Wikileaks and Stuxnet

The recent leaks on government communications will have some interesting effects. First, it will exaggerate the nation's serious problem in finding good government workers; no one with job expectations will want to work where his opinions or musings are periodically made public. Second, those in government will stop being public. Meetings will be done in silent or on notepads passed around written in invisible ink. A lot of information to explore now, a lot less in the future. And the reason these self appointed moralists who leaked the information give: more transparency. The righteous always seem to confound themselves.

Yet these diplomatic leaks are minor invasions compared to Stuxnet. This story, if accurate, signals a new era in international antagonism: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/ So far it looks beyond the capacity of terrorists but at some point nations will be able to infiltrate the computer systems of enemies and disrupt the systems or turn them in some way, either against the host country itself or trigger actions from the host country against anyone, friend or foe. Imagine taking over a country electronically and using its own computers to attack its own ally or to raid a stock market or currency, all by proxy.

Most of these problems are just over the heads of the administrators.