Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Should The U.S. Respond To A Cyber-Attack With Nuclear Weapons?

The Hill: Pentagon mulls nuclear response to cyber attacks: report

A Pentagon report outlining an updated U.S. nuclear strategy suggests using nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear attacks on the U.S., according to The New York Times

The newspaper reported Wednesday that the draft document, the Nuclear Posture Review, provides for possible nuclear responses to devastating cyberattacks on U.S critical infrastructure.

The suggestion marks a dramatic expansion of what the U.S. believes warrants a first use of nuclear weapons, the Times noted. Only in narrow cases, such as in the event of a biological attack on the U.S., has Washington suggested that it could respond with nuclear force.

Read more ....

Update #1: Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks With Nuclear Arms (New York Times)
Update #2: Pentagon Reportedly Weighing Using Nukes In Response To 'Large Cyberattacks’ (Huffington Post)
Update #3: Pentagon: Counter massive cyberattack with nukes -- VICE News

WNU editor: I am skeptical on this use of nuclear weapons in the event of a cyber attack from an unfriendly country. To me this is over-kill.

2 comments:

Carl said...

Not only is it overkill, but the experts say that attribution is hugely difficult. The problem in Washington is the propensity to jump to conclusions whenever something like that happens, not to mention the fact that they also won't talk about US cyberwarfare operations, so it's all a little bit crazy.

Anonymous said...

This is such a broad and stupid question. I hate articles like that
It depends on so many factors. Was it a nation that hacked? What was hacked? What were the consequences? Where would the nukes be used? Etc. etc..
Stupid clickbait articles