Reflection #2

The first time I visited the Spy Museum was as an eighth grader on my school’s field trip to Washington D.C. My friends and I were fascinated by the secret tunnel, in which we could evesdrop on other tourists, and the Aston Martin which looked like it was straight out of a James Bond movie. This trip was very different because of my shift in mind from “oh my gosh this stuff is awesome I want to be a spy” to “This is slightly terrifying.” Much of my newfound anxiety was a direct result of the new exhibit, Weapons of Mass Disruption, consisting of a short film all about cyber wars. The video explained how cyber attacks are the terrorist outlet of the future, and even admitted that the chances of a serious breaching of our country’s cyber security is not possible, but in fact likely. There are even reports that some countries have already been successful in infiltrating systems in order to damage many networks. Today, we begin to freak out when our cell phones have low signal or if we are in a spot with bad wi-fi. One cyber attack could do so much more damage than most people realize. One interesting fact that was brought up in the exhibit was that the effects of a cyber attack would take us back to the technology of the 1700s, within seconds. Our dependence on the usefulness of technology has become so absurd that the threats posed by these cyber attacks would change everything. Although the Department of Defense as well as Homeland Security have started to take less physical acts of terrorism like these more seriously and have attempted to secure our electrical power grid, organizations such as the NERC have even commented that we are not prepared to immediately handle these types of attacks, let alone a full cyber war. Since decreasing our dependence on technology is not a feasible option, and working on stronger security to decrease the likelihood of these attacks is a slow, complicated process, I believe that these organizations should be working on ways to recover from cyber breaches if in fact they are as likely and as devastating as the experts claim.