The Digital Domain of Warfare

  • Posted 10.15.15
  • NOVA

Cyberspace was not intended to be a hostile environment, but the number of digital attacks against individuals, companies, and governments grows every day. Militaries now view the Internet as a domain of warfare. To protect the welfare and information of its citizens, the U.S. government is developing a branch of the military that deals specifically with cyber warfare.

Close
Running Time: 01:56

Transcript

Edward Snowden: The Internet is shared critical infrastructure for everyone on Earth. It’s not supposed to be a domain of warfare. We’re not supposed to be putting our economy on the front lines of the battleground. But that’s increasingly what’s happening today.

Shane Harris: You think about how the military looks at cyberspace today – they actually look at it as a domain of warfare comparable to land and sea and the air and outer space, and they're looking at cyberspace as a way to both attack their enemies and spy on them, but also a place where they can be attacked and they can be spied on.

David Rothkopf: In fact, many cyber attacks occur without being noticed and most cyber attacks occur without the government having any idea that they are taking place.

Harris: The advantage is always going to go to the attacker because if you're defending your network and let's say you're a large industrial company and you've got 70,000 computers in your company that are connected to the internet, that’s 70,000 points of access that you have to defend against. The guy who's trying to get in through your system only has to find one, and frequently will look for a vulnerability in some software that you're running that you or even the manufacturer doesn't even know exists.

Michael Hayden: The American people have not yet decided what it is they want their government to do or what it is they will allow their government to do to defend them in the cyber domain.

Richard Clarke: We’re spending billions of dollars creating this new kind of warfare capability. And yet there’s been no discussion in public about the strategy for using it – about the issues that arise in that strategy. So I think we would benefit by a public discussion now of the strategy involved with cyber war, but we’re not getting it.

Credits

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Produced by
Ceri Riley
Director of Photography
Gary Henoch & Neil Barrett
Special Thanks
Ari Daniel, Lauren Aguirre, Will Toubman, Chris Schmidt
Original Footage
© WGBH Educational Foundation 2015

MEDIA CREDITS

Music
APM
Animation
Ekin Akalin

IMAGE

(main image: animated globe)
© WGBH Educational Foundation 2015

Related Links

  • CyberWar Threat

    As internet connections multiply so do points of attack and risks to national security.

  • Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare

    The former NSA contractor sat down with NOVA to discuss the perils posed by cyber warfare.

  • The Cybersecurity Lab

    Take cybersecurity into your own hands by thwarting a series of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

  • Cyber War Games

    A project called DETER allows researchers to practice fighting cyber crimes.