Military Could Be “Paralyzed”

It’s “like the ultimate video game made real,” United Press International reported about former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s technologically innovative Future Combat Systems (fcs). The programs, however, could be a “crippling weakness,” the report said.

Though still in the works, the government has already spent $160 billion on the programs, and the total amount could accumulate to over $300 billion over the next decade.

Making the U.S. military more dependent on technology will arguably make it stronger and more effective, but it will also open U.S. forces up to significant vulnerabilities. This is a “far less discussed danger,” upi’s Martin Sieff says, but one that makes the U.S. military “vulnerable to being paralyzed by asymmetrical cyber-warfare attacks” (March 16, emphasis ours throughout).

This is a trend the Trumpet has been watching for some time. Back in June 1999, editor in chief Gerald Flurry called technological dependence, and the susceptibility to hackers severely crippling America militarily, “the Western world’s Achilles heel.”

Hackers have long been hard at work trying to neutralize American might through cyber-attacks on the U.S. military. The Pentagon acknowledged 79,000 such attacks on U.S. armed forces websites from mid-2004 to mid-2005. The attacks have not been entirely ineffective. “Even in peacetime,” Sieff wrote, “recent electronic viruses have shown a disturbing ability to disrupt U.S. military electronic systems and bases.”

Sieff concluded: “What cannot be in doubt is that by the time fcs is up and running—if it ever is—potential U.S. adversaries will also be far advanced in their efforts to turn what is intended as a decisive global military advantage into a crippling weakness.”

Cyber-warfare could take a predominant role in the violence prophesied to befall America and Britain.