29 de fevereiro de 2012

Pew study: Is the Internet ruining or improving today's youth?

Hyper-connected teens
Julia Schwartz, left, and sister Robyn share an iPod while Robyn text-messages a friend using her cellphone in 2006.(Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)



Teenagers today are growing up in an unprecedented environment of hyper-inter-connectivity. According to recent data collected by the Pew Internet Project, 95% of teens 12 to 17 are online, 76% use social networking sites and 77% have cellphones.
But whether the tweeting, Google searching, texting, Facebook chatting lifestyle of the "Always On" (AO) generation is creating a savvy group of information gatherers who skillfully harness the power of collective thinking, or if a crippling reliance on the Internet will create a generation of shallow and easily manipulated drones with no attention span -- well, that's up for debate.
On Wednesday, the Pew Research Center, in conjunction with Elon University's Imagining the Internet project, released the results of a survey of 1,021 Internet "experts" asked to weigh in on whether growing up in a hyper-connected world will have a net positive effect, or a net negative effect, on today's youth.
The results were split, with 55% of respondents saying thanks to the Internet kids today are learning to crowd source information and quickly locate answers to deep questions, and 43% saying it's not looking too good for the future of deep thought.
Three percent couldn't make up their minds one way or the other.
Then everybody was asked to explain their choice.
Almost all agreed that in the future there will be a distinct set of skills that young people will need to be successful, including knowing how to solve problems through cooperative work and knowing how to quickly and efficiently find information on the Internet and just as quickly determine if that information has any value.
The most depressing comments in the report came from teachers -- those dealing with the AO generation day in and day out -- who almost universally bemoan the loss of attention span and ability to think critically in their students.
"Technology is playing a big part in students not only not being able to perform as well in class, but also not having the desire to do so,” wrote one teacher who has been teaching at the college level for 12 years.
Another professor wrote: “Every day I see young people becoming more and more just members of a collective (like the Borg in Star Trek) rather than a collection of individuals and I firmly believe that technology is the cause.”
Yet another wrote: "The answers that students produce -- while the students may be adept at finding them on Google -- tend to be shallow and not thought through very well."
But there was some optimism in the report, like this balanced but ultimately positive quote provided by Hal Varian, chief economist at Google.
"I made the optimistic choice, but in reality, I think both outcomes will happen," he wrote. "This has been the case for every communications advance: writing, photography, movies, radio, TV, etc. There’s no reason to believe that the internet is any different."
"It will provide ways to save time, and ways to waste time, and people will take advantage of both opportunities. In balance, however, I lean toward the more optimistic view since a larger fraction of the world's population will now be able to access human knowledge. This has got to be a good thing.”

