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Tension as UK raises cap on nuclear weapons

Will the next world war be a cyber-war? Britain’s defence review predicts increasingly volatile and aggressive digital conflicts – and imagines nuclear missiles as a desperate last resort. The supervisor of the water plant in Oldsmar, Florida stared at her screen in consternation. What was happening to the lye levels? Instead of being at their usual 100 parts per million, they were heading for 11,000. At that point the chemical – harmless in its normal concentration – would make the town’s water supply poisonous, threatening the lives of 15,000 people. The problem soon became clear. Hackers had broken into the plant’s computer system and were manipulating the lye levels remotely. Fortunately they had not done it in a very sophisticated way, and the plant’s IT team was able to shut them out again. Tech experts say that the hack was only possible because the plant was using outdated technology. But the incident highlights something governments are all too aware of: the more connected the world becomes by the internet, the more potential there is for the dangerous disruption of infrastructure by cyber attacks. It is not hard to imagine what larger-scale sabotage might look like. Cities could be deprived of electricity, traffic deadlocked and hospital computer networks paralysed. Even more alarmingly, missile systems and nuclear power plants could be interfered with. Not only might defence chiefs find themselves unable to direct their weapons and personnel, they might take drastic action based on false information. Modern armies use algorithms to collect information and assess threats, and US intelligence services believe that Russia and China are already working to feed them fake data. If successful, they might be able to mount an attack without anyone being sure which country it was coming from. As a result, governments face a dilemma. Should they continue to spend money on weapons of physical destruction, or divert it to cyber defence instead? Britain’s answer, given yesterday when Boris Johnson outlined its new defence and foreign-policy strategy, was to invest more money in both. He had already announced a £16.5bn increase in the defence budget over four years, to be spent in part on a new National Cyber Force, an artificial intelligence (AI) agency and a “space command” capable of launching a rocket next year. Now Britain is also set to increase its stockpile of nuclear warheads to 260, rather than reducing it to 180 as previously planned. It is a highly controversial move, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament, and critics warn that it could start a new nuclear-arms race. But the foreign minister, Dominic Raab, insists that it is “the ultimate insurance policy” against global threats. One expert, however, believes that our main concern should be another type of security: epistemic. Elizabeth Seger argues that the rise of fake news could lead to “epistemic babble” – a situation in which nobody can tell the difference between truth and lies. That would make it all too easy for them to be led into conflict for no good reason. Will the next world war be a cyber-war? Touchpad touchpaper Some say, no. Cyber-warfare can cause major disruption and might potentially bring a nation to its knees. But any country that wants to take over another’s territory is still going to have to send in physical troops, and at that stage it is likely to face fighters armed with traditional weapons which do not rely on the internet but can still do a great deal of damage. Others argue that cyber-warfare is the obvious way forward. Someone with a high level of expertise can disguise where the attack is coming from, so their enemies do not know who they are fighting, making it impossible to retaliate. And since all sophisticated weapons are now controlled via the internet, even an apparently conventional war is going to have a cyber element. KeywordsConsternation - A feeling of shock or confusion. It derives from a Latin verb meaning to alarm or dismay.

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