In your opinion
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LUClEN
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Now I have very little knowledge of military might and what not, but I do know America is the world leader in terms of carriers and nuclear arms. That being said, is it safe to say that if every other country were to declare war on America they would lose?
Comments
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Wars are more than might friend.
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Very true. But it seems America has the greatest capacity to level vast spaces. They also have bases in every country which I would think gives them some advantage.
Just wondering if the biggest fish in this pond is bigger than all the fish combined -
we would lose i think
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Our military might is not measured in the ability to just level a country like during the cold war era. These days we are into surgical strikes, it is all about the prescission these days. That said it is my opinion we can be overwhelmed on a more conventional level. We still have enough nukes and conventional equipment to hold our own but not if we face a coalesced force alone.
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If the goal of the war is to conquer the US then the US would prevail. No nation nor even combinations of nations has the naval capacity to fight the US on the seas and project military force across the oceans. However the US would have no way to defeat every other nation. The damage to the world economy would compel peace on all parties.
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Nukes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Rocks
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All i know is i'd rather have the US, a relatively free democratic country watching over us than some crazy ass tyran ? our ? up.
I know i'm satirizing the current situation and it's a bit more complicated than that but you get what i'm saying.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."
John Stuart Mill
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There is no democracy in the US. It is a false democracy. The majority do not actually have power but simply an illusion of power where they get to choose who gives them the shaft and makes the big decisions rather than actually partaking in the big decision making themselves.
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RodrigueZz wrote: »There is no democracy in the US. It is a false democracy. The majority do not actually have power but simply an illusion of power where they get to choose who gives them the shaft and makes the big decisions rather than actually partaking in the big decision making themselves.
I knew this was coming... I should've avoided the word democratic. Silly me.
Anyways, i actually agree with you to a certain degree but to say there is no democracy at all seems a bit cynical.
Although i do agree that the US has become more of a republic where the representatives (chosen by the people) make the big decisions whereas the people have little to say about passing new laws and such, the US still has democratic characteristics.
I didn't mean to start a serious argument about politics when i posted my previous comment but hey, so be it.
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I would agree that it does have democratic characteristics, but the essence of democracy is "people" & "power", demos and kratos, and this just does not seem to be the case in the states. The vast majority is relatively poor yet decisions are still made in the interests of the wealthy minority. Definitely looks like more of a plutocracy than anything else.
Just looking at what it takes to be a candidate, individuals are expected to be wealthy and educated, things that are outside the reach of the majority. The normal person is not even able to run a campaign, so what political power does he really have in the grand scheme of things? -
RodrigueZz wrote: »I would agree that it does have democratic characteristics, but the essence of democracy is "people" & "power", demos and kratos, and this just does not seem to be the case in the states. The vast majority is relatively poor yet decisions are still made in the interests of the wealthy minority. Definitely looks like more of a plutocracy than anything else.
Just looking at what it takes to be a candidate, individuals are expected to be wealthy and educated, things that are outside the reach of the majority. The normal person is not even able to run a campaign, so what political power does he really have in the grand scheme of things?
Welcome to capitalism my friend.
What would you suggest though? (i'm not being sarcastic btw)
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Participatory democracy is superior to representative democracy in my opinion.
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look, if the scenario is EVERY OTHER COUNTRY in the world versus the US? the US probably loses because having to fight EVERYONE is a bit much, and Canada/Mexico being right next door helps negate our geographical barrier. but let's be honest: this is a highly-unlikely scenario
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Nuh uh.
Have you seen your foreign policy lately? -
Everyone would lose. That much radiation & damage earth would likely be a wasteland
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i have ... and i would place some kind of Vegas wager right now that this scenario will never, ever happen if i could.RodrigueZz wrote: »Nuh uh.
Have you seen your foreign policy lately?
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RodrigueZz wrote: »Participatory democracy is superior to representative democracy in my opinion.
That would be great. The problem is, a lot of citizens want to have a leader who makes tough decisions for them.
Not everyone is that interested in politics even though it's really important, often they just don't care.
So you can blame the people/political awareness.
