Will our future wars ultimately be fought in the cyber domain? That’s the burning question Fox News puts to computer security expert David Kennedy in this insightful clip that especially focuses on the recent failed launch of a missile in North Korea.
As Kennedy confirms, the U.S.’s ability to infiltrate and infect foreign defense computer infrastructure is formidable. The ‘Stuxnet’ virus that America was able to infect Iranian computers with set back that country’s nuclear program by several years recently, and it’s quite possible that American cyber efforts have been behind a string of missile failures in the case of North Korea.
But it’s equally possible that talk of cyber capabilities is merely a cover for the use of other tools such as long-range lasers or space-based weapons that could be used to stymie North Korean missile launches. As one defense analyst put it recently, from an Internet perspective, North Korea is virtually sealed off from the outside world; ordinary citizens are not allowed access to the Internet (only government personnel can use it, and only then, for official purposes). So, as with Iran, initiating cyber weapons might have to be done physically, and this is even harder to effect in North Korea than it was in Iran.
Still, there’s no doubt that computers and computer networks play a big role in North Korea’s defense systems and in its future infrastructure planning. Watch as David Kennedy discusses this and America’s cyber capabilities in this fascinating segment.