punishment in, 211 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 284 Thailand, 259, 336, 419, 457n8 Thatcher, Margaret, 110, 315 theism and theistic morality, 419, 420–22, 428–30 Argument from Design, 18, 421, 423 and consciousness, hard problem of, 423, 425–8, 488n43 deism vs., 8, 18, 22, 422 and existence of God, arguments against, 421–2 fundamental physical constants and, 423–5 God of the Gaps argument, 423–8 refutation of theistic morality, 428–30 wars motivated by, 10, 429–30 See also deism and deists; God; secularization theoconservatism, 448–9 theocracy, 201, 206, 430 theodicy, 39, 423 Thermodynamics, Laws of, 15–16 See also Entropy, Law of thick tails.


Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

Cyber Westphalia and beyond: Extraterritoriality and mutual entanglement in cyberspace. In D. Bigo, E. F. Isin, & E. Ruppert (Eds.), Data politics: Worlds, subjects, rights. Routledge. Offensive action … takes place just below the threshold of armed conflict: But not always. For exceptions and discussion, see Zetter, K. (2014). Countdown to zero day: Stuxnet and the launch of the world’s first digital weapon. Broadway Books; Greenberg, A. (2019). Sandworm: A new era of cyberwar and the hunt for the Kremlin’s most dangerous hackers. Doubleday; For a contrary view, see Rid, T. (2013). Cyber war will not take place. Oxford University Press USA. Spreading false information is as old as humanity itself: See Posetti, J., & Matthews, A. (2018, July 23).


pages: 404 words: 107,356

The Future of Fusion Energy by Jason Parisi, Justin Ball

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, heat death of the universe, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, performance metric, profit motive, random walk, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Stuxnet, the scientific method, time dilation, uranium enrichment

It really is incredible how hostile to life this isotope is. 15A sphere is the right shape to use because it minimizes the surface area for a given volume. Hence, the number of neutrons leaving the material is minimized. 16Formally, this is know as Graham’s Law, which observes that 17For enrichment, centrifuges typically rotate roughly 500 times per second. The Stuxnet computer virus, which famously destroyed a significant fraction of Iran’s centrifuges in 2010, subtly altered this rotational speed. 18This occurs through a process known as “beta minus" decay. It takes a neutron and turns it into a proton and an electron. Also, note the awesome sequence of elements: Uranium, Neptunium, and Plutonium.


pages: 481 words: 125,946

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence by John Brockman

Adam Curtis, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, bread and circuses, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, constrained optimization, corporate personhood, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital rights, discrete time, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elon Musk, Emanuel Derman, endowment effect, epigenetics, Ernest Rutherford, experimental economics, financial engineering, Flash crash, friendly AI, functional fixedness, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information trail, Internet of things, invention of writing, iterative process, James Webb Space Telescope, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, lolcat, loose coupling, machine translation, microbiome, mirror neurons, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, RFID, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing machine, Turing test, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Y2K

That will stop runaway uses that could harm. Even so, we should realize that AIs, like many inventions, are in an arms race. Computer viruses were the first example, ever since I invented the first one in 1969. They race against virus detectors—but they’re mere pests, not lethal. Smart sabotage algorithms (say, future versions of Stuxnet) already float through the netsphere and are far worse. These could quietly infiltrate many routine operations of governments and companies. Most would come from bad actors. But with genetic-programming and autonomous-agent software already out there, they could mutate and evolve by chance in Darwinian evolutionary fashion—especially where no one’s looking.


pages: 521 words: 118,183

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

A congressional oversight committee described the hack as “the most significant digital violation of national security faced to date.”158 A Twenty-First-Century Watergate It would hardly be the last. Even as Russia and China asserted themselves more online, lesser autocrats were getting in on the action. In 2010, a sophisticated worm known as Stuxnet destroyed 1,000 Iranian centrifuges, setting back Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The malware attack was widely attributed to the United States and Israel. In response, Iran’s mullahs began ramping up their cyber operations. During the summer of 2012, an Iranian cyberattack on the Saudi Aramco oil company melted down 35,000 hard drives and forced the company to buy 50,000 new computers—driving up the global price for hard drives for half a year.159 A few months later, Iran launched Operation Ababil, a series of distracting though not destructive attacks against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and other financial institutions.160 The next year, casino billionaire and conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson publicly suggested that America should nuke a patch of Iranian desert as a warning over its nuclear program.


pages: 514 words: 152,903

The Best Business Writing 2013 by Dean Starkman

Alvin Toffler, Asperger Syndrome, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, call centre, carbon tax, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, Columbine, computer vision, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crowdsourcing, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Eyjafjallajökull, factory automation, fixed income, fulfillment center, full employment, Future Shock, gamification, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, hiring and firing, hydraulic fracturing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, late fees, London Whale, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Parag Khanna, Pareto efficiency, price stability, proprietary trading, Ray Kurzweil, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, stakhanovite, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, tail risk, technological determinism, the payments system, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, wage slave, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Y2K, zero-sum game

