An Introduction to Cyber Warfare

With the rise of the cyber age, a new form of warfare has developed: Cyber Warfare. Cyber warfare is practiced by individual hackers, and governments alike. It can spam a large spectrum of seriousness, from the minor threats of everyday spam you get in your email. to the strategical deployment of a virus designed to wipe out Iran's nuclear capabilities. With the increasing networking of, well, everything, cyber warfare poses more and more threats. Look at denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed DOS (DDoS) attacks, for example. DoS are a kind of cyber attack aimed at impeding a designed audience from accessing a network or machine. These attacks can be very mild and inconsequential, as just last night, I was watching a stream on twitch.tv and the streamer got DDoS'd, causing the stream to shut down; or they can be quite severe, as it is possible to DoS a bank's network, making any and all transfers of money impossible to carry out. Now, say this attack is carried out on a larger scale, and instead of one bank being hit, a hacker strikes at a large group of banks. All of a sudden, one hacker may have single handedly stopped a country from functioning for a given period of time. Cyber warfare is extremely dangerous, as we rely more and more on technology for our everyday needs, more and more possible targets start to become apparent. If you follow the news, you will often see cyber attacks being carried out and linked to other nations, as recently the New York Times was hacked by Chinese hackers. There is also a rise in cyber terrorism, and unidentified entities are known to be conducting tests, like collapsing energy reactors in order to create a power outage in a region. Next post, I'll get more specific on some attacks, when I cover Olympic Games, the United States' attempt to cripple Iran by destroying their nuclear power plants with a virus. In short, cyber warfare should not be underestimated. The possibilities to cause destruction with it are immense.

A Sea of Opportunity: An Introduction to the Navy

One cannot overstate how important a navy, or sea power in general, is to a nation. Few things correlate to greatness as a strong navy does. Let's take an economical look at the navy, first. If anyone has ever seen the  U.S Navy commercial that is often on TV, you should know that "90% of all trade travels by water." This fact is even more pronounced back in the past. Exploration (also done by sea) was largely focused on finding new trade routes. Exploration led to the colonisation of the New World, and as you may have guessed, ships were what brought the colonists, and immigrants, later on, to the colonies. It is not a stretch to claim that naval power moved the world forward.

A strong navy was simply a key factor for a country to prosper. Look, for example, at the Spanish empire, who colonised most of South America. We can even take a look back at the Phoenicians, an ancient trading nation whose maritime affairs led to the spread of the alphabet. This nation prospered largely due to their navy, establishing monopolies and prospering, rising above even the Egyptians from 1200 to 800 B.C. The importance of the navy does not decline over time, in fact, less than 150 years ago, Alfred Thayer Mahan started the largest naval technology race in history, after publishing his book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1778. Mahan's work is credited as being the single most influential book in naval strategy. His theories were adopted by all major nations, including Germany, Japan, France, and even the United States, a fact that is often forgotten. 

                                                              Alfred Thayer Mahan

Britain is undoubtedly the best example of naval power's influence. As Britain is made up of islands, the need for a strong navy is self explanatory. Britain navy was the elite, with ships like HMS Dreadnought outclassing every other vessel currently existing. It is no coincidence that Britain emerged as a superpower.

It is a simple, yet overlooked correlation: naval supremacy and overall success are two fishes in the same sea.

                                                                HMS Dreadnought

Ending Total Warfare With a BANG: The Atomic Bomb

The age of total warfare faced an abrupt ending with the closing of World War II. With the success of the Manhattan project, a weapon of power beyond comparison arised: the atomic bomb. Although the idea had been thought of before by many, no nation had actually completed the weapon and used it in a battle. Although the A-Bomb has only been used twice in combat (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), it functioned as a deterrent ever since, as no country was willing to risk having it used against them. In 1949, the Soviet Union succeeded in detonating their own atomic bomb, meaning that the monopoly the United States once had was officially over. With two opposing nations sporting this sort of destructive power, wars were forced to change in nature. What followed in the next war was a unique shift in not only how wars are fought, but who fights them.

In the next few wars, the major players are in the background, instead of in the front lines. With the Truman Doctrine, the United States promises aid to any country fighting against Communism (in essence). In the meantime, the Soviets want their system to expand. In other words, the US did not fight the USSR, it provided the USSR's enemies with means to fight those who were backed by the Soviets. Although some of these are really well known, a large amount of support is forgotten. Most seem to forget that the United States backed the mujahedeen (spelling varies)  fighters in the Afghan civil war, in order to keep communism out, demonstrating the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" characteristic of this time. 

It is somewhat ironic that a weapon of mass destruction became the largest factor in stopping total warfare, in the end. However, when the best predicted outcome of a fight is mutually assured destruction, people are hesitant. The pot just wasn't high enough to justify the all-in. Instead, the big players were now just dealing the cards in order to favour those they desired. Warfare had changed.

Little Boy, the bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945