Newsweek quotes Cyber Statecraft Initiative Senior Fellow Alexander Klimburg on the increasing sophistication of hackers abroad and the growing threat they pose to governments:

According to Alexander Klimburg, an affiliate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center and senior research fellow at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, “cyberspace today is like Europe in 1914, before World War I. Governments are like sleepwalkers. They do not comprehend the power of new technology and the consequences of misunderstanding each other’s activities.”

[…]

Thanks to its vast resources, the U.S. may well be able to stay one step ahead of its cyberenemies. But the problem with this new battlefield is that none of the potential combatants know the rules—and, even more dangerous, no one can be certain of who the combatants are. “It is not always possible to distinguish between cyberespionage, cyber covert action and, most importantly, preparation for cybersabotage or war,” says Klimburg. “Serious misunderstandings are preprogrammed…. The consequences of misidentifying the motive of the attacker could be, in diplomatic-speak, ‘inadvertent escalation’—or accidental cyberwar.”

Read the full article here.

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