Instructions & ethical principles are attached, based on this reading:
SCENARIO 61: The Olympic Games Operation and the Stuxnet Worm
In June 2012, the New York Times reported that the United States and Israeli governments had been cooperating on an initiative codenamed Olympic Games. Originally conceived and developed during the George W. Bush administration, the Olympic Games operation aimed at disrupting Irans uranium enrichment program and thus damaging that nations nuclear capability. At the core of this joint operation was a computer worm known as Stuxnet, a cyberweapon that targeted electronic program controllers developed by Siemens Corporation (in Germany) for industrial controlled computers (ICCs) that were installed in Iran. The Stuxnet worm was allegedly responsible for (i) sending misleading data to computer monitors in Iran and (ii) causing several of that nations centrifugesthat is, fastspinning machines that enrich uraniumto spin out of control. The Stuxnet attack was estimated to have destroyed approximately 1,000 of Irans (then) 6,000 centrifuges.
1 Was the Olympic Games operation a justified breach of cybersecurity? If it is wrong for ordinary individuals and nongovernmental actors/organizations to break into and disrupt
someones computer system, is it also wrong for sovereign nation-states to do this as well? Or,
point, however, that during the Olympic Games incident, no formal declaration of war existed
among the three nations allegedly involved (Iran, Israel, and the United States). So, we might
modify our original question slightly by asking instead whether imminent threats regarding
the development of nuclear weapons by rogue nations could be used to justify cyber intrusions on the part of any legitimate sovereign nation(s) affected. For example, one might be
inclined to argue that such actions against rogue nations could be justified on consequentialist
or utilitarian grounds (i.e., based on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number), examined in Chapter 2. But if it is permissible for sovereign nations states such as the United States and Israel to engage in cyber intrusions against socalled rogue nations like Iran, simply on consequentialist grounds, we can ask the following question: Why would it not also be permissible for some nonstate actorsfor example, members of the computer hacking communityto launch
cyberattacks against those nations, if an overall greater good could result from their actions?
After all, if our concern is merely with the kinds of desirable consequences that would likely
be achieved, couldnt the same utilitarian principles justify cyberattacks from hacker groups or
from other kinds of nonstate actors/organizations as well? Furthermore, we could ask whether
those same actors/organizations might also be justified in attacking unofficial states such as
Al Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which are not officially recognized by the
international community as legitimate and sovereign states.
In February 2015, a wellknown international hacker group, called Anonymous, announced
its plans to take down ISIS by attacking that organizations social media sites used to spread
ISIS propaganda and recruit new members.2
On the one hand, some might be inclined to applaud Anonymous objectives in the case of
ISIS. On the other hand, however, we can ask what the unintended consequences might be if
we legitimize such activities by international hacker groups like Anonymous, who do not act
officially on the part of any legitimate or recognized nation state(s).
NOTES FROM LAST ESSAY YOU HELPED ME WITH:
You did an amazing job! I received an B on the paper, here are the notes the professor left:
You rights analysis needs to be corrected it needs to be reworked
* From each of the ethical principles you apply you need to: State the principle – Define the principle -then you need to apply it to the details of the case.
* Dont repeat principles. Utilitarianism and Consequentialism are the same principles. You need to use 3 different principles in your analysis.
