I consider the escalation of cyberwar more likely than nuclear war. It is much easier for cyberwar to escalate as the attribution of attacks is hard and various non-state actors are involved on both sides.
It’s plausible that the person most likely to escalate this conflict into WWIII is a hacker that sits in their basement and that doesn’t take direct orders from any government.
I would expect that geopolitics experts underrate the agency and effects of cyber actors just like nobody had scenarios like Arkipov’s submarine in their models during the Cuban missle crisis.
We likely could achieve more by focusing on tech people than by focusing on traditional geopolitics in this conflict.
Lock full-on the throttle / lock steering ahead-and-maybe-slightly-to-the-left / lock out brakes of e.g. every Tesla[1] in existence[2]? This is not utterly implausible for a single person to be able to do[3][4].
9/11 caused the US to invoke NATO article 5 for ~3,000 civilians killed. ~2.3 million Teslas have been sold[5].
There’s been multiple instances of white-hats pointing out remotely exploitable security flaws in cars, and Tesla’s response to white-hats has been extremely negative, meaning that flaws that would otherwise be fixed often aren’t.
I consider the escalation of cyberwar more likely than nuclear war. It is much easier for cyberwar to escalate as the attribution of attacks is hard and various non-state actors are involved on both sides.
It makes sense to me that attribution of attacks is harder, that various non-state actors are involved on both sides, and that each of these things would push cyberwar towards being more likely than nuclear war. However, I figure there are a million other things to consider. Things that I don’t have much of a grasp on at all. To conclude that one is more likely than the other with some moderate degree of confidence, I’d want to have a much stronger grasp on the other factors and be able to weigh them up, but I don’t have that, so a low-confidence position is what makes sense to me.
It’s plausible that the person most likely to escalate this conflict into WWIII is a hacker that sits in their basement and that doesn’t take direct orders from any government.
Maybe. Or maybe cybersecurity is actually good in this context, and it is thus implausible. I don’t have a grasp on how good the cybersecurity is, so it’s hard to say.
I would expect that geopolitics experts underrate the agency and effects of cyber actors just like nobody had scenarios like Arkipov’s submarine in their models during the Cuban missle crisis.
It’s not clear to me why you believe this. Arkipov’s submarine is just one data point and doesn’t seem strong enough to me to be confident. The place my mind goes is more general human and organization biases, and incentives, and access to information, but I’m not sure exactly how any of that applies here.
We likely could achieve more by focusing on tech people than by focusing on traditional geopolitics in this conflict.
It’s not clear to me why you make this claim either.
I consider the escalation of cyberwar more likely than nuclear war. It is much easier for cyberwar to escalate as the attribution of attacks is hard and various non-state actors are involved on both sides.
It’s plausible that the person most likely to escalate this conflict into WWIII is a hacker that sits in their basement and that doesn’t take direct orders from any government.
I would expect that geopolitics experts underrate the agency and effects of cyber actors just like nobody had scenarios like Arkipov’s submarine in their models during the Cuban missle crisis.
We likely could achieve more by focusing on tech people than by focusing on traditional geopolitics in this conflict.
What do you think a single hacker could do that would realistically lead to a WWIII situation?
Lock full-on the throttle / lock steering ahead-and-maybe-slightly-to-the-left / lock out brakes of e.g. every Tesla[1] in existence[2]? This is not utterly implausible for a single person to be able to do[3][4].
9/11 caused the US to invoke NATO article 5 for ~3,000 civilians killed. ~2.3 million Teslas have been sold[5].
Or insert other major remotely-accessible model of car here.
Especially if the person in question is both a) in a country that isn’t cooperative with NATO and b) doesn’t especially bother to cover their tracks.
There’s been multiple instances of white-hats pointing out remotely exploitable security flaws in cars, and Tesla’s response to white-hats has been extremely negative, meaning that flaws that would otherwise be fixed often aren’t.
Also note that Teslas are cellular-connected.
I don’t have an accurate number as to how many are on the road.
I do too, but these probabilities are not exclusive. In fact, they’re correlated. The path from cyberwar to nuclear war is pretty believable.
My thoughts:
It makes sense to me that attribution of attacks is harder, that various non-state actors are involved on both sides, and that each of these things would push cyberwar towards being more likely than nuclear war. However, I figure there are a million other things to consider. Things that I don’t have much of a grasp on at all. To conclude that one is more likely than the other with some moderate degree of confidence, I’d want to have a much stronger grasp on the other factors and be able to weigh them up, but I don’t have that, so a low-confidence position is what makes sense to me.
Maybe. Or maybe cybersecurity is actually good in this context, and it is thus implausible. I don’t have a grasp on how good the cybersecurity is, so it’s hard to say.
It’s not clear to me why you believe this. Arkipov’s submarine is just one data point and doesn’t seem strong enough to me to be confident. The place my mind goes is more general human and organization biases, and incentives, and access to information, but I’m not sure exactly how any of that applies here.
It’s not clear to me why you make this claim either.