Stux chucks world into flux

Ever since I first encountered Jeffrey Goldberg crowing about Stuxnet, the cyber-weapon that reportedly set back Iran's nuclear program by 1-2 years, I've worried that by launching such weapons (or helping the Israelis launch them) the U.S. is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.  The same might be said for our ever-expanding drone deployments. David Rothkopf fleshes out such fears:

"America still hasn't quite understood that we are opening Pandora's box. Take drones. We feel we can use them anywhere, soon others will be using them against us. There are dozens of countries around the world developing their own drone technology or buying what is out on the market. The same is true for technologies like those associated with Stuxnet," said the former senior diplomat who has worked closely throughout his career with the military and intelligence communities. Or as another journalist friend of mine put it who has been covering the issue closely, "The day after Stuxnet was like the day after Hiroshima. We had the technology and no one else did. But within a matter of a few years that had changed." So had the nature of modern warfare...and by extension of modern diplomacy and that's what is going to happen here.

Will debased politics hit the databases?

Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel today delves into the coopetition between the GOP fundraising empires of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers.  When the account turned to rival databases, I suffered a free association so sharp it was almost comic, as if the keyword word flashed in front of my eyeballs. Here was the trigger:

Earlier this year, operatives from both camps had conversations with the Republican National Committee about accessing its mega database of voter information, which is both a powerful organizing tool and a valuable asset used as collateral to secure bank loans and lines of credit.

“This is about getting a hold of the most valuable asset that the RNC has,” said former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who asserted Rove’s allies have for years wanted to “get their hands on this list so bad they can taste it.”

The word was Stuxnet.  And no, I don't expect the Koch and Rove empires to sabotage each others' databases.  What I can easily imagine is Rove or other GOP operatives corrupting or stealing Democrats' data. It's so in keeping with the m.o. of the aging College Republicans who have directed GOP campaigns for a generation.

Another rough beast slouching

Lenin. Bin Laden. Palin. Stuxnet. Weapons that returned (or will return) to plague those who deploy them.

Thomas Wright of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs warns that Obama cannot have it both ways on cyberattacks: "It cannot on the one hand treat cyber-destruction by others as an act of war but then say that US cyber-destruction is a routine covert action":

When something wicked this way comes

In the Times' long investigative report on the Stuxnet virus that has apparently severely disrupted Iran's nuclear program -- generally believed to be a joint Israeli-American project -- here's what jumped out at me:

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.

Color me fearful -- I don't like this rough beast being unleashed on the world.

Schlockly awe

Jeffrey Goldberg is stunned into quasi-religious wonder at the possibility that the Stuxnet virus may have seriously set back Iran's nuclear program:

If it is true, however, that Stuxnet is still corrupting Iranian computers so many months after it was introduced, it is something like a miracle. I still find it difficult to imagine that a computer virus may be able to achieve what many people thought only the American or Israeli air forces could achieve. 

It seems obvious to me that if a weaponized computer virus can seriously disrupt a uranium enrichment program, similar attacks could cripple vital systems of all kinds...elsewhere. That is not cause for celebration.

Call me risk averse (and perverse), but my reaction to news of such wondrous weaponry reminds me of how I feel when contemplating a Senate unbound by the filibuster: wait till the other side gets hold of it.