Cyber Attacks: The Up and Coming New Type Of War

  In the article "Cyber Wars" by Patricia Smith, she talk about cyber attacks going on between Iran and the U.S. over via the web. Iran has already issued some attacks on the U.S.. One attack outside of the U.S. that was major, was on the company Saudi Aramco. This line on the attack reads "They knew that last August 15, more than 55,000 Saudi Aramco employees would be at home preparing for a Muslim holiday. So that morning, at 11:08, a computer virus began erasing data on 75% of Aramco's corporate PCs-documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, files-replacing everything with an image of a burning American Flag." This shows that Iran could do some serious damage over a computer.
  The article includes quotes from people of congress, the government, and the white house. One quote that stood out to me was from Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta who stated "An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cybertools to gain control of critical switches, they could derail passenger trains or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country." This stood out to me because it surprised me that over a computer a country could do so much damage and it could all be done with just one click.
  I think that any kind of war is wrong and that war over the computer seems quite petty really. War to me is just petty in general. Though I'd rather prefer there be no war at all, at least with cyber war, the U.S doesn't have to send out any more of our men and women who have served the country before.
  This article makes me think that countries will fight over the most absurd and petty things just to get their way. Sometimes yes, there could be a serious cause for war. Though I haven't seen any in my short lifetime. There are other ways to go about things other than war. Wasn't the goal of the U.S was to event or keep peace in the world? If so, war is not helping that cause. I hope that in the future, we can all just live in some form of peace with each other and stop these frivolous wars.