The decision was made; we would send out American troops right away. The
Saudi demonstrators wanted democracy, but we couldn’t betray King Fahd, our
old ally. There was too much oil at
stake to take a chance. The
Campaign for Islamic Democracy (CID) warned that it would unsheathe its
“cybersword” if we didn’t back off. Never
hearing of this group before, we didn’t take the threat seriously.
Then, the attack was initiated. Power
outages spread across the United States. The
temperature in an automated oil pipeline near Valdez, Alaska, was lowered,
causing the pipe to burst. Next,
the CID approached our air-traffic-control system, resulting in one mid-air
collision and several close calls. Destruction
in our country was too extensive; even if we had to abandon our ally, it was
time to negotiate (Arquilla 1).
Of course, none of
this ever really happened, but it is a prime example of what war, more precisely
“cyberwar”, could be like in the future. Society's reliability on computers has caused the
nation’s security to be threatened by cyberterrorism.