Democrats should own cyber security the way republicans own guns.
Let's think about this - conservatives OWN the gun issue. They have a monopoly on it. If you support guns you vote R, that is all there is to it. But the Dems, we need an issue to drive voters to our side. I think that very thing could be cyber security. What got me thinking about this is the Solar Winds hack. Seriously - the mainframe was hacked because they had the password "solarwinds123". Really, you shouldn't have a mainframe password be the same as what you use to buy the latest Avengers movie from Amazon.
Conservatives use NRA to their advantage. So let's use IBM to our advantage! The next war isn't going to be fought with tanks and missiles. It's going to be fought with mainframes and routers. Hell, we saw what Russia was capable of in 2016 and they overturned an election and turned half the country against the other half without firing a shot! Right now you're more likely to be the victim of a cyber attack than a terror attack.
But let's face it, we've all been hacked at some point or another in the last 10 years. I've personally had my credit cards hacked multiple times and ridiculous items have been charged that have maxed out those cards and then some. Getting that sorted out with the bank is always fun (not). And if infrastructure is going to be a huge part of our platform going forward, let's include cyber infrastructure in it. We're not prepared for another event on the scale of Solar Winds. And if that happens things are going to get worse.
The next 9/11 that is going to cripple the country isn't going to be a terrorist attack. It's going to be a DDOS attack. It's not going to come from Iraq or Afghanistan. It's going to come from China or Russia. And when that happens it will hit before you know it and send all of us back to the stone ages. That will be a very costly war to fight for which we are very under prepared. If computers are going to be our gateways to the world, we need to protect them the way we would protect our children or our land.
Right now we're fighting a war. It's being fought on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. It's not being fought with bullets, but with words, memes, and GIFs. This war is being fought with targeted advertising designed to flip people's deepest political beliefs to the side of batshit crazy. It's not being fought with the US or Russian armies. The troops on this battlefield are people who you consider to be friends and relatives. People are getting uglier, meaner, ruder, and crazier, and it's because Russia and China have weaponized social media politics. Parler got banned from Apple, Google, and AWS, so where did it go? Russian servers. MAGA supporters get banned from Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, so where do they go? They go to Telegram which is a social media site owned and operated on - wait for it - Russian servers.
We even saw cyber warfare being fought on January 6th. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times noted that the insurrectionists got most of their funds to pay for their trips to the Capitol through cryptocurrency and dark web resources. We saw Russia fueling vaccine fears by floating bizarre theories that 5G towers were responsible for giving us COVID and that the vaccines contained microchips that were going to track your every move. Conservatives are even mobilizing in rural areas and going through military training in case there's an attack on our power plants. This is all happening without a shot even being fired.
Democrats can own this issue. It should be at the forefront of every campaign. And it would be relatively easy to do so. Forget building a great wall. Let's build a great firewall. Let's keep foreign influence out of our internet. Let's secure our passwords and work from home applications. And unlike Trump's unbelievably poorly planned effort to build a "great wall", which blew into Mexico, the Great Firewall won't ruin landscapes or displace properties. It will create jobs and make things better for people working at home and at work. It'd be like building a cyber suit of armor around the country. Forget Space Force, we really need to start a Cyber Force. And unlike make believe space battles, real life internet battles are actually a thing. Let's make building cyber infrastructure as important as building a new infrastructure! If we're going to be commuting on the information highway instead of the actual highway, let's secure it. If you want a more secure internet and a more secure America, then vote D!
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