Why waste money on military weapons?

It's really sad how some men and women who rule nations believe that their power and the respect their nations get is directly proportional to the amount of military weapons that they have and their military prowess. That used to be true before the computer age but with the advent of the computer which was utilised to control almost everything from air traffic, rail traffic in developed nations, road traffic lights, electric power stations, water supply systems to government databases and financial systems, the power of a nation now rests on how well it can protect its critical computer network systems from hackers. If ever there is going to be a world war III in years to come,(may God forbid) it is going to be a cyber war with nations launching cyber attacks on each other's critical computer network systems, which will render all military weapons useless.

Picture it this way. The year is 2060 and the whole wide world has become one computer network highway. China has become the number one superpower having overtaken giants like USA, Japan, UK, South Korea and Russia and that is because it has developed an army of hackers who have the ability to hack into any computer network system in the whole world and through those hackers China stole other nations' technology programs, business and strategic governance intelligence and improved on it to become a superpower to reckon with. Then it so happens that there is a diplomatic dispute between USA and China which escalates into an all-out war. USA is convinced that with its superior military weapons it can cut China down to size by defeating it in military war so it gives China an ultimatum to submit to USA's demands or else face their wrath in war. This ultimatum opens China's old wounds, the psychological trauma it suffered during the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, when British gunboats routinely humiliated the Chinese government of the day. The deep feelings of resentment most Chinese feel for the humiliation they suffered during that time makes them want to ensure that there is no repeat of a time when foreign powers could push the Chinese people around with impunity. Therefore the Chinese knowing very well that they stand no chance if it came to a conventional military conflict with USA and its superior military firepower, they turn to using what they can do best, they utilise their army of hackers to launch a cyber attack on USA. So as the USA army is busy preparing to launch a barrage of ballistic missiles and jet fighters to destroy key Chinese targets, China simply telnets into the USA's critical computer network systems and by so doing takes over control of the whole nation of USA. At the flick of an electronic switch the Chinese army of hackers totally shut down USA's electric power stations, water supply systems, all traffic control systems, USA financial systems and all USA government databases. USA with all its computer network systems shut down abruptly stands still and the result is more devastating than the earthquake in Haiti of January 2010 and also more devastating than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of August 1945. There are airplane & airbus crashes, electric train crashes and road accidents all over USA, people suffocate in elevators and the effect of the terrible stench from decaying food supplies in refridgerators and toilets without water after a few days with the electronic switch off is worse than the effects of the poisonous gases at Chenobyl, Bhopal or Seveso combined. USA's attempt to respond by launching nuclear-armed Trident missiles at China proves impossible, as the computer systems that control the weapons system have been hacked into by the Chinese army of hackers.

Dear readers, heave a sigh of relief because this is a fictitious story and not a prophetic statement but be warned that a situation like this has the potential to become reality especially considering what was written on http://www.telegraph.co.uk recently , I quote,

"There have already been well-documented instances in recent years where Chinese hackers have successfully launched cyber attacks against key Western targets like the Pentagon and Whitehall. In America Chinese hackers are reported to have attempted up to 100 000 attacks on government computers each year, and have successfully penetrated the computer systems of some of American military's elite units, such as US Army's 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. In 2006 Chinese computer hackers were accused of shutting down the UK House of Commons computer network by flooding it with bogus emails, and the UK Foreign Office and other key government departments have accused Chinese computer experts of trying to hack into their systems. In fact, China is so obsessed with achieving electronic dominance over the whole world so much that it annually holds computer hacking competitions throughout the country, and then recruit the winners to their burgeoning cyber army."

So dear readers let me get back to my question, "Why waste money on military weapons when the real threat to the world today is hackers who can penetrate the computer networks that this technology age is dependent on to run people's lives efficiently." It would be best if countries like Iran which is refusing disarmament of its nuclear weapons would realise that their nuclear weapons are no threat to an army of hackers and get rid of the nuclear weapons and concentrate their efforts on building perfectly secure computer networks that even the most capable hacker can not penetrate.