Unnecessary Escalation: Why Anti-War Activists Should Be Anti Cyber-War As Well
In this era of fading American hegemony that has come in the aftermath of the war on terror, our cultural elites advocate constantly for aggression and escalation which stops short of all out war. Economic sanctions, trade wars, military aid packages, and covert action are offered to the war weary public as a supposed alternative to violent conflict. However, anti war activists on both the left and right have long understood that these coercive measures are no alternative at all, but rather are ineffective and deadly mechanisms that increase the likelihood of military confrontation. In the information age, a new tool has been added to the arsenal of our national security state. Cyber war has become a key tool in the new cold wars against Russia and China. As America’s adversaries become more aggressive in cyberspace, our country responds in kind, often making preemptive strikes against targets which blur the line between civilian and military. Libertarians, and decent people across the rest of the political spectrum, must oppose this dangerous policy for the same reasons we oppose every horrible excess of the warfare state.
Much like the “low intensity” wars that have characterized American foreign policy in the post WWII liberal world order, cyber wars make American civilians less safe by inviting blowback, and encouraging the proliferation of dangerous weapons and tactics. This is exacerbated by the fact that like all war, cyber conflict is the domain of incompetent and inefficient government programs. There is no better example of this than the Wannacry ransomware attack of 2017, which the national security state attributed (with little direct evidence) to North Korea. The attack affected countless critical systems in the western world, most notably the British NHS. The true scandal of the event though, was that the attack was done with a windows exploit called Eternal Blue, which was created by the American NSA. As was revealed in the leaks by the great Edward Snowden, the NSA had made a habit of not informing major tech companies when vulnerabilities were discovered in their software, but instead creating and stockpiling exploits for future use. Eternal Blue was leaked by a group calling themselves the Shadow Brokers, leading to Wannacry and many other attacks. By taking an aggressive posture in cyberspace, the NSA invites such attacks upon us all, while also leaving us more vulnerable to them.
Another consequence of cyberwarfare is that like all wars, this one comes home in the form of tyranny. Just as the war on terror has been viciously turned on the American Right who used to be its greatest proponents, the buildup of our cyber capabilities will be used to spy on American citizens who express dissent. It has already been conclusively proven by the aforementioned Snowden leaks that the NSA spies on every living American, but despite court orders against the agency, the government violation of liberty on the internet has only gotten worse. An example of this is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security created under the Trump administration. The original mandate of the agency was to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity, especially with respect to critical infrastructure in the face of attacks by nation-state actors. However, recent reporting from the Intercept has proven that the agency has set its sights inward, focusing on policing the actions of US citizens through the suppression of disinformation, including by strong-arming big tech companies.
This was the inevitable result of an agency birthed from the lie that was Russiagate, and the Trump administration should have known better. Anytime government power is allowed to expand, it will be turned upon the citizenry. Washington can’t even be trusted to engage in cyberspace defensively without manipulating us, allowing an increase in offensive capabilities to counter foreign adversaries can only end in Orwellian disaster.
Perhaps the greatest reason to be anti cyberwar, is that the entire premise is built upon a lie. The American Empire is obsessed with selling the public the idea of wars which are just, bloodless, and free. This explains the national security state’s obsession with economic sanctions and trade wars: it represents a “moderate” alternative to the bloody invasions that most Americans are tired of. The truth of course, is that sanctions are destructive, deadly and wrong. Cyber warfare is no different. Damaging economies and critical infrastructure is a violent act, and it isn’t the elites who suffer the consequences, but ordinary Iranian, Russian, and Chinese civilians. Attacks like Stuxnet, which severely damaged the Iranian nuclear program despite no genuine evidence that it was being used for weaponry, do nothing to keep America safe. Instead, they harm foreign civilians, leave us open to blowback, and represent an aggressive escalation that makes a hot war more likely. For all those reasons, we ought to present a unified message on this issue. So don’t fall for the propaganda. Instead, be brave, be anti-cyberwar, be an anti-war libertarian.
