Source: Andy Greenberg, Forbes
The Chinese government is an infamous enforcer of digital apartheid; when its citizens try to access prominent international Web sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, they hit a filter that blocks politically sensitive material. In the West, that information blockade is often described as the “Great Firewall of China.”
But in Mandarin, it is called jindun gongcheng, the Golden Shield. As that name implies, China’s controls on the Internet are capable of blocking inbound as well as outbound traffic. And according to some security professionals, that means the Golden Shield is more than just a barrier to free expression; it may also be China’s advantage in a future cyber-war.
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Whether of note the U.S. military has caught on to these nuances of the digital arms race, it will soon, Paller argues. “This is going to be an area of huge investment for the military for the next hundred years,” he says. “It isn’t just the future of information warfare. It’s the future of warfare.”