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Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

In the near future it's just constantly going to be countries launching cyber-attacks on each other, stealing private citizens' data, taking public utilities down, engaging in disinformation campaigns, etc.

And the ones who'll be affected worst by the whole ordeal will be innocent people around the world who aren't very tech-savvy and are just trying to get through the day.

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Was going to write something. You wrote basically all I had to say. I'm so apathetic at this point :(

Just as in other areas where countries use violence against each other's populations, it will be a question of the state defending its citizens.

Maybe, some day, there will be some sort of international agreement about what can be done and what must not be done. Like with ABC weapons.

> Just as in other areas where countries use violence against each other's populations, it will be a question of the state defending its citizens.

Unfortunately the state seems to be more interested in using these same attacks against its own citizens.

> Just as in other areas where countries use violence against each other's populations, it will be a question of the state defending its citizens.

And for this reason, the innocent civilians of third-world/underdeveloped/developing nations will be affected the worst.

There has already been such an agreement (The Hague Land Warfare Order, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...), but "cyber warfare" wasn't a thing then and thus not included.

The future is now, I mean in 2016 there were conferences about how easy it is to turn off utilities with a USB key on the ground or checking if they run Windows 98 in their control plants. By law, the power network is listed online to combat climate change and pollution.

In the sense that information has always dictated war, has the world really changed since WW2 in this regard?

> By law, the power network is listed online to combat climate change and pollution.

Which law is that?

the cyber domain is like the plains of WW1 right now. Everyone's got a machine gun, but tactics havn't evolved yet. So yeah, a lot of people are going to get mowed down. But there's an opportunity to make personal cyber security easy and marketable so governments have to be more targeted with what they do.

Sure everyone should just be kind to one another and live in total peace and harmony. Unfortunately not everyone sees it that way. You can't force other people to see things your way, and you can't have détente without demonstrated capability.

Is the game theory in favor of this? It seems like it would be a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, thus unlikely to happen.

This has been happening for many years already.

In other words, business as usual. All that has changed are the means by which it is conducted.

It feels like Shadowrun was ahead of its time.

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