Sheep need a shepherd.
Fortunately, not everyone's a sheep.
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If we changed the role of politics in people's lives I am confident many of those who are apathetic towards it would feel differently. To many politics is beyond their reach - they are not wealthy enough to influence it and in the end their views do not matter as it is a political representative that actually gets to vote so they are completely detached from the decision making process save for having the chance to decide who gets to decide.
I have a theory that women tend to be indifferent towards politics solely because they see so few females involved in it and thus they grow up thinking it is not for them or not of any interest. -
RodrigueZz wrote: »If we changed the role of politics in people's lives I am confident many of those who are apathetic towards it would feel differently. To many politics is beyond their reach - they are not wealthy enough to influence it and in the end their views do not matter as it is a political representative that actually gets to vote so they are completely detached from the decision making process save for having the chance to decide who gets to decide.
I have a theory that women tend to be indifferent towards politics solely because they see so few females involved in it and thus they grow up thinking it is not for them or not of any interest.
In my opinion, government should be way smaller anyway.
Btw democracy is all about reaching a consensus. You can't be involved or change every little thing to your liking.
People seem to forget that occasionally, you are just one of the 300 million citizens. When ? doesn't go exactly their way, they get upset. At the end of the day quality of life in the US is still pretty good compared to the rest of the world. I'm not saying there aren't things that could change in the benifit of the people.
Of course there are a lot of improvements to be made.
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Quality of life compared to other first world countries is rather poor though. Comparing America to third world countries does not make sense. Compare it to first world countries.
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Still not doing that bad really.
http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp
http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf -
It seems to me, we sort of have the same views.
Only difference is i'm more optimistic or naive maybe, i dunno.
You seem to be more pessimistic/cynical about politics in the US.
This ain't really a you're wrong, i'm right type of argument.
I don't even live in the US anymore (since '10) so you probably have a more accurate opinion on the current state of US politics than me. -
RodrigueZz wrote: »Now I have very little knowledge of military might and what not, but I do know America is the world leader in terms of carriers and nuclear arms. That being said, is it safe to say that if every other country were to declare war on America they would lose?
IMO, it wouldn't end well for Merica, and it doesn't need to involve opposing countries using nuclear weapons, just hackers (if they have the capability).Congress' Profound Failure on Cybersecurity
Column by ADAM LEVIN, Credit.com
Aug. 11, 2012
On August 2, 2012 Congress did it again. They acknowledged the looming threat of cyberwarfare while discussing the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, and then they "kicked the can down the road." It's what they do best. The "Party of No" hurt us all on a critically necessary piece of cyber-security legislation, and continued the U.S. Senate's proud tradition of failing to do anything to deal with our absolute vulnerability to an attack by state sponsored hackers and terrorists on our critical infrastructure.
The Obama administration called the result "a profound disappointment." That is a ? understatement.
We no longer have Cold War problems. It's hackers, working either for rogue states or terrorist organizations. At some point, they will disrupt not just our military's computers, which will be bad enough, but also the computers upon which all Americans depend: computers that run our nuclear power plants and electricity grid; computers that deliver our drinking water; computers that manage our hospitals, banks, and every. They will use our own machines against us, but as of yet we have no John Connor.
"(T)he Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . [which] has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space," William J. Lynn III, the deputy secretary of defense, wrote in a 2010 article for Foreign Affairs magazine.
What's particularly troubling, experts warn, is the degree to which America's critical computer infrastructure is decentralized, privatized, unprotected, and vulnerable to attack. It was precisely this problem that the cybersecurity bill was intended solve.
Knocking out even 10 percent of the computers used to control the complicated network of water reservoirs and pipelines that crisscross the Western states would have an immediate, severe impact in giant metropolises including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Private utility companies like First Energy — which caused the 2003 East Coast blackout, and which came within 60 days of incinerating a large swath of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2002 by allowing acid to eat a football-sized hole in a nuclear reactor lid at its Davis-Besse power plant — face only limited requirements to safeguard their critical computer systems. If this is how major utilities handle basic infrastructure such as power transmission lines and nuclear reactors, just think what unseen dangers lurk in their disparate computer systems.
