Today marks the 69^th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  In addition to taking a moment to remember those soldiers who lost their lives on that “infamous” day, I was thinking about how technology has changed over that time, as well as the threats we face today and our responses to them.

By 1941 technology had been moving at a breakneck pace, and as is often the case, war was the driving force. At the beginning of World War I, planes were in their infancy. By the start of World War II, they were changing the course of combat. To counter the impact of enemy planes, Radar was being tested in various places during the Second World War, and it turned out to be a major factor in winning the Battle of Britain.  In December 1941 the United States had just started using Radar. In fact, the first operational Radar system in the United States had recently been installed in Oahu. Unfortunately, it was not yet fully incorporated into the air defense system, so there was no way to effectively assess the information or pass it on to command. As we all know, having the right technology in place does not make a difference if you don’t have the right training or the ability to use the data effectively.

On the other end World War II we have the first use of nuclear weapons, and that quickly ended the war with Japan that began four years earlier. It amazes me to think that in the course of 40 years we went from the first flight of an airplane that barely left the ground, to an airplane that delivered a 10,000-pound bomb capable of leveling a city.

Today, even though there are most likely nine nuclear states in world, we probably don’t need to worry about a plane delivering a 10,000-pound bomb. We have sufficient technology in place to detect and deter an attack from a state enemy. We need to worry about a terrorist group seeking to create a weapon, or more likely seeking one from unsecured stockpiles. We need to worry about briefcase-sized bombs that can be carried over an unsecured border. We need to worry about states who support terrorism acquiring nuclear weapons.

I was reading a fascinating story the other day about the Stuxnet worm, which apparently crippled Iran’s nuclear program—at least for a time. The worm is an engineering marvel, designed to infiltrate the Iranian program and attack the operating systems of the specific equipment used in the plant. This was not something developed by your garden-variety hacker. It seems that the technology race goes on, and the Internet is now part of the battlefield.