Winter 2012

The Empty Threat of Cyberwar

THE SOURCE: “Cyber War Will Not Take Place” by Thomas Rid, in Journal of Strategic Studies, Feb. 2012.

The specter of cyberwar haunts American leaders. “The next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack,” Leon Panetta warned last year when he was still CIA director.

Rubbish, says Thomas Rid, a reader in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There are plenty of dark doings online, but they fall far short of war. “Cyberwar does not take place in the present. And it is highly unlikely that cyberwar will occur in the future,” he asserts.

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