El mundo tecnológico, bendición y maldición para la Generación Y

El mundo tecnológico, bendición y maldición para la Generación Y

Por



Hay una buena posibilidad de que los niños de hoy, siempre conectados a los medios electrónicos, finalmente se conviertan en brillantes y ágiles dirigentes. Siempre y cuando no terminen siendo personas dispersas en el terreno intelectual, incapaces de concentrarse lo suficiente para disfrutar de un buen libro.
Al menos, eso dicen 1.021 expertos en tecnología, críticos y estudiantes encuestados por el Pew Research Center que respondieron casi mitad y mitad respecto a cómo la tecnología siempre presente afectará a los adolescentes y a los que tienen veintitantos años, ubicados en la llamada "Generación Y".
En una encuesta, difundida el miércoles, el 55% coincidió con la afirmación de que en el 2020 los cerebros de los jóvenes estarán "conectados" de forma diferente que los que tienen más de 35 años, y tendrán buenos resultados a la hora de encontrar respuestas rápidamente y sin atajosen su proceso mental.
Pero el 42% se mostró pesimista, coincidiendo con una segunda afirmación: que en ese año los jóvenes usuarios de tecnología se distraerán con facilidad, carecerán de herramientas para pensamientos complejos y sólo buscarán la gratificación instantánea.
"Existe una tensión en curso entre los (aspectos) positivos y negativos que prevemos", explicó Janna Anderson, profesora asociada de la Universidad Elon de Carolina del Norte y una de las autoras de la investigación.
Las previsiones de esta encuesta son importantes ya que una investigación similar realizada a principios de los '90 predijo con exactitud que emergería un conflicto entre la tecnología online y los derechos de autor, la privacidad y las instituciones establecidas, sostuvo Anderson.
Pensar con intensidadLos participantes en la encuesta dieron predicciones coherentes respecto a las habilidades que los jóvenes necesitarían en el 2020.
Incluyeron la solución de problemas públicos mediante trabajo cooperativo, la búsqueda eficaz de información online y el sopesar la calidad de la información.
"En contraste, la capacidad de leer una cosa y pensar con intensidad al respecto durante horas no es que no sea trascendental, pero será mucho menos trascendental para la mayor parte de la gente", opinó Jonathan Grudin, principal investigador de Microsoft y uno de los que contestaron a la encuesta, en unas declaraciones incluidas en el informe Pew.
Barry Chudakov, investigador del Programa McLuhan de Cultura y Tecnología de la Universidad de Toronto, comentó que estar enterado de la influencia e intrusiones de la tecnología sería muy poco habitual.
"¿Es mi voluntad, o es la herramienta la que me incita a sentir y pensar de esta manera?", escribió.
Muchos de los encuestados respaldaron la introducción de reformas educativas para hacer que los jóvenes distraídos sean más capaces de manejar la tecnología -siempre presente- y centrarse. Incluyeron pausas, meditación, áreas de silencio y estar sin dispositivos con conexión a Internet.
Álvaro Retena, especialista en tecnología de Hewlett-Packard, prevé un estancamiento en la tecnología e incluso en la literatura ya que los períodos de atención se acortarán.
El sondeo del Pew Research Center se llevó a cabo en Internet entre el 28 de agosto y el 31 de octubre, dentro del proyecto Pew sobre Internet y la vida estadounidense, indicó Reuters.

MEC vai incluir ciências na Prova Brasil, informa ministro



Com a mudança, exame ficará mais próximo a programa internacional de avaliação

29 de fevereiro de 2012 | 11h 59
BRASÍLIA - O ministro da Educação, Aloizio Mercadante, disse nesta quarta-feira, em audiência pública no Senado, que irá incluir a disciplina ciências na Prova Brasil, a principal avaliação da educação básica. O exame, aplicado pelo MEC aos alunos do 5.º e 9.º anos do ensino fundamental a cada dois anos, até o momento mede apenas o desempenho em matemática e português.

Mercadante não disse se a mudança já valerá para a próxima edição da prova, marcada para 2013. O exame é um dos principais componentes do Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb), que avalia a qualidade do ensino oferecido por escolas, municípios e Estados. A última edição foi aplicada em 2011 e os resultados do Ideb serão divulgados neste ano. Todas as redes de ensino e escolas têm metas a serem atingidas até 2022, estipuladas em 2007 pelo MEC.
Com a inclusão de ciências na Prova Brasil, o exame fica mais próximo ao Programa Internacional de Avaliação de Alunos (Pisa). O teste internacional é aplicado pela Organização para a Cooperação e o Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) em mais de 60 países e mede as habilidades dos alunos em linguagens, matemática e ciências. O Brasil melhorou seu desempenho no programa de 2000 a 2010, mas continua nas últimas posições do ranking

