Cyber peace: the online war that isn't.

• Author: Watkins, Tate
• Position: Citings - Cyber war - Brief article

DESPITE congressional scare-mongering about the looming threat of cyber war--the prospect that online attacks will wreak devastation on par with traditional warfare--the calamity may never actually happen.

At least not according to Thomas Rid, a researcher in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. In a Journal of Strategic Studies paper published online in October, Rid writes that no online attack to date has constituted a war, which he defines as "a potentially lethal, instrumental, and political act of force conducted through malicious code." Furthermore, he says, it's "highly unlikely that cyber war will occur in the future."

Many members of Congress nevertheless indulge in cyber doomsday rhetoric when it suits their purposes. In 2010 Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) claimed, "We are at war, we are being...