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A consensus is emerging that the world is cleaving into blocs—not only geopolitically but economically, too. In 2020, the economist Douglas Irwin wrote that “the COVID-19 pandemic is driving the world economy to retreat from global economic integration.” In the years since, how to manage this purported deglobalization has been a consistent theme at World Economic Forum meetings; in May, an Economist cover depicted a map of the world physically fracturing into competing economic blocs. The associated story presumed that deglobalization is a long-term certainty, arguing that it is becoming “visible in the economic data, as investors reprice assets and redirect capital in a less integrated world.” Last week, a Bloomberg columnist piled on, concluding that “global trade and finance are fragmenting into rival and increasingly hostile blocs, one centered on China and extending into the global South and another around the United States and other Western countries.”

But there is a problem with the assumption that deglobalization is a fact on the ground: the data does not fully back it up. As evidence of continuing deglobalization, observers often cite phenomena such as the United States’ reluctance to establish new free-trade deals, the debilitation of the dispute-settlement system overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the proliferation of new national measures restricting trade, and declines in both short- and long-term capital flows from their past peaks. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly did reveal that economic interdependence carries risks, and the efforts Russia has made since 2022 to use its natural gas pipelines to influence the G-7’s response to its invasion of Ukraine—as well as the many sanctions the G-7 has imposed to try to weaken Russia’s economy—have highlighted the vulnerabilities that can arise when countries trade across geopolitical divides. But a closer look at economic data shows that even though governments have increasingly adopted policies aimed at strengthening their own resilience, the world economy is still evolving to become more, not less, globalized in key ways—and more dependent on Chinese supply in particular.

Even if these plants did somehow collectively melt down, global nuclear meltdown would not come close to causing human extinction. There are 450 nuclear reactors currently operating. If each simultaneously released a Chernobyl-level amount of radioactive material, the average radiation dose per square mile over the earth would be far less than the dose per square mile which the whole of Ukraine suffered as a result of the actual Chernobyl accident. Clearly all human life was not wiped out in soviet-era Ukraine (the resulting mortality across the country was roughly 4000 people out of 51 million), so whilst this hypothetical scenario would be a profound tragedy, it would not come anywhere near causing human extinction. (In contrast to global nuclear war, which remains an existential threat. Warming will likely exacerbate the risk of nuclear war by inflaming geopolitical tensions – a strong argument against a passive, non-interventionist stance on climate mitigation. However, if the argument is really “climate change makes nuclear war more likely”, then that should be made clear, as disarmament would also be an effective preventative measure.)

It is easier to imagine a catastrophe than to produce it. The 2003 East Coast blackout is the archetype for an attack on the U.S. electrical grid. No one died in this blackout, and services were restored in a few days. As electric production is digitized, vulnerability increases, but many electrical companies have made cybersecurity a priority. Similarly, at water treatment plants, the chemicals used to purify water are controlled in ways that make mass releases difficult. In any case, it would take a massive amount of chemicals to poison large rivers or lakes, more than most companies keep on hand, and any release would quickly be diluted.

Cyber-alarmists have also warned about hackers disabling major infrastructure such as power grids—potentially crippling entire countries. Grids do go down occasionally, but the culprits are typically squirrels and lightning. Regardless of the source, such disruptions are usually brief and bearable, and engineers are increasingly designing systems that are resilient to such threats. Estonia, for instance, the victim of a major and oft-discussed cyberattack in 2007, is now the home of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

When it comes to disaster, reach is far less important than physical impact. Lewis noted that mass physical damage from cyber events hasn’t been realized, and the contrary is observably true for natural disasters. Reversibility is an important and often overlooked aspect of physical impact, as it defines the longevity of damage. Small-arms damage, for example, is generally reversible, while nuclear attacks are not. Cyber attacks have been demonstrably reversible, given their transitory nature. U.S. institutions and communities have become quite adept at reversing the damage from natural disasters, but their widespread physical impact makes the process much slower and labor-intensive than remediation after cyber attacks. A comparison of two events makes this clear.

In 2015, a cyber attack on the power grid affected 230,000 people in Ukraine. Due to what has often been characterized as an act of cyber war (a questionable use of that expression at best), the lights were out for as long as six hours. This came as part of a wave of cyber attacks on the grid in 2015 and 2016, none of which had any further meaningful impact. The 2015 cyber attack-induced blackout tends to be seen as the “success story” for offensive cyber against power grids, even despite the lack of sustained impact. Natural catastrophes, on the other hand, have had no trouble depriving millions of people of access to electricity for days at a time. One of the most interesting cases for closer study, though, is Hurricane Ida.

However, thus far, terrorist groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even less progress in going atomic. That lack of action may be because, after a brief exploration of the possible routes, they — unlike generations of alarmists — have discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to be successful.34

