The New Digital Age by Jared Cohen & Eric Schmidt

Author:Jared Cohen & Eric Schmidt [Cohen, Jared & Schmidt, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science, Computers, History & Theory, Political Science, History
ISBN: 9780307961105
Google: Fl_LPoLdGKsC
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2013-04-23T00:22:31+00:00

Sudden access to technology does not in and of itself enable radicalized individuals to become cyber terrorists. There is a technical skills barrier that, to date, has forestalled an explosion of terrorist-hackers. But we anticipate that this barrier will become less significant as the spread of connectivity and low-cost devices reaches remote places like the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the African Sahel and Latin America’s tri-border area (Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil). Hackers in developed countries are typically self-taught, and because we can assume that the distribution of young people with technical aptitude is equivalent everywhere, this means that with time and connectivity, potential hackers will acquire the necessary information to hone their skills. One outcome will be an emergent class of virtual soldiers ripe for recruitment.

Whereas today we hear of middle-class Muslims living in Europe going to Afghanistan for terror-camp training, we may see the reverse in the future. Afghans and Pakistanis will go to Europe to learn how to be cyber terrorists. Unlike training camps with rifle ranges, monkey bars and obstacle courses, engineering boot camps could be as nondescript as a few rooms with some laptops, run by a set of technically skilled and disaffected graduate students in London or Paris. Terrorist training camps today can often be identified by satellite; cyber boot camps would be indistinguishable from Internet cafés.

Terrorist groups and governments alike will try to recruit engineers and hackers to fight for their side. Recognizing how a cadre of technically skilled strategists enhances their destructive capacity, they will increasingly target engineers, students, programmers and computer scientists at universities and companies, building out the next generation of cyber jihadists. It is hard to persuade someone to become a terrorist, given the physical and legal consequences, so surely ideology, money and blackmail will continue to play a large role in the recruitment process. Unlike governments, terrorist groups can play the antiestablishment card, which may strengthen their case among some young and disaffected hacker types. Of course, the decision to become a cyber terrorist is almost always less consequential to one’s personal health than signing up for suicide martyrdom.

Culture will play an important role in where these pockets of cyber terrorism develop in the world. Deeply religious populations with distinct radicalized elements have traditionally been the most fertile ground for terrorist recruitment, and that will hold true for cyber-terrorist recruitment as well, especially as the largely disconnected parts of the world come online. To a large extent, the web experience of users is highly determined by their existing networks and immediate environment. We do not expect radical social change simply from the advent of connectivity. What we’ll see instead are more communication channels, more participation and more rogue identities developing online.

And, of course, there are state sponsors of terrorism who will seek to conduct untraceable attacks. Today, Iran is one of the world’s most notorious sponsors of terror groups, funneling weapons, money and supplies to groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and various militant groups in Iraq.

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