The single-minded fanaticism of the military mind knows no bounds, and now, according to the Washington Post, the US Army’s Center for Signals Warfare in Warrenton, Virginia is calling for tenders for a study into the feasibility of developing viruses and delivery and penetration systems to create the capability of infiltrating and disabling enemy command and control systems, including the systems on-board missiles: for the US to unleash such a form of warfare is particularly crazy because its efficacity depends crucially on the perpetrator having incomparably better programmers and more secure systems than any potential enemy – when all the evidence points to the US being particularly weak in computer security while most of the most malignant computer viruses appear to have originated in Pakistan, Hong Kong or Israel, while the Soviets have some of the best programmers in the world; the threat to deploy such a system would make it very tempting for any potential foe to make a pre-emptive virus strike against the US that could completely disable not only its military systems but the entire running of the country, for many months – would such a pre-emptive strike amount to an act of war, if so, who knows where it came from?
