Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Hacking isn't war
Listening again to 'On Point' on NPR. As usual the program has well-informed experts and callers above the mindless-partisan pay grade. Topic today is the silly War Powers Act.
Seems to be general agreement that Libya never posed a military threat, thus doesn't justify any military action. They're right about that.
Also general agreement that modern threats were not foreseen by the 1787 constitution, thus need new arrangements.
Nonsense. We've only redefined a range of hostile actions that were perfectly well-known back then. Before BushBushObama's insatiable compulsion to send soldiers and contractors everywhere, such hostile actions were called sabotage or espionage or mail fraud, and weren't intended to be answered with soldiers.
Admittedly those actions are vastly easier to accomplish in mass quantities via the Web, but that doesn't turn them into war. They're still mostly sabotage, and the appropriate response (or prevention) is still counter-sabotage. Stuxnet is an excellent example of counter-sabotage, following a pattern that Reagan's CIA used against Russian oil production facilities. ¶ 9:34 AM
Seems to be general agreement that Libya never posed a military threat, thus doesn't justify any military action. They're right about that.
Also general agreement that modern threats were not foreseen by the 1787 constitution, thus need new arrangements.
Nonsense. We've only redefined a range of hostile actions that were perfectly well-known back then. Before BushBushObama's insatiable compulsion to send soldiers and contractors everywhere, such hostile actions were called sabotage or espionage or mail fraud, and weren't intended to be answered with soldiers.
Admittedly those actions are vastly easier to accomplish in mass quantities via the Web, but that doesn't turn them into war. They're still mostly sabotage, and the appropriate response (or prevention) is still counter-sabotage. Stuxnet is an excellent example of counter-sabotage, following a pattern that Reagan's CIA used against Russian oil production facilities. ¶ 9:34 AM
