Reflection 2

One of the most interesting parts of my week was seeing the cyber security exhibit in the Spy Museum. The issue of cyber security is an ever evolving issue that my generation will undoubtedly be forced to try to resolve.

What makes this entire issue so fascinating is the new definition of the enemy. No longer are we able to fight or track people, with technology we are fighting ideologies. How are security forces to go about tracking a moving thought? If people learned nothing from Inception they should at least take away the lesson that an idea is the most infectious thing. Viewpoints or orthodox dogmas might be able to spread at an astronomical rate, one that no technological invention can stop. The spread of dogma isn't necessarily a negative thing, it only becomes a bad thing when that dogma includes the hatred of a group of people. Some groups choose to act upon this hatred in extremely forceful ways (biological weapons, bombs, hijacking's, mass murders, etc).

The idea that these groups can grab hold of technology that could tear apart the infrastructure of a nation is frightening. With able minds, and an access to a capable computer or weapon, entire states could go without power. This could lead to a lack of water, electricity, heat, air conditioning, and communications. At the point of crumbling infrastructure government could no longer intervene because the ability to communicate is gone. Several questions thus arrive: how do we define our enemy? How do we go about protecting ourselves from the enemy? Do we have the ability to defend ourselves? Our government in the US and the world entirely need to realize the importance of this issue and its complexity. Governments should put cyber security at the front of their agenda, and citizens should be cautious as the the sites they visit online and what they do while on the internet.