The report “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk“ is part of OECD’s “Future Global Shocks” series, in which thinkers from various disciplines assess whether events in their fields might become as damaging to the world as the recent financial crisis or a global pandemic. Single online events, such as a major DDoS attack, are unlikely to have such worldwide effects, but the combination of something like a botnet DDoS attack, a major EMP, and specific attacks on SCADA or other computer-controlled machinery, and some form of real-world “kinetic” attack might well shock the world.
Via Ars Technica. Download the report (PDF) “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk” from OECD.
Our perception of a cyberpunk future is shaped by the foresight of luminaries like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling. Their vivid scenarios of ubiquitous computers, high tech weaponry, corporate tyranny and social disintegration have never been closer to reality than in the world of 2011. Here’s a few facts that will make you question the very fabric of our contemporary existence and learn to embrace the promise and perils of an increasingly cyberpunk reality.
A reality filled with high technology run by low life.
Continue reading “Why you already live in a cyberpunk future” »
The authors show that the United States has the ability to defend itself from long-range nuclear armed ballistic missiles if it builds the right systems defenses based on stealthy drones that could shoot down ballistic missiles in powered flight after they have been launched from fixed known sites.This same system could defend Northern and Western Europe, and Northern Russia from large and cumbersome long-range ballistic missiles that Iran might build in the future.
Source: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (PDF).
The rate at which new states gain access to space increased dramatically in the past decade. By the end of 2009 a total of 50 states had placed satellites in space … This number is expected to continue to grow as more states seek the socio-economic benefits that space provides through the efforts of the commercial sector and countries such as China, which are helping states to develop affordable small satellites. Companies such as the former Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited and China have assisted states including Algeria, Egypt, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and South Africa in efforts to build their first civil satellites.
Excerpt from the Space Security 2010 Report (PDF). MSNBC has a summary of the report in the article “World’s military projects dominate space“.
Also see “US Space Security Policy” (PDF) from the Centre for International Policy Studies.