Obtaining a Finished Bomb: Assistance by a State

However, there is of course no guarantee that things will remain that way. And, in suggesting that they will change damagingly, Goldberg, in particular, is rechanneling an argument that has been around for a long time. It was in 1974 that journalist John McPhee decided that, although only a small proportion of nuclear professionals expressed a “sense of urgency” about the atomic terrorist, he would devote an entire book to a physicist he was able to find who did (nothing, of course, is as boring as a book about how urgent something isn’t). That was Theodore Taylor, who proclaimed the problem to be “immediate” and who explained to McPhee at length “how comparatively easy it would be to steal nuclear material and step by step make it into a bomb.” To fabricate a crude atomic bomb, Taylor patiently, if urgently, pointed out, was “simple”: all one needed was some plutonium oxide powder, some high explosives, and “a few things that anyone could buy in a hardware store.” “Everything is a matter of probabilities,” Taylor assured his rapt auditor, and at the time he thought either that it was already too late to “prevent the making of a few bombs, here and there, now and then,” or that “in another ten or fifteen years, it will be too late.”10 Nearly a half-century later, we continue to wait for terrorists to carry out their “simple” task. The argument received new impetus with the 9/11 attacks which inspired the remarkable extrapolation that, because the terrorists were successful with box cutters, they might soon be able to turn out weapons of mass destruction—particularly nuclear ones—and then detonate them in an American city. In his influential 2004 book, Nuclear Terrorism, Harvard’s Graham Allison relayed his “considered judgment” that “on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not.”11 Allison has had a great deal of company in his alarming pronouncements. For example, in 2007, the distinguished physicist Richard Garwin put the likelihood of a nuclear explosion on an American or European city by terrorist or other means at 20 percent per year, which would work out to 91 percent over the eleven-year period to 2018. 12 Allison’s time is up, and so is Garwin’s. These oft-repeated warnings have proven to be empty. And it is important to point out that not only have terrorists failed to go nuclear, but as William Langewiesche, who has assessed the process in detail, put it in 2007, “The best information is that no one has gotten anywhere near this. I mean, if you look carefully and practically at this process, you see that it is an enormous undertaking full of risks for the would-be terrorists.”13 That process requires trusting corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material, setting up a machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crew, all the while attracting no attention from outsiders. An al-Qaeda computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group’s proposed startup budget at the time for research on weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it to be focused on primitive chemical weapons work) was some $2,000 to $4,000.14 In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, officials had many more al-Qaeda computers, and it appears that nothing in their contents suggested the miserable little group had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-tech facility to fabricate a bomb.15 Nor have terrorist groups been able to steal existing nuclear weapons—characteristically burdened with multiple safety devices and often stored in pieces at separate secure locales—from existing arsenals as was once much feared. And they certainly have not been able to cajole leaders in nuclear states to palm one off to them—though a war inflicting more death than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined was launched against Iraq in 2003 in major part under the spell of fantasies about such a handover.16 More generally, the actual terrorist “adversaries” in the West scarcely deserve accolades for either dedication or prowess. It is true, of course, that sometimes even incompetents can get lucky, but such instances, however tragic, are rare. For the most part, terrorists are a confused, inadequate, incompetent, blundering, and gullible bunch, rarely able to get their act together. All seem to be far better at frenetic and often self-deluded scheming than at actual execution. A summary assessment by RAND’s Brian Jenkins is apt: “their numbers remain small, their determination limp, and their competence poor.”17 And much the same holds for Europe and the est of the developed world.18 This holds even for the putative “mastermind” of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: just about all of his many terrorism schemes either failed or did not even begin to approach fruition. Overall, as a terrorism planner, he had a fertile mind but a feeble record of accomplishment, one characterized by fanciful scheming and stunted execution.19 In this context, 9/11 clearly stands out as an aberration. Except perhaps for the use of vehicles to deliver mayhem, there has there has been remarkably little innovation in terrorist weaponry or methodology since 9/11.20 Like their predecessors, they have continued to rely on bombs (many of which fail to detonate or do much damage) and bullets.21 There is another aspect to this argument. It is held that, whereas the number of bathtub deaths does not fluctuate much from year to year, terrorism deaths are not very evenly distributed over time and this somehow makes the phenomenon unpredictable and unstable. It is a “fat-tailed distribution” in which there are many small events and a few “outliers that are really important.”22 Thus, we should give up, suggests Bloomberg’s Justin Fox: “Five or 10 or even 50 years of data isn’t necessarily enough to allow one to predict with confidence what going to happen next year.”23 As Figures 1 and 2 suggest, the frequency and destructiveness of terrorism and terrorism cases in the United States is indeed anything but uniform.24 However, many natural hazards show the same pattern as terrorism. For example, the frequency and destructiveness of tornados range widely: the death count can vary by up to twenty-fold from year to year. Moreover, they are also far more likely than terrorism to kill. However the lumpiness doesn’t preclude sensible analysis. Concern about this unevenness, as bathtub critics Justin Fox and Kenneth Anderson both note, stems from a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that stesses the importance of extreme events which he calls “Black Swans.” Taleb argues that “almost everything in social life is produced by rare but consequential shocks and jumps” and “our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the extremely improbable.”25 However, the account suffers from selection bias. It focuses on those unexpected and emotion-engaging events and phenomena (like 9/11) that became consequential (and therefore Black Swans), while ignoring ones that failed to do so. Moreover, insofar as Black Swan events carry an “extreme impact,” this quality derives not so much from their unexpectedness or from the emotions they initially trigger as from the reaction or overreaction they generate. These reactions are sometimes as unexpected as the event itself, and often they do not correlate well with the event’s size or with its objective historical importance. Moreover, although some unexpected and emotion-engaging events do have considerable consequences, much consequential development in human history—probably most of it—stems not from such events, but from changes in thinking and behavior that are decidedly gradual and often little-noticed as they occur.26

