Hackers weren’t hobbyists anymore. They weren’t playing a game. In short order, they had become the world’s new nuclear scientists—only nuclear deterrence theory did not so neatly apply. Cyberweapons didn’t require fissile material. The barrier to entry was so much lower; the potential for escalation so much swifter. Our own stockpile of cyber exploits and cyberweapons hardly deterred our adversaries from trying to acquire their own. What Iran, North Korea, and others could not develop on their own, they could now just buy off the market. The Gaucho might not sell them a way in, but there were
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