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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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I get the biological vector - it's scary. But a cyber attack? Meh.
A coordinated and effective cyber attack could cripple infrastructure, it's actually a thing to be concerned about. There's a reason we banned certain Chinese chip manufacturers products from being used within government hardware. If you think there's not an actual threat you're not paying attention.
Could. But in reality wouldn't.
Russia has been at open, kinetic war with Ukraine for over a year now. Before that they've been the aggressors since 2014 Crimea annexation. Russia is one of the worlds leading "cyber powers". Cyber has done very, very little damage in Ukraine.
Sure, there is risk. But it's not "extinction level risk" like a biological vector. There's never been a cyber attack that has closed the global economy for 2+ years. Cyber attacks just don't scale that way. But viruses like COVID do. We know.
The US is well known to use this as a vector for attacks. Intercept network hardware in delivery, insert hardware backdoors and then have delivered as if nothing happened.
So, only fair they're concerned others might do it.
This is just my opinion, NOT in any way facts:
Thing is we've all been attacked and are actively defending against cyber attacks already, all over the internet-connected globe. We've fought bot nets. We are prepared. We've taken precautions. Our defenses has been battle-tested. (Though I am not sure we are prepared enough against these new pattern-finding AIs). And we know to keep essential services offline.
Biological we haven't, we've mostly trusted our immune system, which is made for smaller population densities. And we have no way to modify our defenses other than vaccines. If any smart biohacker finds a vulnerability, our only plan is what we did when covid started. And a biological attack combined with a misinformation campaign could cripple any country easier than any cyber attack.