Week 4 Discussion

As part of this week's readings, the textbook tackles the question of what exactly is meant by “cyberwar”? As the book says, not everyone agrees. For this discussion, we'll look at one example of that argument.

 In the fall of 2014, an attack on Sony resulted in the theft and release of company emails, unreleased movies and other data, along with wiping of hard drives. The attack seemed to be at least in part retaliation for creating the movie “The Interview” and an attempt to prevent it's release.

 This attack got considerable coverage in the press, and many commentators referred to it as “cyberwar” or “cyberwarfare” or other similar terms. And then other commentators said that was going too far, it wasn't really cyberwar. It's probably the first time that argument was carried out so much in public, and so much by people who really hadn't thought much about it before, including several politicians.

 Your assignment for this discussion is the typical format of one initial post and two responses.

 Initial Post

 Find an article online where someone refers to the Sony attack as “cyberwar” or “cyberwarfare” or some similar term that includes the word “war”. Your post should include a quote from the article, any necessary explanation of the quote, and a link to the article.