In the 1940s, the Manhattan project was underway to utilize science to construct a bomb that could wipe out an entire city within 60 seconds. Two of these bombs were dropped, and in the time after, the USSR and the USA engaged in a battle to construct ever more powerful nuclear weapons, the largest being the Tsar Bomb, with a yield of 50 KT, enough to wipe out most of the the Megapolis on the East Coast of the US (NYC, Boston, DC). The bomb would be far more devastating than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But oddly enough, the insane power of the nuclear bombs was the very thing that stopped us from ever using them again. Since we knew multiple countries had them, and knew their combined power could indeed create nuclear winter, no one ever used them again.
But a new age of digital warfare may be on the rise. Forget about directly bombing your enemy. What if you could turn off their city lights, the gas lines, the internet, subways and so on, wreaking havoc and making it easier to bomb, or creating massive leverage for political deals? What if instead of needing to create leverage, you undermine democracy through tactics that create information that tips the scales in favor of a candidate one nation desires over another?
Powers of Cyber Warfare
After the September 11 attacks, a report written by SANS concluded that there was a possibility that the entire power grid, or parts of it, in the US could be taken out. The report was written more than a decade ago, and it said that higher levels of automation and computerization could make hacking into the power grid more of a threat with time. Imagine if the five-day blackout that hit NYC in 2005 had lasted for any longer, or if no help could come because multiple cities across the country were affected. It is likely the Nuclear Arsenal is tied to some of the power grids and thus those could be taken down too. This could actually make it likely that other nations could use their nuclear power without a response.
Quantum Computers
The current encryption rate and the end of Moore's Law on classical electronics means that the current encryption rate will stall out, amongst other computational items. But a quantum computer could allow encryption rates so much higher that they could easily bypass even the most difficult of current encryption keys that are in place on our power grid and so on. The best encryption of today would become baby's play. So if one should find a modern analogy to the atom bomb, it would be the quantum computer. The first nation to devise a quantum computer will be the first to be able to take out all of the lights, banks and internet servers of a city. Considering the heightened focus on cyber security after this recent election and the allegations that are being pressed on Russia, it is paramount that we devise a quantum computer to increase our encryption keys and create a more formidable defense against such attacks.
