I was fascinated recently to read how the Iranian nuclear reactor complex was ‘attacked’ by a highly targeted virus in their computer systems. It reminds me of the Kosovo conflict when NATO revealed some of their command posts were receiving similar attempts to upset their command-and-control structures. Now if like me, you have an anti-virus on your computer that updates itself, and you were horrified to find you actually need a trojan hunter and a malware hunter, and would have no chance if these things were not automatic of knowing what was happening where; it gets to be interesting to think that national security is now concentrated upon groups of programmers in airy rooms sitting at screens.
The speed with which computers can handle complex situations and make decisions means they are now the foundation of modern defence and war strategy. That they themselves have become a battle ground should not surprise us, and I am sure the men and women manning these cyber castles will be as well trained and capable as any in the armed forces.
But though this would make awfully dull cinema, real people are involved outside the screens, and real deaths are being avoided or created by the successes or otherwise of binary imagination. It isn’t a game, but it is a logical system we can never be released from so welcome to the new age when computers can do your thinking for you, but not your dying.