In short, in the Sony case, the government and the country got a glimpse of the disturbing, ambiguous nature of cyber conflict. It does not look like war as we know it, nor does it resemble Hollywood’s depictions of a devastating cyberattack. The Sony attack demonstrated how profoundly a new generation of weapons has changed the geography of conflict between states. The new targets will likely be all civilian: even a movie studio, hardly critical infrastructure, makes for a ripe target. “In the end,” one of Obama’s advisers told me with resignation in his voice, “we’re a lot more vulnerable
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