• • • Toffler worship and futuristic kitsch aside, what does Hybrid Reality actually argue? There are several disjointed arguments. First, that technology—“technology with a big ‘T,’” as they call it—is supplanting economics and geopolitics as the leading driver of international relations. This means, among other things, that Washington deploys tools such as Flame and Stuxnet simply because it has the better technology—not because of a strategic and military analysis. It is a silly argument, but wrapped in tech-talk it sounds almost plausible. For the Khannas, technology is an autonomous force with its own logic that does not bend under the wicked pressure of politics or capitalism or tribalism; all that we humans can do is find a way to harness its logic for our own purposes.


pages: 478 words: 149,810

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency by Parmy Olson

4chan, Asperger Syndrome, bitcoin, call centre, Chelsea Manning, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, hive mind, it's over 9,000, Julian Assange, lolcat, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer, pirate software, side project, Skype, speech recognition, SQL injection, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are the 99%, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day

The question appeared have been dictated by Isikoff. The feature later showed Isikoff and Brown strolling side by side down a busy road and talking, Brown gesticulating, Isikoff’s khaki-colored slacks flapping in the breeze as he listened intently. Then it was back to the apartment, and Brown once more sprawled in his chair. “I mean we got Stuxnet off of this,” he said, flicking his hand, referring to an attached file among Barr’s e-mails that was in fact a defanged version of the infamous computer virus that was best known for attacking Iranian nuclear infrastructure in the early 2000s. “It shouldn’t have been available by this federal contractor to get ripped off by a sixteen-year-old girl and her friends.”


pages: 606 words: 157,120

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Automated Insights, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Dava Sobel, digital divide, disintermediation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, future of journalism, game design, gamification, Gary Taubes, Google Glasses, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of the printing press, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, lifelogging, lolcat, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, Narrative Science, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, pets.com, placebo effect, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, smart meter, social graph, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler

Thus, he notes that “with minor differences, the evolution of the technium—the organism of ideas—mimics the evolution of genetic organisms.” Technology is nature, and nature is technology; resistance is futile—who would want to challenge nature? With this simple insight, Kelly develops a whole theory that can explain literally every development—from malware like Stuxnet to Google glasses—by claiming that this is just what technology wants. All we have to do is to develop the right listening tools—and the rest will follow. Hence, notes Kelly, “only by listening to technology’s story, divining its tendencies and biases, and tracing its current direction can we hope to solve our personal puzzles.”


pages: 1,380 words: 190,710

Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems by Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Ana Oprea, Piotr Lewandowski, Adam Stubblefield

air gap, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, bash_history, behavioural economics, business continuity plan, business logic, business process, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive load, continuous integration, correlation does not imply causation, create, read, update, delete, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, database schema, Debian, defense in depth, DevOps, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, exponential backoff, fault tolerance, fear of failure, general-purpose programming language, Google Chrome, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, information security, Internet of things, Kubernetes, load shedding, margin call, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, NSO Group, nudge theory, operational security, performance metric, pull request, ransomware, reproducible builds, revision control, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, self-driving car, single source of truth, Skype, slashdot, software as a service, source of truth, SQL injection, Stuxnet, the long tail, Turing test, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Valgrind, web application, Y2K, zero day

2 Alternatively, imagine that a government wants to prevent another country from building or obtaining a weapon. Could they remotely and stealthily disrupt their progress? This scenario supposedly happened in Iran in the late 2000s, when attackers illicitly introduced a modularized piece of software onto the control systems of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Dubbed Stuxnet by researchers, this operation reportedly intended to destroy the centrifuges and halt Iran’s nuclear program. Policing domestic activity Governments may also break into systems to police domestic activity. In a recent example, NSO Group, a cybersecurity contractor, sold software to various governments that allowed private surveillance of communications between people without their knowledge (through the remote monitoring of mobile phone calls).


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The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

access to a mobile phone, Admiral Zheng, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, British Empire, clean water, Columbian Exchange, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, disinformation, drone strike, dual-use technology, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Isaac Newton, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murano, Venice glass, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, uranium enrichment, wealth creators, WikiLeaks, yield management, Yom Kippur War

If necessary, he added, the US would ‘do what it would have to do’.79 ‘As I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency,’ President Obama stressed, ‘I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.’80 Despite issuing threats designed to bring Iran to the negotiating table, the US appears to have been taking action behind the scenes to achieve what it wants anyway. While there were several potential sources for the Stuxnet virus that attacked the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran and then other reactors across the country, multiple indicators suggest that the highly sophisticated and aggressive cyber strategies targeting the nuclear programme could be traced back to the United States – and directly to the White House.81 Cyber-terrorism is acceptable, it seems, as long as it is in the hands of western intelligence agencies.