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has suggested that “the fear of terrorism isn’t motivated solely by what terrorist have done, but what terrorists hope to do.” Bathtubs are simply not “engaged in a conspiracy with other bathtubs to murder ever-larger numbers of Americans.” However, terrorists “in the Islamist orbit,” he insists, “seek unconventional weapons that would allow them to kill a far-larger number of Americans than died on Sept. 11.”6 Or as Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times puts it, “Bathroom deaths could multiply by 50 without a threat to civil order. The incidence of terror could not.”7 Thus far, 9/11 stands out as an extreme outlier: scarcely any terrorist act, before or after, in war zones or outside them, has inflicted even one-tenth as much total destruction. That is, contrary to common expectations, the attack has this far been an aberration, not a harbinger.8 And al-Qaeda central, the group responsible for the attack, has, in some respects at least, proved to resemble President John Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald—an entity of almost trivial proportions that got horribly lucky once. The tiny group of perhaps 100 or so does appear to have served as something of an inspiration to some Muslim extremists. They may have done some training, may have contributed a bit to the Taliban’s far larger insurgency in Afghanistan, and may have participated in a few terrorist acts in Pakistan. In his examination of the major terrorist plots against the West since 9/11, Mitchell Silber finds only two—the shoe bomber attempt of 2001 and the effort to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid bombs in 2006—that could be said to be under the “command and control” of al-Qaeda Central (as opposed to ones suggested, endorsed, or inspired by the organization), and there are questions about how full its control was even in these two instances, both of which, as it happens, failed miserably.9 Even under siege, it is difficult to see why al-Qaeda could not have organized attacks at least as costly and shocking as the shooting rampages (organized by other groups) that took place in Mumbai in 2008 or at a shopping center in Kenya in 2013. Neither took huge resources, presented major logistical challenges, required the organization of a large number of perpetrators, or needed extensive planning.

It is possible to argue that the damage inflicted by terrorists since 9/11 outside of war zones is low because “defensive measures are working,” as the journalist Peter Bergen has suggested.27 At the extreme are the repeated assertions of former Vice President Dick Cheney that security measures put into place after 9/11 have saved thousands of lives, a figure he had escalated by 2009 to “perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.”28 In this argument, the bathtub comparison fails: the terrorism death toll, to which it is compared, is low only because terrorism has very effectively been reduced by countermeasures designed to do exactly that. There have been few efforts to refute or even examine such extravagant and evidence-free claims—for the most part, they are simply allowed to lay there.29 But even applying a high estimate for the value of human life and a low one for US counterterrorism expenditures, the expenditures would have had to save 11,797 lives per year to begin to be justified.30 Or they would have had to avert more than one 9/11 attack every other year.31 Disclosed Plots To begin to assess, and parse, this argument, one can look at the 124 plots by Islamist extremists, many of them inspired by al-Qaeda or ISIS, seeking to commit terrorism in the United States since 9/11 through 2017. 32 Of these, 27 have been carried out in some form or other. Terrorists managed to kill people in ten of these, resulting in the average of six deaths per year as noted above.33 The remaining 97 plots were rolled up by authorities. For the most part, the capacities of the people involved in these plots are singularly unimpressive, however. When those cases are examined, the vast majority of the offenders (though perhaps not quite all) turn out to have been naive, amateurish, and gullible. Their schemes, especially when unaided by facilitating FBI infiltrators, have been incoherent and inept, their capacity to accumulate weaponry rudimentary, and their organizational skills close to non-existent. Left on their own, it is certainly possible that a few of the plotters in the 97 foiled plots would have been able to get their act together and actually do something. But it seems unlikely that the total damage would increase by anywhere near enough to suggest that terrorism presents a substantial threat, much less the one imagined by Cheney: the yearly death toll might be pushed up to 12 or perhaps even 18 Undisclosed plots It is frequently argued by officials that many terrorist plots have been thwarted in addition to the ones that have entered the public record but that information about these cases cannot be disclosed for various reasons. In working on an extensive report about how US intelligence efforts (and budgets) were massively increased after 9/11, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest says that she frequently heard this claim. In response, she says she “asked them to share with us anything they could, plots that were foiled that we could put in the paper because we didn’t have many examples. We said, give us things, just in generalities.” But “we didn’t receive anything back.”34 Terrorism specialist Marc Sageman has had the relevant background (and clearances) to comment authoritatively on the matter: “As a member of the Intelligence Community, who kept abreast of all the plots in the US,” he says, “I have not seen any significant terrorist plots that have been disrupted and not disclosed. On the contrary, the government goes out of its way to take credit for non-plots, such as their sting operations.”35 Glenn Carle, who was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats at the CIA for several years before his retirement in 2008 after 23 years of service, is more terse. He characterizes the claim that there are a great many thwarted terrorist plots that have gone undisclosed in three (or six) words: “Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.”36 Disclosed minor plots In addition to those prosecuted on terrorism charges, authorities have apprehended a considerable number, perhaps hundreds, of loud-mouthed aspirational terrorists within the United States, and, lacking enough evidence to convict them on terrorism charges, the authorities have levied lesser ones to jail or to deport them. For the most part, these plots or aspirations are even less likely to lead to notable violence than the ones that have resulted in terrorism trials. Further, the bulk of people who are jailed on terrorism-associated prosecutions serve short terms and, accordingly, are soon set free to commit terrorism if they want to do so. Yet, none have attempted to do so. Deterrence Nor is it likely that much terrorism has been deterred by security measures. Extensive and costly security measures have undoubtedly taken some targets off the list for just about all terrorists. In particular, since most of them have been impelled toward terrorism by hostility to American military policy in the Middle East, many of them have sought out military targets.37 Although some have contemplated attacking individual soldiers in the street or military recruitment centers in shopping malls—or have actually done so—few have considered attacking military bases themselves. That is, they have likely been deterred from attacking their preferred target. The same can be said for another target: aviation.38 However, while deterred from attacking some targets, no dedicated would-be terrorist should have much difficulty finding other ones if the goal is to kill people or destroy property to make a statement—the world is filled with such targets. Shooting up a mall, or derailing a train, or setting a building or forest on fire, or detonating a homemade bomb in a crowd can garner great attention and can have substantial consequence—as has been seen with the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, with the shootings in Paris in 2015, or with the destruction in Manchester, England, in 2017. Thus, the fact that there has been so little Islamist terrorism in the United States and the West can’t be because would-be terrorists have been deterred by security measures. And much the same can be said for the related argument maintaining that we have much to fear because we only catch the dummies, while all the smart ones get away to wait for the right opportunity to commit terrorist mayhem. But then, why don’t they eventually actually do something? If they are so smart, they surely know that the longer they wait, the more likely they are to be detected. The impact of no-entry measures and comparisons with Europe Since 9/11, there have been something like two billion legal entries into the United States by foreigners. It is impressive that virtually no al-Qaeda or other Islamist extremist operatives appear to have been in this number. The costly maintenance of a no-fly list and similar measures has doubtless been helpful in this; indeed, getting operatives into the country was already a primary problem for the 9/11 plotters. 39 However, the complete failure of overseas terrorists to insert any operatives at all since 2001 suggests either considerable incompetence or a lack of trying very hard. The Western European experience is relevant to this issue.40 Estimating European counterterrorism expenditures is difficult, but, although they are likely lower than the United States, Europeans have not experienced more terrorism. The cost figures for the United Kingdom are more available, and they suggest that the country spends about half as much as the United States on counterterrorism, yet has suffered about six deaths per year since 2001, the same as for the United States. This, even though Europe’s Muslim population is large and even though entry and exit are much easier—it does not have the Atlantic Ocean as a moat. The grand deterrent The fact that terrorism is such a rare phenomenon in the developed world, likely derives from what might be called the grand or ultimate deterrent. In the end, terrorism simply doesn’t recommend itself as a course of practical political action because of the futility and fundamental absurdity of the enterprise. In general, in fact, it tends to be counterproductive. 41 That there is so little terrorism, then, is not because of the efficacy of security measures or because it is so difficult to pull off—lucrative targets are ubiquitous and headline-grabbing mayhem is easy to commit. To a considerable degree, terrorism is rare because terrorists, unlike bathtubs, don’t exist. As Bruce Schneier puts it bluntly, “there isn’t much of a threat of terrorism to defend against.”42

