{"id":5700,"date":"2020-12-02T11:29:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T16:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/?p=5700"},"modified":"2020-12-02T11:29:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T16:29:21","slug":"cyberwarfare-and-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/2020\/12\/02\/cyberwarfare-and-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberwarfare and the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 An original funding budget of $6,000 in 1940 would change the world forever.\u00a0 This U.S. government research project would become known as the Manhattan project in 1942.\u00a0 Originally just granted $6,000 for research, the project would have up to 2 billion dollars in funding by the summer of 1945.\u00a0 This project is one of the most significant in world history due to its impact on the future of our planet.\u00a0 After the first nuclear bomb was tested during the Trinity test in July 1945, it was apparent the world would never be the same.\u00a0 This project concluded with the two most disruptive acts of war in history, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Since these bombings took place, the nuclear arms race has captivated the world.\u00a0 The Cold War was one of the most tense and unpredictable times our planet has ever seen, and going into the 21st century the threat of nuclear war was still looming.\u00a0 Iran was a focus of these worries, due to their outsider mentality in the global sphere.\u00a0 The nation has a lot of enemies, and few allies.\u00a0 Both of these facts made Iran a likely nation to be developing nuclear weapons, as the US proved in WW2 that to hold this ability of destruction brings about serious influence.\u00a0 The uncertainty of their nuclear program was increasingly worrisome to the international community throughout the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0 Something had to be done, and almost 60 years after the initial Trinity test it would take a new innovative weapon to confront Iran\u2019s threat.\u00a0 This weapon came in a form that had rarely been seen before, and never to this stature: a computer worm.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In 2005 the United States was recognizing the threat of Israel bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear power facilities, and in an attempt to forgo war in the middle east with one of our closest allies it was time to embark on a new initiative.\u00a0 Unlike the Manhattan Project, this would take a modern technological form.\u00a0 The intelligence communities of the United States and Israel jointly constructed a computer worm named Stuxnet, with the purpose of delaying and complicating Iran\u2019s nuclear program.\u00a0 The computer virus was designed to attack computers inside an Iranian uranium enrichment plant in the city of Natanz.\u00a0 By infiltrating the software inside the facility the worm manipulated the work rates of centrifuges.\u00a0 These centrifuges, which separate uranium, began to spin too fast causing them to overheat and malfunction.\u00a0 This worked exactly as the joint intelligence force had desired, delaying Iran\u2019s nuclear program by destroying the technology on the inside.\u00a0 Unintentionally, it spread rapidly to other facilities across Iran, disrupting many computer run initiatives such as gas lines and water treatment plants.\u00a0 This was not the plan or desire of the United States and Israel, however it gave a great warning about the possibilities of cyberwarfare.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Stuxnet is credited as the first large scale cyber attack, as it successfully disrupted Iran\u2019s nuclear program in 2010.\u00a0 This signified a change in the future of warfare, as the capabilities of cyberwarfare were first recognized.\u00a0 It has influenced a new dimension of warfare that already has taken leaps forward from 2010.\u00a0 As technological ability continues to improve, so too will the threat of cyberwarfare.\u00a0 How far will these weapons of war go?\u00a0 I believe that these threats will never go away, as the unrestricted access to the internet in many parts of the world combined with governments dependency on technology allows cyberwarfare to be one of the most disruptive weapons of war we have ever seen.\u00a0 Technology and science have always increased the possibilities to destroy, and cyberwarfare is the most modern representation of this trend.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.csoonline.com\/article\/3218104\/what-is-stuxnet-who-created-it-and-how-does-it-work.html<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Manhattan-Project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 An original funding budget of $6,000 in 1940 would change the world forever.\u00a0 This U.S. government research project would become known as … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10697,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[470131],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10697"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5701,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700\/revisions\/5701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}