Tragedy in Ohio: When the Bullied Strike Back


Posted: 02/29/2012 6:41 am, Marlo Thomas, Huf Post
It was only a month ago that I wrote about Kevin Jacobsen, a despondent father who took his life on the eve of the one-year anniversary of his son's bullying-related suicide. Today, we read about more tragic deaths, this time in Ohio, where on Monday, a 17-year-old boy -- reportedly the victim of bullying -- unloaded a gun on his classmates in the school cafeteria, killing three and wounding many others.
Bullying is not, as some allege, some mandatory rite of passage that young people must endure on their journey to adulthood. This is not "kids just being kids." This is a murderous game that young people are playing all across this country, and without immediate intervention by adults -- parents, teachers, community leaders -- we will continue to see more and more deaths, and the slow and painful obliteration of a generation.
It is tempting to call the horrid news from Ohio a wake-up call, but that is both disingenuous and naive. We've had far too many wake-up calls already.
Wasn't is a wake-up call when a 15-year-old girl took her life by throwing herself in front of a bus after being bullied relentlessly at school -- and then, shockingly, the bullying continues on her Facebook page as she lay dying in the hospital?
Wasn't it a wake-up call when nine children committed suicide in a single Minnesota school district known for its "extreme anti-gay climate" -- a rash of serial suicides so alarming that state health officials labeled the district a "suicide contagion area?"
If we are not awake by now, something is seriously wrong.
And yet, those charged with turning this crisis around -- from parents to policy-makers -- urge us to step back and examine the problem. This isn't a case of "there are two sides to every argument." There's onlyone side to this conflict, and we all know who starts it. And we all know how it too often ends.
And who needs to listen to any explanations or justifications, when all you really want to do is beat up on the bullies yourself?
And then I read about a Mom from Quebec named Chantal Larose. Only days after her 15-year-old daughter hanged herself in the family garage -- in a final fatal act to escape the bullying -- Larose held a press conference condemning the public fury being unleashed on her daughter's tormentor, whom she referred to as "the young girl we are beating up on these days."
"This goes against the battle that I am fighting," Larose said bravely. "The battle that we are [all] fighting is against intimidation."
Coming from a mother who lost her daughter to the scourge of bullying, these words land hard. Larose has moved beyond casting blame and is asking us to look to all of our children to find a solution.
"A victim of bullying is at high risk for becoming a bully," Julie Hertzog of Pacer's National Bullying Prevention Center told me. We decided to explore this further by talking to the bullies themselves to try to understand the different reasons that bullies bully. Here is a sample of what some of them said:
"In elementary school, kids put you down so they can be popular. It's all about 'Who You Are.' I had trouble pronouncing some words and my teeth were not straight, so kids called me 'horse' or 'donkey.' I got angrier and angrier. And so I started bullying. One girl ended up getting home-schooled and moving away." -- Kaylie, 15
"Yes, I have been a bully. I bullied a girl on the school bus every day in sixth grade because that was my way of dealing with problems I had at home. Just a few weeks ago, I saw her Facebook status, saying how she wanted to kill herself. And I felt awful knowing that I was one of the causes of her considering suicide. So I messaged her and apologized for everything I've done. She didn't commit suicide and I am so thankful." -- Tabitha, 15
"In elementary school, I was pretty ruthless, always jockeying for position. After this one girl had been in a car accident, I drew a picture of a dog and wrote: 'This is YOU!' My intent was not to be a bully or hurt someone deeply. I was just trying to get a laugh. I didn't realize it could have a long-term impact on her. I was just a loudmouth trying to be cool, wanting to be part of a group." --Noel, 12
When we asked kids, both the bullies and the bullied, "Where were your parents or teachers or other adults when all of this was happening?" many of them said the same type of thing:"I try to look like I'm happy for my parents" or "This school stuff is just a stupid drama." Researchers tell us that this nonchalance is a protective mechanism for kids -- an attempt to "diminish the importance of what is happening to them." Researchers also say that parents and teachers are often so distracted by other problems -- at home, in the classroom -- that they don't recognize the signs of bullying.
Obviously, the system isn't working. The kids who are in the thick of today's bullying epidemic -- victims, bullies and bystanders alike -- are lost, and they urgently need adult guidance. Most kids believe that there is nothing they can do to stop it; whether they are being bullied or standing by, watching, they are helpless.
An important first step to untangling this dilemma, says Herzog, is changing how we treat the bullies. "We need to take the anger out of our response," she says. "Making villains of kids who bully does not create a positive environment. We need to teach all kids empathy and bring them together, inclusively."
Among those trying to do exactly this is Kevin Epling, co-director of Bully Police USA, who became an "accidental activist" for bullying-prevention legislation after his son Matt committed suicide. "Kids are our best tool for turning this around," Kevin says, and he calls on parents and educators to seize control of the problem by creating programs that bring together students, teachers, principals, parents and the community to tackle bullying head-on.
I recently watched videos for two of these initiatives -- Hero in the Hallway and Team Urban -- and, for the first time in a long time, felt a glimmer of hope. Here are kids who are not fighting, not name-calling, not spreading hate, but instead banding together -- even dancing -- to celebrate their childhood, not fear it.
It is time for us to dedicate ourselves to listening carefully to all of our children -- victims, bystanders and bullies -- and stop abandoning them to face this problem alone. Nothing short of their lives is at stake.

