[yosito]

Who stands to benefit by destabilizing the western world to such a degree? Clearly some big players like Russia and China, as well as some smaller players can benefit from destabilizing the western world a little bit. But if they destroy it to the point where millions of people are suffering, they'll bring suffering on themselves as well. It seems to me that they're probably motivated to level the playing field and gain dominance more than completely destroying or starving people on a large scale.

[steego]

To be clear, I wasn't making the case for a motive or even suggesting this was a plausible scenario. My point was death from a nuclear weapon is not the worst form of death.

Modern history is littered with examples of millions of people starving or being slaughtered because societies collapsed economically or politically.

> Who stands to benefit by destabilizing the western world to such a degree?

Who's limiting the conversation to the western world? Let's think beyond ourselves for a second. Wouldn't it be just as tragic if cyber attacks were used to destabilize other places in the world? Imagine an African country that has become entirely dependent on some sort of mobile money transferring platform. Maybe their neighbor launches an attack on that platform to destabilize the country for whatever nefarious reasons.

[fjsolwmv]

There are thousandss of brilliant but poor people in the world...