This contemporary approach to cyberthreats resembles the aftermath of 9/11, when almost all experts believed an even larger terrorist attack would soon take place. Then, as now, the threat is overblown. Although occasionally dramatic, cyberattacks have turned out to be a comparatively minor and manageable threat. Far too much discussion around the issue focuses on worst-case scenarios, fails to contextualize the problem, and neglects to weigh the costs of cyberattacks against the enormous value of the Internet and artificial intelligence. Most commentary, moreover, does not fully appreciate the ability of the business sector—by far the most tempting of targets for malevolent hackers—to develop effective countermeasures.

CYBERWAR

Finally, an essential aspect of cyber operations’ strategic effects is the level of harm to the target. Most malicious cyber activity to date has not risen to a threshold of significant harm, violent effects, or loss of life.44 This is especially the case when compared to other military capabilities.45 That said, there are different ways to operationalize level of harm. One potential metric is loss of life. To date, no one has reportedly died as a direct result of a cyberattack, despite over thirty years of recorded cyber operations. 46 Even in hypothetical catastrophic scenarios, the cost in terms of human casualties is relatively low compared to other military capabilities. For instance, a common worst-case scenario is a cyberattack on a power grid.47 However, the 2015 Russian cyberattack against Ukraine’s power grid, the first known example of an offensive cyber operation targeting a state’s power grid, did not lead to any reported casualties.48

It is also possible to measure the harm cyber operations inflict in treasure rather than blood. According to this metric, the financial or economic costs of cyberattacks are significant. For example, the total cost of the most expensive cyberattack in history, the 2017 NotPetya attack, is estimated at $10 billion.49 However, governments have largely avoided characterizing these operations as crossing an “act of war” or “use of force” threshold.50 While still of strategic consequence, cyber operations (especially absent physical violence) appear to be perceived differently than other military operations.51

The risk of escalation is grossly exaggerated. Countless Track II dialogues are undertaken to reduce the risk of miscalculations that could lead a cyber incident to escalate into kinetic violence. Yet, in two decades of malicious cyber action, there has never been an incident that has led to escalation. While there have been a few instances of unintended consequences and collateral damage, these did not lead to an escalation of conflict. We can now reject the initial hypothesis of miscalculation and escalation as inaccurate. The likely reasons there have been no cyber incidents that resulted in escalation is that states maintain careful control of their most dangerous cyber capabilities and have devoted their own strategies to reduce risk. We should learn from their experience of tight leadership and control as we design our own active policies.

A new strategy must use communications, messaging, and signals with opponents, allies, and publics. This does not mean that every action should be accompanied by a press release, but a new cyber strategy will need to use public and private communications to shape opinion in ways favorable to the United States and make it clear that our actions are guided by international law and agreement. Adopting a more assertive posture in cyberspace is in itself a message that will improve our position with opponents. Diplomatic and public messaging can help manage escalation risk and strengthen collective responses with allies while shaping opponents’ planning. Decisions on timing and audience will be determined by the specifics of each action, but our overall goal should be to end Strangelovian opacity.

