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For nearly everyone today, life revolves around technology. Most Americans use computers, smartphones, wireless technology, social media, and other advances in their everyday lives. Many people also trust the Internet with all of their personal information, from their bank accounts to their health records. What would happen if our communication networks were interrupted? It would make a great impact on our daily routines—and possibly far worse.

Some experts choose to classify radiological weapons not as WMDs, but as weapons of mass disruption. They contend that a major attack involving these weapons would do more to disturb our infrastructure and social balance than it would maim and destroy. In other words, it would change the way we lived (by necessitating the inconveniences that would go with decontamination and relocation, for instance), but life would go on. A greater and more common disruptive weapon, however, would be likely to involve a cyber-attack.

Cyber warfare, in which the Internet itself is the battlefield, via the Internet, can devastate financial and organizational systems. Some cyber-attacks involve sabotage, in which military and financial computer systems are disrupted, while others involve espionage or security breaches. Exploitation methods such as these are used to disable networks, software, computers, or the Internet itself to steal or acquire classified information from rival institutions or individuals for military, political or financial gain.

In 2004, the National Military Strategy proposed broadening the definition of WMD further than ever before when it introduced the term “weapons of mass destruction or effect (WMD/E),” defined as follows:

“The term WMD/E relates to a broad range of adversary capabilities that pose potentially devastating impacts. WMD/E includes chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and enhanced high explosive weapons, as well as other, more asymmetrical “weapons.” They may rely more on disruptive impact than destructive kinetic effects. For example, cyberattacks on U.S. commercial information systems or attacks against transportation networks may have a greater economic or psychological effect than a relatively small release of a lethal agent.” (Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2004, 1)

This definition acknowledges the reality that while a terrorist organization may not have the means to build a nuclear weapon or stage an all-out biological or chemical attack, it can turn a rival’s own technology against it and disrupt their way of life. However, the term WMD/E is a very new term. The Joint Staff has not reached the decision to replace the term “WMD” with the more inclusive “WMD/E,” which is currently only used within the military.

This rather radical revision of the WMD concept does not address international issues that the world community has about the potential effects of these weapons. In addition, an international WMD/E mission may be considerably difficult to execute. If a nation is planning a cyber- attack on a rival nation, the presence of this threat would be easy to hide and difficult to verify, unlike a large arsenal of illicit weapons.

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