Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?
Toomas Hendrik IlvesRead
Digital warfare, in the Clausewitz definition as 'the continuation of policy by other means,' reached Western public consciousness via my own country, Estonia, in 2007 when our governmental, banking, and news media servers were hit with 'distributed denial-of-service attacks,' which is when hackers overload servers until they shut down.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Digital warfare involves using cyber attacks to achieve political objectives.
In this quote, Toomas Hendrik Ilves highlights the significance of digital warfare as a modern extension of traditional conflict, particularly through cyber attacks that disrupt essential services. He emphasizes the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia, illustrating how such tactics represent a new battleground in the realm of geopolitics, where digital means are employed to undermine government functionality and public trust.
Themes
Digital WarfareCyber AttacksPoliticsEstoniaSecurityTechnologyClausewitz
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about national security, a leader might reference this quote to underscore the importance of cybersecurity.
More from Toomas Hendrik Ilves
All quotes →When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights.
Toomas Hendrik IlvesRead
Similar quotes
Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.
Douglas RushkoffRead
Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications.
Edwin Howard ArmstrongRead
The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations: It’s a process, not an event.
Seth GodinRead
There is people who make stuff with words. There is people who make stuff with programs. And I really believe that that whole creative culture, people didn't realize how creative programming is. And anybody who's done it of course knows that not only is it creative, but it's incredibly absorbing.
Tim O'ReillyRead
The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.
J. C. R. LickliderRead
The Senior Moment has become the Google moment, and it has a much nicer, hipper, younger, more contemporary sound, doesn't it? By handling the obligations of the search mechanism, you almost prove you can keep up.
Nora EphronRead