The topic I’ve chosen to cover is Plato’s Ring of Gyges, more specifically the moral
philosophy of acting without consequences, with a focus on today’s cyber security and cyber
warfare, more specifically, the attack on Iran’s nuclear reactors also known as Stuxnet.
This topic interest me because it has to do with my career (cyber security) and my love for
Platonic philosophy. Also, because considering the amount of cyber attacks by nation states,
there is little moral philosophy associated with it.
In the Republic, Plato states:
For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the
individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say
that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of
becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's,
he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although
they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one
another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.
Should we condone or condemn cyber warfare? Plato says we should condone it that we
would be “wretched idiots” if we did not use the power we had. In this case, the power to surveil
individuals, foreign countries, and enemies both domestic and abroad, without anyone finding
out. In this case, I happen to agree with Plato due to the fact that we live in a world where every
industrialize nation has their Ring of Gyges.
But the questions that one must ask is: who watches us and should moral actions be detached from consequences?
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