In 2007 the U.S. Air Force set up Cyberspace Command -- AFCYBER. In the spring of 2008 the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization addressed the issue. On May 14 Estonia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia, in which the seven countries agreed to fund and man a cyberdefense research and training center in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

This new expansion of the war zone was to be expected. After human beings settled dry land, they set their eyes on the seas, using them for military purposes. Several thousand years later, they moved the war to the air, with tethered aerostats, dirigibles and then airplanes designed to carry weapons long before they started transporting passengers and cargo.

This questionable progress gradually accelerated. The path from the first log boats to the Wright Brothers' planes took thousands of years. The next phase, from the first aircraft to the first satellite, took only 54 years. Spacecraft of the 1960s became an inalienable part of industrialized countries' war machine.

In the late 20th century man moved to cyberspace, initially created with war in mind. The era of prompt information exchange 20 to 25 years ago has given way to a new vast world with a constantly growing number of objects of critical importance for modern society.

The establishment of the cyberdefense research and training center in Tallinn, designed to protect Estonia from hackers, looks logical, because information security of the NATO member states is crucial for the bloc's information safety. One or several malfunctioning elements in the cyberspace of its member states will have a pernicious effect on the defense ability of the organization as a whole.

The development of defense systems means that somebody is attacking or preparing to attack. The military view offensives against strategic information objects as part of modern warfare. Undermining the adversary's economy by hacking into its exchange and major banks' servers, paralyzing the computerized air and rail traffic control systems, and collapsing the sites of news agencies and Internet publications is a shortcut to victory.

Trying to protect oneself from such attacks by not using the Internet in strategic sectors is useless, because this path will throw one's economy back decades and eventually will result in defeat.

The same is true of military systems. A modern army cannot be effective without huge but vulnerable computer information systems.

The only reasonable conclusion is that victory in a cyberwar is possible only with active offensive actions. To win such a war, one need not have large groups of top hackers; you can simply overthrow the board, removing all figures from it.

High-powered electromagnetic emissions capable of destroying the bulk of radio and electronic systems are the "hand" that can overturn the board. Nuclear weapons, which have the strongest EME, have been considered an effective instrument for suppressing communication systems since the 1960s.

Less radical instruments are shock-wave emitters, used in E-bombs and artillery shells, which can destroy unshielded electronics and even many wires within a range of hundreds of meters.

Many people say a cyberwar would be more humane than a conventional war. After all, hacking into cybersystems would not kill anyone, and an E-shell can kill humans only if it hits them directly, which is highly improbable.

But this is a simplistic view. An economic and transport paralysis in a large country will claim nearly as many lives as a military conflict, and a possible counteraction involving conventional and possibly nuclear weapons may increase the number of victims immeasurably.

The world is becoming smaller, more interdependent and vulnerable. As the saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

(Ilya Kramnik is a military commentator for RIA Novosti. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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