This MSNBC article reports on the changing face of war:
President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the government to develop, for the first time, national-level guidance for determining when and how the United States would launch cyber-attacks against enemy computer networks, according to administration officials.
Similar to strategic doctrine that has guided the use of nuclear weapons since World War II, the cyber-warfare guidance would establish the rules under which the United States would penetrate and disrupt foreign computer systems.
I wonder whether a growing emphasis on cyber-warfare will overly sanitize the image of war. After all, it's only natural for the genius hackers sitting safely in the US to think that they are only breaking computer systems, not people. But, as more and more critical systems begin relying on computers, it may very well be the case that a computer attack will lead to serious loss of or damage to human life. The causal link will probably be more indirect, but it's still there: imagine the lives that would be lost in our society if the phone lines no longer worked, or if electricity was shut down for a week, or if the water system stopped working. Furthermore, although there will undoubtedly be attempts to target cyber-attacks to only military installations, there's no reason to suspect that we'll be any better at targeting there than we are at targeting with physical weapons. (What if we accidentally shut down a hospital rather than bombing one?)
Cyber-warfare will perhaps be less bloody; but I have my doubts about whether it'll be that much less deadly.