Frascati Manual: Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development, 6th edition




6th edition (2002)
Pages: 266
ISBN 978-92-64-19903-9
   


The Frascati Manual was originally written by and for the experts in OECD member countries who collect and issue national data on research and development (R&D). Over the years, it has become the standard of conduct for R&D surveys and data collection not only in the OECD and the European Union, but also in several non-member economies, for example, through the science and technology surveys of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).


Table of contents
Chapter 1. Aim and scope of the manual
Chapter 2. Basic definitions and conventions
Chapter 3. Institutional classification
Chapter 4. Functional distribution
Chapter 5. Measurement of R&D personnel
Chapter 6. Measurement of expenditures devoted to R&D
Chapter 7. Survey methodology and procedures
Chapter 8. Government budget appropriations or outlays for R&D by socio-economic objectives (GBAORD)
Annex 1. Brief history and origins of the Frascati Manual
Annex 2. Obtaining data on R&D in the higher education sector
Annex 3. The treatment of R&D in the United Nations System of National Accounts
Annex 4. R&D related to health, information and communication technology (ICT) and biotechnology
Annex 5. Methods of deriving regional R&D data
Annex 6. Work on science and technology (S&T) indicators in other international organisations
Annex 7. Other S&T indicators
Annex 8. Practical methods of providing up-to-date estimates and projections of resources devoted to R&D
Annex 9. R&D deflators and currency converters
Annex 10. Supplementary guidance on the classification of large R&D projects with special reference to the defence and aerospace industries
Annex 11. Correspondence between categories of R&D personnel by occupation in the Frascati Manual and ISCO-88 classes

Revised Field of Science and Technology (FOS) classification
The review of the FOS classification was discussed several times in the framework of the last revision of the Frascati Manual (2002). In particular, it was felt at the time that the FOS classification – the most appropriate classification for R&D in the public sector – needed to be reexamined in order to reflect the latest changes in the science and technology area, especially with regard to emerging technology fields such as ICT, biotechnology and nanotechnology. This revised classification (download here) was issued in 2007.

Annex on measuring R&D in developing countries
Despite the Frascati Manual's widespread use, significant usage gaps remain, especially in Africa, Central and South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. There is widespread interest in the nature and role of R&D in developing countries, raising questions on how it should be measured within the guidelines set out in the Frascati Manual. A new annex released in 2012 (download here) provides an initial attempt to address some of the most salient issues.
The preparation of this annex on how to use OECD guidelines to measure R&D in developing economies was coordinated by the UIS in partnership with the OECD Secretariat under the auspices of the OECD Working Party of National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI). Building on the existing Oslo Manual annex on innovation surveys in developing countries, this new work is a contribution to the OECD Strategy for Development.

Permanent URL of this page: www.oecd.org/sti/frascatimanual
Last updated 29 February 2012

