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Hacking the Ayatollahs

Nov. 21 2014

In 2010, computer security experts started detecting the Stuxnet virus spreading rapidly across the Internet. Mysteriously, its complex code seemed to do nothing but further distribute the virus—until it encountered software used by the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, where it proceeded to interfere with the operation of centrifuges. Kim Zetter’s book reconstructing the story of Stuxnet, and examining its implications, is reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld:

Zetter marshals evidence suggesting that these high jinks slowed down Iran’s nuclear effort. It is not a criticism of her book to note that this assessment, like many of its observations and conclusions, is at best well-informed conjecture. [The covert operation that created Stuxnet] remains shrouded in secrecy. The interviews and public sources upon which Zetter draws yield no definitive information. Perhaps only the Iranians themselves know for certain what happened, and they are not telling.

Whatever Stuxnet did or did not accomplish, [Zetter’s book] has the virtue of putting the attack into a broader context. The epoch of cyber warfare inaugurated by Stuxnet promises to be no less unnerving than the nuclear-weapons age that began in 1945. The problem is familiar: What goes around comes around. We may hope that the virus damaged the ayatollahs’ nuclear program, but given the degree to which Internet connectivity has expanded into every corner of American life, we ourselves are susceptible to attack by the same kind of stealth weapon.

Read more at Hudson Institute

More about: Cyberwarfare, Iranian nuclear program, Mossad, Stuxnet

 

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic