In a presentation at the annual Cyber Security Summit in Canberra, Australia, Prof. Greg Austin of the University of New South Wales warned that China's cyber war capabilities could alter the strategic landscape in Asia by 2030.
"Today, China is struggling to integrate cyber weapons and information dominance into its military strategies", Austin said. "By 2030, China will have acquired a total war capability in cyber space against Taiwan. This will alter the strategic balance in the Western Pacific more than anything that is happening around the coral reefs in the South China Sea today."
Austin, author of the book “Cyber Policy in China” and several others, addressed the final session of the conference with a presentation titled "Shaping the Cyber Arms Race of the Future". He argued that new technologies such as the Internet will redefine both war and politics for the East Asia region.
"Australia's 12 new submarines, the first to be launched in 2030, at a total cost in excess of $30billion, would have to operate in cyber space even better than they can navigate under the sea", Austin warned. "Any major power that Australia confronts in conflict at sea after 2030 will use cyber attacks to try to prevent these boats from putting to sea, or failing that, to disable them or their weapons systems at sea. All of the critical systems will be cyber-controlled and therefore cyber vulnerable, even if it meant simply manipulating and falsifying data inputs into various systems".
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