![Harper’s Magazine Weapons of Mass Distraction: Object lessons from the cyber-mythology September 2010
In May 2009, Barack Obama delivered his first speech as president addressing the “cyber threat,” which he described as “one of the most serious economic and national-security challenges we face as a nation.” This threat, Obama said, includes acts of terror that “could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer.” This February, Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence under George W. Bush, testified to Congress that computerized terrorism “rivals nuclear weapons in terms of potential damage to the country.” Government cyber-security spending, which is now projected to increase by 50 percent by 2014, includes funding for this course curriculum produced by the Cyberterrorism Defense Initiative (CDI) at the University of Arkansas. A “cyber-9/11,” however, seems as much a phantasm as did Bush’s WMDs, a flare-up of national anxiety fueled by politics, stoked by sensationalist news reports, and exploited by eager corporations.
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Harper’s Magazine
Weapons of Mass Distraction: Object lessons from the cyber-mythology
September 2010
In May 2009, Barack Obama delivered his first speech as president addressing the “cyber threat,” which he described as “one of the most serious economic and national-security challenges we face as a nation.” This threat, Obama said, includes acts of terror that “could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer.” This February, Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence under George W. Bush, testified to Congress that computerized terrorism “rivals nuclear weapons in terms of potential damage to the country.” Government cyber-security spending, which is now projected to increase by 50 percent by 2014, includes funding for this course curriculum produced by the Cyberterrorism Defense Initiative (CDI) at the University of Arkansas. A “cyber-9/11,” however, seems as much a phantasm as did Bush’s WMDs, a flare-up of national anxiety fueled by politics, stoked by sensationalist news reports, and exploited by eager corporations.
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