“The Fourth Generation marks the most radical change since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.”
– Understanding Fourth Generation War, William S. Lind, January 2004

“We wanted to create the most immersive and emotionally powerful battlefield game ever and we needed new technology to deliver on our vision.”
– Bleeding Edge Tech Created for Battlefield 3, Patrick Bach, EA Games

“Traditional military logic falls apart in the Code War. Deterrence and arms treaties are but philosophical concepts when invisible weapons are involved. Assigning certain blame for an attack may be impossible when it’s conducted through computers in dozens of countries. The fear of retaliation—which kept the Cold War from becoming hot—may not apply.”
– Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race, BusinessWeek, July 2011

“Earlier this week, LulzSec launched a new Anti-Security campaign, and said in a statement: “If you’re aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security. Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including e-mail spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments.”
– British Teen Arrested Over Sony, CIA Hacking, CNBC, June 2011

“There are probably some corporations and credit cards that haven’t been hacked,” said Kim Peretti, director in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ forensic services practice. “But you have to assume you’ve been compromised.” The cyber Mafia has already hacked you, CNN, July 2011

“Chinese hackers take down the Pentagon’s classified and unclassified networks, trigger explosions at oil refineries, release chlorine gas from chemical plants, disable air traffic control, cause trains to crash into each other, delete all data — including offsite backups — held by the federal reserve and major banks, then plunge the country into darkness by taking down the power grid from coast-to-coast. Thousands die immediately. Cities run out of food, ATMs shut down, looters take to the streets.

That electronic Judgment Day is not the stuff of bad movies or sci-fi novels…A sophisticated cyber war attack by one of several nation-states could do that today, in fifteen minutes.”
– Richard Clarke’s Cyberwar,Wired, April 2010

“The link between games and war goes all the way back to “boards” scratched onto the back of statues by Assyrian guards almost 3,000 years ago. Three millennia later, as the U.S. military recruits from, and is increasingly led by, a generation raised on Grand Theft Auto, real warfare is taking on the look and feel of a video game.”
– The Rise of Militainment, Foreign Policy, March/April 2010

“According to Activision, just five days after its release Black Ops has generated more than $650 million in worldwide sales, beating out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which smashed previous sale records when it was released last year. Just to compare, “The Dark Knight”, the top-grossing movie as measured five days after release, pulled in $200 million.”
– Call of Duty Smashes Five-Day Sales Records, New York Times, November 2010

“The U.S. Army Experience Center at the Franklin Mills shopping mall in northeast Philadelphia has 60 personal computers loaded with military videogames, 19 Xbox 360 video game controllers and a series of interactive screens describing military bases and career options in great detail. Potential recruits can hang out on couches and listen to rock music that fills the space.”
– U.S. Army recruiting at the mall with videogames, Reuters, January 2009

“[The Chinese] always made a silent escape, wiping their electronic fingerprints clean and leaving behind an almost undetectable beacon allowing them to re-enter the machine at will. An entire attack took 10 to 30 minutes. Most hackers, if they actually get into a government network, get excited and make mistakes…Not these guys. They never hit a wrong key.”
– The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies, TIME Magazine, August 2005

“Stuxnet, the computer worm that last year disrupted many of the gas centrifuges central to Iran’s nuclear program, is a powerful weapon in the new age of global information warfare. A sophisticated half-megabyte of computer code apparently accomplished what a half-decade of United Nations Security Council resolutions could not.”
– From Bullets to Megabytes, New York Times, January 2011

“Hackers have repeatedly penetrated the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market during the past year, and federal investigators are trying to identify the perpetrators and their purpose. The Nasdaq situation has set off alarms within the government because of the exchange’s critical role, which officials put right up with power companies and air-traffic-control operations, all part of the nation’s basic infrastructure.”
– Hackers Penetrate Nasdaq Computers, Wall Street Journal, February 2011