08 Dec Ready. Aim. Click.
This message just went out on Twitter:
Sure sounds like war to me. I have no idea what the weapons actually consist of, but they were apparently effective earlier today against Mastercard. I wonder if Visa’s “troops” are now metaphorically massing on the other side of the battlefield, preparing for the counterattack. The credit card companies may not take much more than a symbolic hit from this, but it still seems like something new and nontrivial.
Meanwhile, the State Department’s assistant secretary for Public Affairs, P.J. Crowley, is sending out well-crafted, pithy-by-necessity tweets on Wikileaks issues. For instance: “The U.S. government did not write to PayPal requesting any action regarding #WikiLeaks. Not true.” This is probably an effective way for the USG to try to set things straight, quickly.
And our friend John Bolton wants us to roll out the virtual artillery: “as for Wikileaks itself, and anyone cooperating with its malicious enterprise, now is the time to test our cyber-warfare capabilities. Fire away.”
If nothing else, the Wikileaks episode is demonstrating just how central the internet will be to the future of conflict.
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