Rather than dangerous escalatory spirals that threaten to spill over into kinetic conflict, even the most heated interactions between rivals in cyberspace are characterized by limited, tit-for-tat retaliations that are often separated by significant periods of time and that remain far below any conflict or armed attack threshold. Indeed, in a survey of cyber incidents and responses between 2000 and 2014, Brandon Valeriano et al. find that "rivals tend to respond only to lower-level [cyber] incidents and the response tends to check the intrusion as opposed to seek escalation dominance. The majority of cyber escalation episodes are at a low severity threshold and are nonescalatory."20 Similarly, Sarah Kreps and Jacquelyn Schneider conduct an original experiment to test different logics of cyber escalation and find that cyber attacks "create a threshold that restrains the escalation of conflict."21 Specifically, they find that Americans are less likely to support using kinetic force to respond to a cyber attack, even when the effects of the latter are comparable to other types of kinetic attacks.22

Even the most destructive cyber attack in history, NotPetya, launched by Russia in the spring of 2017 (reportedly using a leaked National Security Agency tool, EternalBlue), did not cause escalation. NotPetya wreaked $10 billion worth of damage across the globe, including to large multinational companies such as Maersk, Merck, and FedEx.23 If cyber operations are likely to cause escalation, NotPetya would be a prime contender, not only because of the extent of the damage inflicted, but also because it was carried out by a longstanding adversary of the nations it affected, which included some of the most powerful states in cyberspace.

What does this disaster in Ukraine tell us about the efficacy of cyber? In the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia, the latter has demonstrated some success. Apart from the temporary freezing of the electrical grid in 2015, information warfare, the use of propaganda, and cyberattacks on end-user devices to support police actions were useful in Ukraine during the Maidan Revolution and later the annexation of Crimea. Russia successfully conducted an effective “public diplomacy,” i.e., pro- paganda war, when it seized control over its former territory in the Crimea, and this was crucial for maintaining domestic public acceptance of the claimed but as yet unrecognized transfer of sovereignty. In addition, Russian attempts to penetrate Ukrainian government computing systems has not xiv The United States supplies its own telecommunications network for military purposes. A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Each satellite is approximately 2,000 km from the Earth. For comparison of different satellite systems, see EOS, “EOS Data Analytics,” https://eos.com/ blog/types-of-satellites/. xv Starlink uses 10.7-12.7 GHz and 37.5-42.5 GHz for the transmission of data from satellites to the customer’s terminal on the ground. Separate frequencies are used for communication from satellites to ground-based gateways that connect to the Internet, from ground back up to the satellites, and two channels for telemetry. Edward Roche and Michael Blaine 140 stopped the escalation of violence.38 Thorough monitoring of Ukrainian communications, including social media, has continued to provide intel- ligence, but for what benefit? The electrical system is damaged but functional. 39 Yet in spite of these successes, cyber has not killed a single soldier. It has not given Russia even a single meter of territory, nor has it prevented the Ukrainians from continuing doggedly to pursue the fight. Influencing a pop- ulation through cyber-based information operations or disabling cybernetic infrastructure is ephemeral. Systems can be restored, and public opinion can be fickle. Ultimately, bombing of infrastructure is far simpler than sophisticated cyberattacks. In comparison to the attacks on the electrical grid in 2015, which required extensive preparation and weeks of monitoring even after penetration of the cybersecurity barriers, kinetic attacks are standardized, immediate, and longer-lasting in their effects. Accordingly, over time, Russian tactics changed from attempting to influence public opinion in Ukraine simply to the physical destruction anti-Russian forces. The militaries of both the United States and Russia bought into the incendiary hype, promising a Revolution in Military Affairs—from massive investments building cyberwar technologies to specialized institutions to support them. In a hot war, these promised benefits have failed to materi- alize. The diplomatic signaling from the warning attacks launched against Ukraine’s power system and data processing centers did nothing to stop the rush to war. Cyber has produced little more than a lukewarm sideshow, at best incidental. Cyber is missing in action. The humanitarian disaster in Ukraine is not the result of cyber but of the ground war—the artillery, the bombing, the grinding up and destruction of soldiers and other human lives and critical infrastructure that will ultimately determine the outcome.

[John Mueller, Professor Emeritus of Poli Sci at Ohio state university, 3-22-2022, "The Cyber-Delusion," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/commentary/cyber-delusion,]//owen

