This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

And though he didn’t call out the agency by name, Smith took direct aim at the NSA, and the market the United States had created for cyberweapons. “Nation-state attacks are growing because of increasing investments that are leading to increasingly sophisticated cyberweapons,” Smith said. “We simply cannot live in a safe and secure world unless there are new rules for the world.” The twenty-first century required new rules of wartime and peace, Smith proposed. “The world needs a new, digital Geneva Convention … What we need is an approach that governments will adopt that says they will not attack civilians in times of peace. They will not attack hospitals. They will not attack the electrical grid. They will not attack the political processes of other countries; that they will not use cyberweapons to steal the intellectual property of private companies. That they instead will work together to help each other and the private sector respond when there are cyberattacks. In fact, what we really need is not only to recognize the need for rules but, frankly, to know when others are violating them.”