The Trouble With Student Success Stories by Walt Gardner



It's always heartening to hear how some students have managed to overcome Dickensian backgrounds to shine in school. They deserve the spotlight for their impressive achievements in spite of the huge disadvantages they brought to class. That's why scholarships provided by The New York Times since 1996 are so welcome ("Resiliency Helps 8 Students Win Times Scholarships," Feb. 25).
But at the same time, I wonder if these remarkable students will be used by reformers as proof that allstudents can post similar outcomes if they only applied themselves to the task. We already see this happening when critics claim that there are no excuses. If students just worked harder and teachers taught better, the achievement gap would disappear. The theme is on display in such books as Karin Chenoweth'sIt's Being Done (Harvard Education Press, 2007).
I don't doubt that some schools are able to post impressive results. But they constitute an aberration in the same way that the winners of the Times scholarships do. In other words, the exceptions are not the rule. Even such anti-excusers as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom concede this point in No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, 2003). They believe that the best we can hope for is that a fewdisadvantaged students can escape.
The latest example is an article about Rudi-Ann Miller, a student from Jamaica who is one of only 40 black students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City out of a total student enrollment of 3,295 ("To Be Black at Stuyvesant High," The New York Times, Feb. 25). Stuyvesant is one of eight high schools in the city that accepts students only on the basis of an entrance exam. Competition for admission is so fierce that many students prepare for the exam years in advance. She scored 594 out of a possible 800, barely making the cut at about 560. After four years at the school, she applied via early admission to Yale and was accepted.
Because New York City does not track the race and ethnicity of students who take the specialized high school exam - only of those who are accepted at one of the schools - it's hard to know how many other exceptions there are. But I'd be willing to bet that whatever the number, those students will be cited as evidence to support the claims made by the no-excuse crowd.

- Walt Gardner

"Cyberwar Is Already Upon Us."



Think Again: Cyberwar

Don't fear the digital bogeyman. Virtual conflict is still more hype than reality.

