Two million square
nautical miles, we are told, equates approximately the surface area of the
Australian continent. This is the vastness in which a trace of the Malaysian
airliner is still being sought after it vanished on Saturday the 8th of March.
All the high technology in the world seems unable to deliver answers, which
must at least incite us to question our exaggerated faith in the ubiquitous
computer and in so-called intelligent systems.
On the other hand, there
continue to be revelations from Edward Snowden which give the impression of an
omnipotent and omniscient National Security Agency. So if our every Amazon
purchase, Facebook status update, Google search or Whassup message can be
documented how can today's hyper-surveillance fail to track accurately an
errant Boeing 777?
Might we have to get used
to such paradoxes in future? As the situation in the Crimea continues to look
like a very old-fashioned exercise in sabre-rattling brinksmanship, let us
imagine... indeed hope... that by and large the guns on both sides will remain
silent. Sanctions are, of course, bloodless ripostes which can be made by both
sides. It could be that both Russia and the West in 2014 have a very pragmatic
preference for combat which does not involve sending conventional armies into
battle.
Which brings us, perhaps,
to the brink of cyber-war? What better way to reply to sanctions... which will
be claimed to be swingeing... than by launching massive attacks on the IT
infrastructure of the opposing force? Not that any such incursion will be
directly traceable to the Russians or any of the other powers involved. The use
of unwitting digital proxies could be almost be taken for granted. Neither
Washington nor Moscow would be so naive as to append their own signatures to
poison pen missives sent in either direction. The 'logic bombs’ might appear to
be lobbed from anywhere… from Belgium, from Iceland, from Egypt!
The search for the true
culprits could be as frustrating as the quest for MH370 has become. A mere two
million square nautical miles could come to be seen as little bigger than a normal
back yard.
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