When Russian forces launched their invasion of Ukraine last month, governments and experts worldwide warned about the danger of catastrophic cyberattacks. Indeed, in the days leading up to Moscow’s invasion, hackers defaced Ukrainian websites, unleashed malware on government systems, and targeted the country’s banking system—albeit with limited effect. Although no cyber-Armageddon has materialized, officials increasingly fear that Russia might eventually step up its efforts and even target the United States.¶ Russia’s invasion is no doubt catastrophic. But in reacting to it and preparing for what comes next, leaders in Washington and elsewhere should eschew the alarmism that has long warped cybersecurity policy. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed in 2011 that “the single biggest existential threat out there, I think, is cyber.” The following year, his successor, Martin Dempsey, noted that “a cyberattack could stop our society in its tracks.” Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sternly warned in 2012 of an impending “digital Pearl Harbor.” Nicole Perlroth, a cybersecurity reporter at The New York Times, has routinely asked insiders when “a cyber-enabled cataclysmic boom will take us down” and has always been told “18 to 24 months.” She began her survey well over 100 months ago. ¶ This contemporary approach to cyberthreats resembles the aftermath of 9/11, when almost all experts believed an even larger terrorist attack would soon take place. Then, as now, the threat is overblown. Although occasionally dramatic, cyberattacks have turned out to be a comparatively minor and manageable threat. Far too much discussion around the issue focuses on worst-case scenarios, fails to contextualize the problem, and neglects to weigh the costs of cyberattacks against the enormous value of the Internet and artificial intelligence. Most commentary, moreover, does not fully appreciate the ability of the business sector—by far the most tempting of targets for malevolent hackers—to develop effective countermeasures. ¶ Cyberwar¶ If a system is resilient, even successful, dramatic, and dastardly surprise attacks can be managed.¶ Over the past decade, the global obsession with digital threats has taken various forms, with a particular focus on the potential military implications of emerging cyber-capabilities. To be sure, the military needs to worry about keeping its communications and command and control operations secure from hostile attackers. Any disruptions, however, are more likely to be instrumental or tactical than strategic.¶ Despite statements to the contrary, the U.S. military itself seems to have recognized this reality. When Panetta proclaimed in 2013 that cyber was “without question, the battlefield for the future,” political scientist Micah Zenko observed at the time that the Pentagon was spending less than one percent of its budget on cybersecurity, and an assessment from 2019 suggests it may be more like one-tenth of one percent. If those funds prove adequate for the challenge, it would be something of a bargain.¶ Cyber also supposedly enhances a state’s ability to carry out such ancient endeavors as espionage, propaganda dissemination, and sabotage. Analysts have even coined a new term, “hybrid warfare,” that usually includes these three enterprises—although, since the term does not include direct armed conflict, it might more plausibly be called “denatured warfare.” Cyber’s contribution to these three areas, however, is relatively limited.¶ Should invading hackers engage in digital espionage against the United States, for instance, they are likely to find that most of what they come across is already well known, and that much of the rest is not worth knowing in the first place. Wikileaks’ 2010 publication of thousands of classified U.S. government documents demonstrated the degree to which governments worldwide have fallen victim to over-classification. When Bill Keller, the editor in charge of poring over the documents at The New York Times, was asked whether the reporting team found anything they didn’t already know, he responded “no” without hesitation.¶ Much the same holds for concerns over the theft of intellectual property. Not only is this practice centuries old, but systematic stealing has often proved unwise because it distracts governments from homegrown innovation. Cyber-propaganda efforts, in turn, are more likely to increase the overall amount of available information and disinformation—an age-old problem in warfare—than to provide a decisive advantage.¶ The achievements of cyber-sabotage have also been quite modest. The United States and Israel famously used a computer virus known as Stuxnet to hamper Iran’s progress toward developing a nuclear weapon. Although observers hailed the operation as a dangerous new development in modern conflict, the damage proved temporary. Iran quickly rebuilt its centrifuges, and the attack actually proved counterproductive, as it encouraged Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program. There have also been efforts by the United States to physically interfere with missile development in North Korea. Yet, much like the Iranians, Pyongyang eventually solved whatever the problem was, and the attacks had little long-term effect on their program.¶ Cyber-alarmists have also warned about hackers disabling major infrastructure such as power grids—potentially crippling entire countries. Grids do go down occasionally, but the culprits are typically squirrels and lightning. Regardless of the source, such disruptions are usually brief and bearable, and engineers are increasingly designing systems that are resilient to such threats. Estonia, for instance, the victim of a major and oft-discussed cyberattack in 2007, is now the home of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.¶ Cyberterrorism¶ Fears that terrorist groups could inflict damage through cyberspace have been around for many years. And although cyber played no direct role in the execution of the 9/11 terrorist, the event stirred anxiety about the issue. In 2002, for instance, The Washington Post published a lengthy front-page article conveying the views of “government experts” that “terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed.”¶ To date, however, no terrorist group has launched a successful cyberattack. And even if it becomes possible for hackers to shed blood, shootings and bombings are likely to accomplish the same goal far more reliably. Still, cyber has undoubtedly proved to be a relatively convenient method for terrorist groups to recruit and communicate. Rather than creating a paradigm shift, however, this technique has simply replaced or embellished older methods. Even comparatively savvy groups such as the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) tend to comically fail when using the Internet to stir up violence and instruct potential sympathizers. In one case, an ISIS handler connected his eager American charge to a prospective collaborator who happened to be an FBI operative.¶ For the most part, any virtual terrorist army in the United States has, as terrorism expert Brian Jenkins puts it, remained exactly that: virtual. “Talking about jihad, boasting of what one will do, and offering diabolical schemes egging each other on is usually as far as it goes,” he noted. Indeed, the foolish willingness of would-be terrorists to describe their aspirations and often-childish fantasies on the Internet has often helped police seeking to track them down.¶ Election Meddling¶ Election interference also features prominently in alarmist discourse on cyberthreats. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for instance, the United States highlighted apparent attempts by Russian hackers to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Although Clinton still handily won the popular vote, many analysts argued that digital interlopers sought to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections and perhaps democracy itself.¶ These warnings are exaggerated and—coming from U.S. policymakers—arguably hypocritical. It is worth noting that the United States has intervened in foreign elections for decades. Moreover, the idea that elections and voters are easily manipulated is suspect. If extensive promotion could guarantee success, Americans would all be driving Edsels and drinking New Coke—legendary marketing failures in 1958 and 1985 by two of the most successful businesses in history: the Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. In any capitalist society, people are regularly deluged by advertising and marketing campaigns. In all cases, those petitioned remain free to ignore the ads, and most become quite good at it. In fact, studies have shown that campaign information rarely changes many votes. As political scientist Diana Mutz points out, the impact of campaign advertising “is marginal at most.”¶ Political campaigns, as anyone who has suffered through one knows, are also rife with falsehoods: incumbents strategically distort their record, and challengers do the same in reverse. The 2016 Russian contribution to this flood of misinformation was tiny. On Facebook, where most of the manipulation supposedly took place, Moscow’s intervention totaled perhaps a fraction one percent of the content on the platform’s news feed. Much of this was also wasted because the people who embraced it were already committed to a particular party or lived in states that went solidly for one or the other candidate. Russia’s efforts, moreover, proved wildly counterproductive. Instead of weakening U.S. policy, Moscow generated bipartisan support for anti-Russian sanctions when the two U.S. political parties could agree on little else.¶ Cybercrime¶ Despite the overheated rhetoric about war, terrorism, election interference, and critical infrastructure, most cyberattacks target the private sector, seeking to steal or extort money from businesses and their customers. The record here, however, is rather encouraging, and it likely has broader relevance. To be sure, cybercriminals have stolen and extorted billions of dollars from businesses and individuals, but firms have done well at limiting the damage by closing software holes, maintaining backups, and safeguarding sensitive material.¶ A central issue for potential hackers is the profitability of their enterprise. A report by the cybersecurity firm Symantec estimates that 978 million people were affected by cybercrime in 2017, losing $172 billion in total. That number—regardless of how hackers divvy up the profits—is actually remarkably small compared to losses from other forms of illegal activity. Personal and property crimes in 2017, for instance, cost Americans $2.6 trillion.¶ Businesses are also learning to adapt. Andrew Odlyzko, former head of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center, points out that many firms have realized they can readily mitigate the most damaging effects of cybercrime through minor and incremental alterations to their business practices. Banks, for instance, increasingly require customers to verify large or suspicious transactions through voice calls or texts. And even though criminals routinely capture millions of credit card numbers through compromised databases, the overall damage is limited and often dominated by the cost of providing replacement cards. Businesses have also made it easy for consumers to recover from fraud.

