Challenges of cyber-security stimulated a lively discussion at Glover Cottages on Tuesday 13 September. Our guest speaker was Dr Keith Suter, well-known Sydney-based public commentator and managing director of the Global Directions think tank. Among his many roles, Keith is foreign affairs editor for TV Channel 7’s ‘Sunrise’ program.

Keith cited the 1960s futurologist Gordon Moore who predicted in April 1965 that the power of computers would double every 18 months. Many in the corporate world did not accept his prediction. Encyclopaedia Britannica, the world’s most popular font of easily- accessible knowledge, failed to monitor the rise of online referencing and went broke. So did Kodak when it failed to forecast and plan for digital technology in photography. More photos are taken every two minutes today than the 3.5 trillion taken on Kodak equipment since its founding in 1838. No-one predicted how the internet would dominate lives in the 21st Century, nor how vulnerable people would become to those with malicious or criminal motives.  IT personnel have difficulty in explaining the technology in plain language, and old people have generally fallen out of touch. This is possibly to their benefit, making them less susceptible than the young to cyber-crime. Keith predicted that driverless cars will become increasingly popular, and that before the end of the 21st century, people will have computer components surgically implanted so that we will become half-human, half-computer – the cyborgs of science fiction.

Meanwhile cyber-technology is playing havoc in private lives. If the former CIA director David Petraeus could not keep secret his affair with an IT-literate mistress, Paula Broadwell (their numerous assignations were tracked down by the FBI via hotel registration data), what hope is there for mere mortals to have discreet dalliances?   And if the CIA can track you anywhere, so can criminal organisations and terrorists.

Keith sees cyber technology as leading the fifth dimension of warfare, after land, sea, the air and space. He predicts that cyber-warfare is inevitable because so much of humankind’s affairs and concerns are being linked via information technology. IT will become the plaything of governments, criminals, political agitators and terrorists. There is no longer any need to invade or bomb a country, just destroy the computers that manage and control infrastructure. New York could survive airliners being deliberately flown into buildings, but it cannot survive an interruption to its run-down infrastructure, such as its computer-driven water supply.

Report by Richard Broinowski