With future combat likely to occur in cyberspace and space as well as on land, sea and air, the potential for nuclear-miscalculation is greater than at any time since the worst days of the Cold War, said Singer, a strategist with the New America think tank.
“You may now not do certain things, because you need to signal to the other side, ‘Yeah, we’re at war, but we’re not in that kind of war,’” Singer told a group Monday at the Air Force Association’s annual Air and Space Conference outside Washington, D.C. “This also applies to how we think about deterrence and cyber conflict.”
For example, Singer said the U.S. has regularly requested for China to stop hacking into its government and corporate computer networks.
“I would argue that’s not going to end. They are going to keep stealing secrets and the like,” he said. “What we need to focus on are what areas are off-limits, which are too easy to risk escalation” to war.
…
Today, he said, NATO is on the highest alert since the 1980s, Russia now officially considers the Western Alliance its greatest threat, and in the Pacific the U.S. and China are engaged in an arms race, with China slated to have more ships and planes than the U.S. by 2030.
Full article: Futurist: Risk of Miscalculating Nuclear War is Higher Than Ever (DefenseTech)
Global Geopolitics 