BY THOMAS RID | MARCH/APRIL 2012, Foreign affairs



No way. "Cyberwar is coming!" John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt predicted in a celebrated Rand paper back in 1993. Since then, it seems to have arrived -- at least by the account of the U.S. military establishment, which is busy competing over who should get what share of the fight. Cyberspace is "a domain in which the Air Force flies and fights," Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne claimed in 2006. By 2012, William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary at the time, was writing that cyberwar is "just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space." In January, the Defense Department vowed to equip the U.S. armed forces for "conducting a combined arms campaign across all domains -- land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace." Meanwhile, growing piles of books and articles explore the threats of cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, and how to survive them.
Time for a reality check: Cyberwar is still more hype than hazard. Consider the definition of an act of war: It has to be potentially violent, it has to be purposeful, and it has to be political. The cyberattacks we've seen so far, from Estonia to the Stuxnet virus, simply don't meet these criteria.
Take the dubious story of a Soviet pipeline explosion back in 1982, much cited by cyberwar's true believers as the most destructive cyberattack ever. The account goes like this: In June 1982, a Siberian pipeline that the CIA had virtually booby-trapped with a so-called "logic bomb" exploded in a monumental fireball that could be seen from space. The U.S. Air Force estimated the explosion at 3 kilotons, equivalent to a small nuclear device. Targeting a Soviet pipeline linking gas fields in Siberia to European markets, the operation sabotaged the pipeline's control systems with software from a Canadian firm that the CIA had doctored with malicious code. No one died, according to Thomas Reed, a U.S. National Security Council aide at the time who revealed the incident in his 2004 book, At the Abyss; the only harm came to the Soviet economy.
But did it really happen? After Reed's account came out, Vasily Pchelintsev, a former KGB head of the Tyumen region, where the alleged explosion supposedly took place, denied the story. There are also no media reports from 1982 that confirm such an explosion, though accidents and pipeline explosions in the Soviet Union were regularly reported in the early 1980s. Something likely did happen, but Reed's book is the only public mention of the incident and his account relied on a single document. Even after the CIA declassified a redacted version of Reed's source, a note on the so-called Farewell Dossier that describes the effort to provide the Soviet Union with defective technology, the agency did not confirm that such an explosion occurred. The available evidence on the Siberian pipeline blast is so thin that it shouldn't be counted as a proven case of a successful cyberattack.
Most other commonly cited cases of cyberwar are even less remarkable. Take the attacks on Estonia in April 2007, which came in response to the controversial relocation of a Soviet war memorial, theBronze Soldier. The well-wired country found itself at the receiving end of a massive distributed denial-of-service attack that emanated from up to 85,000 hijacked computers and lasted three weeks. The attacks reached a peak on May 9, when 58 Estonian websites were attacked at once and the online services of Estonia's largest bank were taken down. "What's the difference between a blockade of harbors or airports of sovereign states and the blockade of government institutions and newspaper websites?" asked Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.
Despite his analogies, the attack was no act of war. It was certainly a nuisance and an emotional strike on the country, but the bank's actual network was not even penetrated; it went down for 90 minutes one day and two hours the next. The attack was not violent, it wasn't purposefully aimed at changing Estonia's behavior, and no political entity took credit for it. The same is true for the vast majority of cyberattacks on record.
Indeed, there is no known cyberattack that has caused the loss of human life. No cyberoffense has ever injured a person or damaged a building. And if an act is not at least potentially violent, it's not an act of war. Separating war from physical violence makes it a metaphorical notion; it would mean that there is no way to distinguish between World War II, say, and the "wars" on obesity and cancer. Yet those ailments, unlike past examples of cyber "war," actually do kill people.
Illustration by Francesco Bongiorni for FP
"A Digital Pearl Harbor Is Only a Matter of Time."
Keep waiting. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta delivered a stark warning last summer: "We could face a cyberattack that could be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor." Such alarmist predictions have been ricocheting inside the Beltway for the past two decades, and some scaremongers have even upped the ante by raising the alarm about a cyber 9/11. In his 2010 book, Cyber War, former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke invokes the specter of nationwide power blackouts, planes falling out of the sky, trains derailing, refineries burning, pipelines exploding, poisonous gas clouds wafting, and satellites spinning out of orbit -- events that would make the 2001 attacks pale in comparison.
But the empirical record is less hair-raising, even by the standards of the most drastic example available. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of U.S. Cyber Command (established in 2010 and now boasting a budget of more than $3 billion), shared his worst fears in an April 2011 speech at the University of Rhode Island: "What I'm concerned about are destructive attacks," Alexander said, "those that are coming." He then invoked a remarkable accident at Russia's Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant to highlight the kind of damage a cyberattack might be able to cause. Shortly after midnight on Aug. 17, 2009, a 900-ton turbine was ripped out of its seat by a so-called "water hammer," a sudden surge in water pressure that then caused a transformer explosion. The turbine's unusually high vibrations had worn down the bolts that kept its cover in place, and an offline sensor failed to detect the malfunction. Seventy-five people died in the accident, energy prices in Russia rose, and rebuilding the plant is slated to cost $1.3 billion.
Tough luck for the Russians, but here's what the head of Cyber Command didn't say: The ill-fated turbine had been malfunctioning for some time, and the plant's management was notoriously poor. On top of that, the key event that ultimately triggered the catastrophe seems to have been a fire at Bratsk power station, about 500 miles away. Because the energy supply from Bratsk dropped, authorities remotely increased the burden on the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant. The sudden spike overwhelmed the turbine, which was two months shy of reaching the end of its 30-year life cycle, sparking the catastrophe.
If anything, the Sayano-Shushenskaya incident highlights how difficult a devastating attack would be to mount. The plant's washout was an accident at the end of a complicated and unique chain of events. Anticipating such vulnerabilities in advance is extraordinarily difficult even for insiders; creating comparable coincidences from cyberspace would be a daunting challenge at best for outsiders. If this is the most drastic incident Cyber Command can conjure up, perhaps it's time for everyone to take a deep breath.
"Cyberattacks Are Becoming Easier."
Just the opposite. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper warned last year that the volume of malicious software on American networks had more than tripled since 2009 and that more than 60,000 pieces of malware are now discovered every day. The United States, he said, is undergoing "a phenomenon known as 'convergence,' which amplifies the opportunity for disruptive cyberattacks, including against physical infrastructures." ("Digital convergence" is a snazzy term for a simple thing: more and more devices able to talk to each other, and formerly separate industries and activities able to work together.)
Just because there's more malware, however, doesn't mean that attacks are becoming easier. In fact, potentially damaging or life-threatening cyberattacks should be more difficult to pull off. Why? Sensitive systems generally have built-in redundancy and safety systems, meaning an attacker's likely objective will not be to shut down a system, since merely forcing the shutdown of one control system, say a power plant, could trigger a backup and cause operators to start looking for the bug. To work as an effective weapon, malware would have to influence an active process -- but not bring it to a screeching halt. If the malicious activity extends over a lengthy period, it has to remain stealthy. That's a more difficult trick than hitting the virtual off-button.
Take Stuxnet, the worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2010. It didn't just crudely shut down the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility; rather, the worm subtly manipulated the system. Stuxnet stealthily infiltrated the plant's networks, then hopped onto the protected control systems,intercepted input values from sensors, recorded these data, and then provided the legitimate controller code with pre-recorded fake input signals, according to researchers who have studied the worm. Its objective was not just to fool operators in a control room, but also to circumvent digital safety and monitoring systems so it could secretly manipulate the actual processes.
Building and deploying Stuxnet required extremely detailed intelligence about the systems it was supposed to compromise, and the same will be true for other dangerous cyberweapons. Yes, "convergence," standardization, and sloppy defense of control-systems software could increase the risk of generic attacks, but the same trend has also caused defenses against the most coveted targets to improve steadily and has made reprogramming highly specific installations on legacy systems more complex, not less.
"Cyberweapons Can Create
Massive Collateral Damage."
Very unlikely. When news of Stuxnet broke, the New York Times reported that the most striking aspect of the new weapon was the "collateral damage" it created. The malicious program was "splattered on thousands of computer systems around the world, and much of its impact has been on those systems, rather than on what appears to have been its intended target, Iranian equipment," theTimes reported. Such descriptions encouraged the view that computer viruses are akin to highly contagious biological viruses that, once unleashed from the lab, will turn against all vulnerable systems, not just their intended targets.
But this metaphor is deeply flawed. As the destructive potential of a cyberweapon grows, the likelihood that it could do far-reaching damage across many systems shrinks. Stuxnet did infect more than 100,000 computers -- mainly in Iran, Indonesia, and India, though also in Europe and the United States. But it was so specifically programmed that it didn't actually damage those machines, afflicting only Iran's centrifuges at Natanz. The worm's aggressive infection strategy was designed to maximize the likelihood that it would reach its intended target. Because that final target was not networked, "all the functionality required to sabotage a system was embedded directly in the Stuxnet executable," the security software company Symantec observed in its analysis of the worm's code. So yes, Stuxnet was "splattered" far and wide, but it only executed its damaging payload where it was supposed to.
Collateral infection, in short, is not necessarily collateral damage. A sophisticated piece of malware may aggressively infect many systems, but if there is an intended target, the infection will likely have a distinct payload that will be harmless to most computers. Especially in the context of more sophisticated cyberweapons, the image of inadvertent collateral damage doesn't hold up. They're more like a flu virus that only makes one family sick.

