Dependent on Technology

[vinceasneed]

With the recent hacks here in the US, I wonder what would happen if we lost access to our technology due to a hack or any sort malfunction. Would we be then open to attack and helpless. I am truly hoping that we have backup plans in case of this. Hopefully our systems have backup systems that hackers can't get to or we can use if there is an emergency. I don't if anyone will know the answer to this but I am very curious. From a civil perspective, imagine how many people would be lost if GPS stopped working. Older generations would be fine, but younger ones would not. So apply this now to military. What do you think will happen if we lose our technology at any point?

 

[Scorpion]

There should an international anti-cyber organization. As far as GPS is concern not only the US will be affected but many countries as well on both militarily and civil level. Military depends on GPS for missiles launching be it air to surface or surface to surface missiles, fighter jets us GPS as well for location coordinates and directions. Since there is a backup systems its easy to send many GPS satellites into orbit in any case the current failed or shot down by anti satellite missiles. Having said that, electronic warfare can completely disable GPS using jamming devices, create fake targets in the radar screen of military aircraft.

Its a big deal man.

 

[CanisLupas]

GPS would be difficult to render useless as it is space borne. Cyber attack is of most danger to the economy. Major powers like USA, Europe etc have secure dedicated networks that are isolated from the web - and have their own power supplies. So, military and essential government systems will be up even if the net was somehow dead.

The thing is though, in reality, there are far more, far smarter, techies out there that would not be happy if some government or terror group launched an attack that damaged the web. The internet was designed around no single point of failure, and rerouting, so it is almost impossible to bring everything down at once - the back bone is in more than 25 countries these days (not the 12 USA servers people still talk about - true 2 decades ago!). Rest assured that smart people in and outside of governments would have it up and working again pretty quickly.

 

[Mackmax]

Oh god, just the thought of this is terrifying. We as a nation and as a world rely on technology for survival. Just thinking of all of the people on life support, using IVs, in the operation room, or anyone hooked up to a machine that suddenly lose the access to the very things that keep them alive and healthy is outrageous. Also, we use technology as a way for pilots to interact during a flight. If this technology were to stop working, there could be many crashes. Many people would die instantly. By the way, older generations would not be fine. Many of the elderly live off of the technology used towards their medical needs. The easiest and quickest forms of communication would be lost.
From a military standpoint, this is just as drastic. For example, we would no longer have profiles of people, which is very important. I'm sure that the military has many back-up plans just in case something like this occurs.

 

[CanisLupas]

Medical machinery is not going to be online. You are talking about power blackout rather than cyber attacks. That is a possibility if say all the nuke power stations were taken out, but hospitals have backup fuel powered generators, so could be kept alive. As I said before, military networks are secure and have secure power systems and multiple offline back ups - including microfische and paper. The danger is the country going bankrupt and people going crazy and rioting because they lost their minecraft character.