The American public’s fear of terrorism persists in spite of the fact that the actual risk of terrorism for those in the United States is extremely low. Over the past half-century, the chance that an American would be killed by a terror attack on U.S. soil is roughly 1 in 3.5 million, with under ninety deaths per year between 1970 and 2007. Even in 2001, a year when terrorism was uniquely dangerous in the United States, terrorism accounted for less than 0.14 percent of deaths in the country. In contrast, the risk of death from other hazards like cancer (1 in 540), car accidents (1 in 8,000), drowning in a bathtub (1 in 950,000), and flying on a plane (1 in 2.9 million) are all greater than terrorism (Mueller 2006).

Before I suggest a way of thinking about global responsibility during these times of war, I want. to distance myself from some mistaken ways of approchmg the problem. Those, for instance, who wage war in the name of the common good, those who kill in the name of democracy or security, those who make incursio~s into the sovereign lands of others in the name of sovereIgnty-all consider themselves to be "acting globally" and even to be executing a certain "global responsibility." In the US we have heard in recent years about "bringing democracy" to countries where it is apparently lacking; we have heard, too about "installing democracy." In such moments we 'have to ask what democracy means if it is not based on popular decision and majority rule. Can one power "bring" or "install" democracy on a people ~ve.r whom it has no jurisdiction? If a form of power IS Imposed upon a people who do not choose that form of power, then that is, by definition, an undemocratic process. If the form of power imposed is called "democracy" then we have an even larger problem: can "democracy" be the name of a form of political power that is undemocratically imposed? Democracy has to name the means through which political power is achieved as well as the result of that process. And this creates something of a bind, since a majority can certainly vote in an undemocratic form of power (as the Germans did when electing Hitler in 1933), but military powers can also seek to "install" democracy through overriding or suspending elections and other expressions of the popular will, and by means that are patently undemocratic. In both cases, democracy fails. How do these brief reflections on the perils of democracy affect our way of thinking about global responsibility in times of war? First, we must be wary of invocations of "global responsibility" which assume that one country has a distinctive responsibility to bring democracy to countries. I am sure that there are cases in which intervention is important-to forestall genocide, for instance. But such an intervention with a global mission or, indeed, with an arrogant politics in which forms of government are forcibly implemented that are in the political and economic interests of the military power responsible for that very implementation. In such cases, we probably want to say-or at least I want to say that this form of global responsibility is irresponsible, if not openly contradictory. We could say that in such instances the word "responsibility" is simply misused or abused. And I would tend to agree. But that may not be enough, since historical circumstances demand that we give new meanings to the notion of "responsibility." Indeed, there is a challenge before us to rethink and reformulate a conception of global responsibility that would counter this imperialist appropriation and its politics of imposition. imperialist appropriation and its politics of imposition. To that end, I want to return to the question of the "we" and think first about what happens to this "we" during times of war. Whose lives are regarded as lives worth saving and defending, and whose are not? Second, I want to ask how we might rethink the "we" in global terms in ways that counter the politics of imposition. Lastly, and in the chapters to come, I want to consider why the opposition to torture is obligatory, and how we might derive an important sense of global responsibility from a politics that opposes the use of torture in any and all of its forms. 2