"In Cyberspace, Offense Dominates Defense."
Wrong again. The information age has "offense-dominant attributes," Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote in their influential 1996 book, The Advent of Netwar. This view has spread through the American defense establishment like, well, a virus. A 2011 Pentagon report on cyberspace stressed "the advantage currently enjoyed by the offense in cyberwarfare." The intelligence community stressed the same point in its annual threat report to Congress last year, arguing that offensive tactics -- known as vulnerability discovery and exploitation -- are evolving more rapidly than the federal government and industry can adapt their defensive best practices. The conclusion seemed obvious: Cyberattackers have the advantage over cyberdefenders, "with the trend likely getting worse over the next five years."
A closer examination of the record, however, reveals three factors that put the offense at a disadvantage. First is the high cost of developing a cyberweapon, in terms of time, talent, and target intelligence needed. Stuxnet, experts speculate, took a superb team and a lot of time. Second, the potential for generic offensive weapons may be far smaller than assumed for the same reasons, and significant investments in highly specific attack programs may be deployable only against a very limited target set. Third, once developed, an offensive tool is likely to have a far shorter half-life than the defensive measures put in place against it. Even worse, a weapon may only be able to strike a single time; once the exploits of a specialized piece of malware are discovered, the most critical systems will likely be patched and fixed quickly. And a weapon, even a potent one, is not much of a weapon if an attack cannot be repeated. Any political threat relies on the credible threat to attack or to replicate a successful attack. If that were in doubt, the coercive power of a cyberattack would be drastically reduced.

