Attacks on weapons systems or power plants cause an action-reaction spiral and escalate to nuclear use and extinction

What danger do the mutual attacks portend for international security? The international system is such that an incident in one country or a group of countries has reverberating effects on the entire system. Witness the collapse of the financial system in the US in 2008 that affected the entire globe. In like manner, US-China cyber-attacks portend a lot of dangers to international peace and security in the following ways. As reported by Richie (2023, May 25), a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist, Chinese hackers used stealthy malware to attack US bases in Guam. The bases serve strategic purposes, particularly in responding to conflicts in Asia for America and its allies. A crippling of the infrastructure represents not only a threat to America but its allies, hence the international dimension of the security threat. Cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure can snowball into mutual attacks on weapon systems. As observed by Fox (2022), in this digital age, cyber-attacks can shut down nuclear power plants. Knowing fully that the two countries are nuclear superpowers, confrontation by the two countries could escalate to nuclear attacks, which might effectively mean the end of civilisation. A nuclear confrontation has the potential of spillover effects on other countries apart from the belligerent states. The fallout of nuclear bombs will be carried by winds and rivers or seas making such a threat to other countries. Therefore, nuclear attacks cannot be localised in their effects even if there is no immediate threat of nuclear Armageddon because both parties observe restraints not to embark on an all-out nuclear attack.