The media have also portrayed hackers as smart, creative individuals whose energies and talents benefit the nation. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is a former hacker and Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California is located on Hacker Way. Public hack-a-thons are organized by non-profits and government institutions to propose solutions to various problems. Such activities draw on the long-standing appreciation of hackers as creatives who “think outside the box” and are sources of innovation. Governments enlist hackers in espionage efforts and other secret operations (Follis and Fish 2020). Clearly, all hackers and all hacks are not alike. Consequently, the aim of a hacker or the damage resulting from a hack needs to be assessed in order to decide whether the hack constitutes a prank, vandalism, theft, terrorism, an act of war, or something else. These distinctions are obscured, however, by the US government and popularized in the media’s dissemination of the vision of the internet as a new terrain of war. To better understand the meaning of this development, however, we need to view it in the context of two profound societal shifts—the culture and politics of the “war on terror” and the permeation of digital media into everyday life. Security Culture and Digital Life Powerful discourses about cyberthreats, cyberweapons, and a digital arms race now circulate across multiple domains including official government statements, journalism, corporate communications, and entertainment. Two developments—the post 9/11 American security state and the new affordances of digital media—intertwine in dynamic ways to make cybersecurity a matter of social and political consequence, rather than simply a technocratic concern. Since 9/11, ongoing processes of securitization have highlighted the functions of the US government as a provider of security while making security measures highly visible to Americans in their everyday lives. Over the same period, digital technologies have transformed the way people communicate, conduct their social and work lives, get news and information, express themselves, store and circulate documents, images, opinions and more. There is a powerful synergy between these two processes. Catherine Lutz reminds us that long “before 9/11, nearly every aspect of the American way of life began to depend on, entwine with, or suffer from a massive investment in arms and armies” (2010:45). But as Joseph Masco’s recent exploration of the culture of the American national security state argues, “counterterror” following 9/11 has created an “unlimited space and time horizon for military state action” and “a world without borders, generating threats without limits” (2014:2). This national security culture is the larger context out of which new militaristic frameworks for understanding the internet are produced. The security culture promoted by the US government to combat terrorism after 9/11 involved new logics of threat and the organization of security around the idea of terror, rather than a fixed enemy (Masco 2014). This has expanded the authority of the state into gray areas. This political shift can be partly understood through contrasting something that is invasive which crosses boundaries and something that is pervasive which obscures them. The War on Terror blurs the borders between war and peace. It is temporal in the diminished distinction between war time and peace time, and it is spatial in the ways that war zones and civilian spaces cease to be clearly differentiated. In the War on Terror, war (enemies, threats, targets, and so on) is not limited temporally or spatially, and security is premised on the idea that attacks could happen anywhere at any time. In a similar way, digital media have penetrated everyday life so widely that the boundaries between online and offline have become less significant, and perhaps indeterminate (boyd 2012, Nordenson 2020). While the internet was once associated with the virtual and culturally constructed as another plane of existence and expression, the digital is now integrated into the daily lives and activities of Americans. Digital media facilitated the creation of vast borderless networks not under the control of any government. When viewed from the perspective of the state in the context of a war on terror, such vast networks of communications and social relations are bound up with threats and security. Where the digital, despite its origins in military development, came to be associated with new forms of freedom and community, it now is increasingly depicted as a realm of warfare, a weapons system, and a vector of threat. Underpinning ideas about the destructive force of the internet is connectivity itself; because today so many facets of daily life involve digital networks. Thus, during his time as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army, General Martin Dempsey said that gaps in corporate cybersecurity pose a threat to national security because the US military depends on commercial networks (Hennigan 2015). From this perspective, the interconnectedness made possible by the internet is being used to construct a world where nothing lies outside military concerns. The internet offers a perfect field for the expansion of threat scenarios set in “a world without borders, generating threats without limits” as Masco (2014) has described American national security culture around nuclear weapons and the war on terror, because cyberspace is already imagined as borderless, global, and future-oriented. The openness and borderlessness of digital communications is threatening to states. Many governments in the global south engage in temporary internet shutdowns during times of heightened political activity (Freyburg and Garbe 2018, Wagner 2018). Some governments restrict online activities and expression through blocking and censorship (Warf 2011, Akgül and Kırlıdoğ 2015). The US government has taken a subtler approach, relying on surveillance and casting the internet as a site for terrorism and war. This discursive construction of the internet as a war zone is distinct from the US government’s long involvement and investment in developing digital technologies specifically for military purposes (Silver and Marwick 2006). Routine digital communications, online activities, and data of Americans’ daily lives have come to be regarded as potential sources of threats to national security, and therefore in need of government surveillance as famously revealed by Edward Snowden (Greenwald 2014, Lyon 2015b). In terms of discourse, it is noteworthy that the NSA’s secret programs of digital mass surveillance have been consistently described by officials in deceptively benign scientific-sounding terms—such as “data collection,” “data gathering,” and “monitoring”—and journalists often emploed the same language even when not quoting directly.

Sharma and Nijjar ’23 [Sanjay Sharma, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. Jasbinder S. Nijjar, lecturer in sociology at the University of Surrey; “Post-racial politics, pre-emption and in/security”; 05-01-2023; European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 27, no. 2; doi.org/10.1177/13675494231168177; accessed 07-25-2024] dliang

The objective of preventing crime, rather than simply responding to already committed crime, has a long history in Western nations. Some of the earliest forms of militarized policing in Britain’s colonies reflected a ‘commitment to a preventative function’ (Brogden, 1987: 11), as part of a broader strategy of racial regulation. However, it was during the 1970s in the USA that prevention became an explicit strategy in attempts to reduce rising levels of crime and make policing more efficient and effective. This heralded a future-orientated intervention-based approach premised on the prediction and pre-emptive management of crime.

Sharma and Nijjar ’23 [Sanjay Sharma, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. Jasbinder S. Nijjar, lecturer in sociology at the University of Surrey; “Post-racial politics, pre-emption and in/security”; 05-01-2023; European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 27, no. 2; doi.org/10.1177/13675494231168177; accessed 07-25-2024] dliang

Pre-empting racialized terror