"The alarm bells sound regularly: cybergeddon; the next Pearl Harbor; one of the greatest existential threats facing the United States," Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote in The New York Times. "With increasing frequency, these are the grave terms officials invoke about the menace of cybercrime — and they're not understating the threat."
Page 2 of 3
Aug. 11, 2012
Both parties in Congress agree that the question is not whether this next war will start. It's when. Yet members of both parties once again blew their best chance to get America ready. Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut, literally spent years nursing a cybersecurity bill through Congress. As originally conceived, the bill would have created security standards for computers that run the nation's critical infrastructure including transportation, water systems and the electrical grid. In addition, it gave the federal government the power to make sure those standards were met.
Lieberman's first attempt was clearly far from perfect. As my colleague Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer of Identity Theft 911, sees it, the original bill contained some serious threats to the privacy of American citizens. Particularly troubling were provisions that could have required phone companies and Internet service providers to spy on their customers, and turn over anything that looked suspicious to government surveillance agencies.
According to Goodman, "Companies would potentially be reporting individual citizens to law enforcement without any of the checks and balances we have for traditional surveillance, though in truth, to some degree this already been happening for years."
That dog don't hunt. Our Founding Fathers fought and died to preserve and protect our freedom and liberty. Sacrificing freedom in the name of protecting it (sorry, Sheriff Joe) is akin to destroying the village to save it.
That problem could have been resolved, however, by the deliberative process for which Congress was created, but some of our esteemed lawmakers had no desire to make the legislation better. They simply wanted to ? it, but for all the wrong reasons. Conservatives and their financial backers in the Chamber of Commerce didn't even mention the cybersecurity bill's looming privacy threats. Rather, they focused on trumped-up allegations that the bill would be a burden to American corporations.
"The chamber believes [the bill] could actually impede U.S. cyber security by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates," Bruce Josten, chief lobbyist for the chamber, wrote in a letter to senators.
**Continued in link***
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/congress-profound-failure-cybersecurity-care/story?id=16979814#.UXzY4MpPj_g -
Other things to consider:PLC Security In Prison Systems
Vulnerabilities in electronic systems that control prison doors could allow hackers or others to spring prisoners from their jail cells, according to researchers.
Some of the same vulnerabilities that the Stuxnet superworm used to sabotage centrifuges at a nuclear plant in Iran exist in the country’s top high-security prisons, according to security consultant and engineer John Strauchs, who plans to discuss the issue and demonstrate an exploit against the systems at the DefCon hacker conference next week in Las Vegas.
Strauchs, who says he engineered or consulted on electronic security systems in more than 100 prisons, courthouses and police stations throughout the U.S. — including eight maximum-security prisons — says the prisons use programmable logic controllers to control locks on cells and other facility doors and gates. PLCs are the same devices that Stuxnet exploited to attack centrifuges in Iran.
“Most people don’t know how a prison or jail is designed, that’s why no one has ever paid attention to it,” says Strauchs. “How many people know they’re built with the same kind of PLC used in centrifuges?”
PLCs are small computers that can be programmed to control any number of things, such as the spinning of rotors, the dispensing of food into packaging on an assembly line or the opening of doors. Two models of PLCs made by the German-conglomerate Siemens were the target of Stuxnet, a sophisticated piece of malware discovered last year that was designed to intercept legitimate commands going to PLCs and replace them with malicious ones. Stuxnet’s malicious commands are believed to have caused centrifuges in Iran to spin faster and slower than normal to sabotage the country’s uranium enrichment capabilities.
