“I’ll be back”, this is one of the most famous quote of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Terminator. In this movie the artificial intelligent machines, led by the computer system Skynet, oppress humans. This is of course a science-fiction movie and this has nothing to do with reality. But is this true?
Digitalization is a process that is taking place worldwide. Everyone owns a computer and we cannot go back, we are depending too much on a pc. The attack on the computers of the nuclear program of Iran, could be concerning. What if some people hacked their security program and decided to fire a nuke? This is something else than the Terminator story, because this concerns cyber-security. Digitalization can even go so far that everything is controlled by computers. There are two scenario’s for digitalization. The first is where everything is controlled by computers. Here the concern is the one shown in the movie Terminator. If everything is controlled by intelligent computers then humans are not needed anymore. Artificial intelligence computers can think that humans are not needed anymore and that they are a threat to themselves or to the computers. We could not do anything if the computers wanted to annihilate us because computers would own everything even our military department.
The second scenario is a more realistic scenario and that is that we would have a different kind of war, the digital war. We would not invade a country with soldiers but just take the country over by hacking their computers. Countries could hack the power supply systems and win the war. This can also mean that terrorists can have a bigger impact than they now have! This is very worrisome. If a terrorist group hacks a military system, they can harm a lot of people and it would mean that the world would be under a lot of threat. But this war can be also about information. America accuses China of hacking in to their systems. There were personal data of four million employees stolen. This was the biggest cyberattack in US history. Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, “Cyberattacks are anonymous, cross-border and hard to trace. If you keep using the words “maybe” or “perhaps” without making a thorough study, this is irresponsible and unscientific. We hope the U.S. side will shed its suspicions.” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin said: “(The office) says it 'has undertaken an aggressive effort to update its cybersecurity posture.' Plainly, it must do a better job, especially given the sensitive nature of the information it holds." This would make the relationship between China and the US worse than it is. These wars can have a big impact on the world. Cyber-security will be important and in the future governments will spend big money on it. It is the new form of military. Hacking is even used for defending your honor. Sony corporate servers were allegedly hacked by North Korea, probably because of the movie ‘the interview’.
Digitalization can mean that we need one man, the Terminator, he already said to us: “I will be back” and now we know the reason
