[kingzain]

I had to read your comment a few times to make sure I was getting the gist of it correctly. Here's what I understood: you are advocating cyber warfare, and are a big fan of it. I understand your point about handling the situation with no loss of life. Great. But advocating war, even if it's cyber war? Wow.

Have you given a thought to this scenario: while deploying the virus, they made a mistake in their code, that leads to a nuclear meltdown causing an explosion, destroying millions of lives and causing a worldwide phenomenon.

Or how about the drone version cyber warfare mentioned by one of the commenters below?

Or let's say the stuxnet virus fell into the hands of a malicious party and they modified it to take down the national grid. Can you imagine the number of accidents that would cause?

Or maybe I'm just a fool and totally misunderstood your comment.

[Dove]

I'm not advocating warfare. Of course, peace is always best, when you can get it.

You can't always get it, though.

Nations have conflicts and need to resolve them. In descending order of preference, I would prefer they resolve them via diplomacy, economic warfare, cyberwarfare, covert targeted operations, conventional warfare, total warfare.

I am glad cyberwarfare exists, because -- unpleasant as it is or could be -- if a nation is trying to accomplish something it thinks is worth the pain of something further down the list, it gives a more civilized way of getting it done.

In a more general sense, war not at the absolute bottom of my list. Horrible as it is, I am glad it exists, because tyranny can be worse.

[kingzain]

Fair enough. Choose the lesser of all evils. Tells us a lot about humanity and what it has come to. Sad though isn't it.

[Dove]

Not at all. I don't see human history as a fall from peace so much as a struggle upward from a constant state of tyranny and war.

There are whole civilizations now that haven't known tyranny for generations. Where the last invasion is almost out of living memory. Where they try to only go to war for good, moral reasons.

I mean, to come back to the main topic . . . these days, we sometimes settle serious, international disputes by breaking each others' machines.

Sad? No sir. The 21st century is pretty damn awesome by historical standards.