"We Need a Cyberarms Control Agreement."
We don't. Cyberwar alarmists want the United States to see cybersecurity as a new challenge on a geopolitical scale. They see cyberspace becoming a new area for military competition with rivals such as Russia and China, and they believe new cyberarms limitation agreements are needed to prevent this. There are some rumblings to establish international norms on this topic: The British government convened a conference in London in late 2011, originally intended to make the Internet more secure by agreeing on new rules of the road, and Russia and China proposed at the U.N. General Assembly last September the establishment of an "international code of conduct for information security." Now, diplomats are debating whether the United Nations should try to forge the equivalent of nuclear arms control in cyberspace.
So, should it? The answer is no. Attempts to limit cyberweapons through international agreements have three principal problems. The first difficulty is drawing the line between cybercrime and potentially political activity in cyberspace. In January, for instance, a Saudi hacker stole about 20,000 Israeli credit card numbers from a shopping website and leaked the information to the public. In retaliation, a group of Israeli hackers broke into Saudi shopping sites and threatened to release private credit card information.
Where is the dividing line? Even if it were possible to distinguish criminal from state-sponsored political activity, they often use the same means. A second hitch is practical: Verification would be impossible. Accurately counting the size of nuclear arsenals and monitoring enrichment activities is already a huge challenge; installing cameras to film programmers and "verify" they don't design malicious software is a pipe dream.
The third problem is political, and even more fundamental: Cyberaggressors may act politically, but in sharp contrast with warfare, they are likely to have a strong interest in avoiding attribution. Subversion has always thrived in cyberspace because preserving one's anonymity is easier to achieve than ironclad attribution. That's the root of the political problem: Having a few states agree on cyberarms limitation is about as realistic as a treaty to outlaw espionage and about as practical as outlawing the general subversion of established order.
"The West Is Falling Behind Russia and China."
Yes, but not how you think. Russia and China are busy sharpening their cyberweapons and are already well steeped in using them. The Russian military clandestinely crippled Estonia's economy in 2007 and Georgia's government and banks in 2008. The People's Liberation Army's numerous Chinese cyberwarriors have long inserted "logic bombs" and "trapdoors" into America's critical infrastructure, lying dormant and ready to wreak havoc on the country's grid and bourse in case of a crisis. Both countries have access to technology, cash, and talent -- and have more room for malicious maneuvers than law-abiding Western democracies poised to fight cyberwar with one hand tied behind their backs.
Or so the alarmists tell us. Reality looks quite different. Stuxnet, by far the most sophisticated cyberattack on record, was most likely a U.S.-Israeli operation. Yes, Russia and China have demonstrated significant skills in cyberespionage, but the fierceness of Eastern cyberwarriors and their coded weaponry is almost certainly overrated. When it comes to military-grade offensive attacks, America and Israel seem to be well ahead of the curve.
Ironically, it's a different kind of cybersecurity that Russia and China may be more worried about. Why is it that those countries, along with such beacons of liberal democracy as Uzbekistan, have suggested that the United Nations establish an "international code of conduct" for cybersecurity? Cyberespionage was elegantly ignored in the suggested wording for the convention, as virtual break-ins at the Pentagon and Google remain a favorite official and corporate pastime of both countries. But what Western democracies see as constitutionally protected free speech in cyberspace, Moscow and Beijing regard as a new threat to their ability to control their citizens. Cybersecurity has a broader meaning in non-democracies: For them, the worst-case scenario is not collapsing power plants, but collapsing political power.
The social media-fueled Arab Spring has provided dictators with a case study in the need to patrol cyberspace not only for subversive code, but also for subversive ideas. The fall of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi surely sent shivers down the spines of officials in Russia and China. No wonder the two countries asked for a code of conduct that helps combat activities that use communications technologies -- "including networks" (read: social networks) -- to undermine "political, economic and social stability."
So Russia and China are ahead of the United States, but mostly in defining cybersecurity as the fight against subversive behavior. This is the true cyberwar they are fighting.

Thomas Rid, reader in war studies at King's College London, is author of "Cyber War Will Not Take Place."