Though Siemens PLCs are used in some prisons, they’re a relatively small player in that market, Strauchs says. The more significant suppliers of PLCs to prisons are Allen-Bradley, Square D, GE and Mitsubishi. Across the U.S. there are about 117 federal correctional facilities, 1,700 prisons, and more than 3,000 jails. All but the smallest facilities, according to Strauchs, use PLCs to control doors and manage their security systems.
http://automationandcontrols.blogspot.com/2011/08/plc-security-in-prison-systems.htmlA Stuxnet-Type Hack Could Disable Prison Security Systems
By Carlton Purvis
08/01/2011 -
Strauchs has done security engineering or consulting for more than 60 detention facilities in his career. “When I read about the Stuxnet attack in Iran," said Strauchs, "I thought back and said ‘Wait a minute, prisons and jails use PLCs. Wouldn’t that be the same vulnerability?’” PLCs are essentially mini computers with a basic design to perform basic functions - to spin centrifuges in Iran, for example. They’re most common in the machine industry where they control automated tasks. They use a simple programming language called Ladder Logic to make them easier to program and troubleshoot, but it’s this simplicity that makes them vulnerable to being exploited.
PLCs are used in prison because it reduces the amount of wiring needed when there are hundreds of access points to be controlled. They consolidate controls for intercoms, video systems, door and lock alarms, and lighting controls, so a successful attack could cause chaos that would allow prisoners to escape, bring something into the prison, or even carry out a murder.
It would take a fairly sophisticated hacker to carry it out, but the hardware to do it can be bought for around $500. “Someone with malicious intentions could wreak widespread pandemonium by severely damaging door systems and shutting down security, communications, and video systems,” the report states. If no one addresses the problem, it’s only a matter of time until someone exploits this weakness, Strauchs said.
http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/a-stuxnet-type-hack-could-disable-prison-security-systems-008868
http://thehackernews.com/2011/11/computerized-prison-doors-hacked-with.htmlPrisons bureau alerted to hacking into lockups
Expert: ‘Could open every cell door’
By S. Smithson
The Washington Times
Sunday, November 6, 2011
MIAMI — Federal authorities are concerned about new research showing U.S. prisons are vulnerable to computer hackers, who could remotely open cell doors to aid jailbreaks.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is “aware of this research and taking it very seriously,” spokesman Chris Burke told The Washington Times...
“You could open every cell door, and the system would be telling the control room they are all closed,” said John J. Strauchs, a former CIA operations officer who helped develop a cyber-attack on a simulated prison computer system and described it at a hackers’ convention in Miami recently.
The security systems in most American prisons are run by special computer equipment called industrial control systems, or ICS. They are also used to control power plants, water treatment facilities and other critical national infrastructure. ICS has increasingly been targeted by hackers because an attack on one such system successfully sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009.
A malicious cyber-intruder could “destroy the doors,” by overloading the electrical system that controls them, locking them permanently open, said Mr. Strauchs, now a consultant who has designed security systems for dozens of state and federal prisons..
Hackers could “shut down secure communications” through the prison intercom system and crash the facility’s closed-circuit television system, blanking out all the monitors, he added.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/6/prisons-bureau-alerted-to-hacking-into-lockups/#ixzz2RoIyVD5c
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/6/prisons-bureau-alerted-to-hacking-into-lockups/?page=all#pagebreakH(ackers)2O: Attack on City Water Station Destroys Pump
By Kim Zetter
11.18.11
2:02 AM
Hackers gained remote access into the control system of the city water utility in Springfield, Illinois, and destroyed a pump last week, according to a report released by a state fusion center and obtained by a security expert.
The hackers were discovered on Nov. 8 when a water district employee noticed problems in the city’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA). The system kept turning on and off, resulting in the burnout of a water pump.
Forensic evidence indicates that the hackers may have been in the system as early as September, according to the “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion” report, released by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center on Nov. 10.
The intruders launched their attack from IP addresses based in Russia and gained access by first hacking into the network of a software vendor that makes the SCADA system used by the utility. The hackers stole usernames and passwords that the vendor maintained for its customers, and then used those credentials to gain remote access to the utility’s network.
The theft of credentials raises the possibility that other customers using the vendor’s SCADA system may be targeted as well.
“It is unknown, at this time, the number of SCADA usernames and passwords acquired from the software company’s database and if any additional SCADA systems have been attacked as a result of this theft,” the report states, according to Joe Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, who obtained a copy of the document and read it to Threat Level.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/hackers-destroy-water-pump/
