Cyber Threats

About fifteen years ago I was researching a novel (which I never wrote) in which particle beam weapons (known then as star wars) featured as a threat. It was before Internet research and involved old fashioned leg work. I met some rather interesting people who had contacts with, but who were not themselves directly, spooks.

I learned that the big new threat was not particle beam weapons, which nobody could make work and which were already out of date. It was cyber wars where pressing a few keys on a computer could disable an entire missile system, plunge New York into darkness, cut off  NORAD from the outside world; the list was endless and apocalyptic.

Now it could all be presumably done from an iPhone or certainly an iPad. It is good now to hear officially that this threat is a security and defence priority. No doubt countermeasures are in continuous development. This is one area where cuts or economy would be very unwise.