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Technology – Our Achilles' Heel By: Jim Josephsen
Shortly after emerging victorious in World War II, the primary focus for America was on the development of new technologies, facilitating ease of effort, simplifying daily tasks. With the development of technology, household tasks were made more manageable, less fatiguing. From air and ground transportation to the communications industry; healthcare to the practices within trade, banking and commerce, entertainment; farming and agriculture, to the devices requisite for urban living, where opportunity was found, technology was utilized, new products developed. Computerized IC chips enhanced thousands of products. The computer revolutionized productivity and business practices, providing efficiencies that would save money and boost profits.
The ingenuity and creative genius accomplished by the United States produced a radically new world. Much of America’s recent prosperity and jobs creation have been achieved on the shoulders of technology based industries. Many other leading industrial nations have followed suit, sharing the wealth.
Homes across America are now laden with gadgets and equipment, from phones to alarm clocks to digital scales, entertainment systems and appliances that are all technology based, computer driven. How many millions of homes utilize the Worldwide Web? How many millions of cell phones, Blackberries, I-pods, Apple I-phones are required possessions of the 30 and under generation? The overwhelming majority of kid’s toys today have some type of IC chip which operates them. You can not fill up your gas tank or shop at the store without some connection to computer technology. Today’s automobiles are operated by computer technology; many come equipped with GPS systems. Some of today’s cars actually have automated braking systems, preventing front end collisions. Some have automated parallel parking systems.
Practically every business in this country is somehow tied to the Internet, to computer technology, data software programs and communications equipment. In hospitals and medical offices across this country, the new reality and growing technology is that of a paperless medical records data collection system, with the use of wireless computers charting patients’ medical records. Patients’ implanted pacemakers rely on digital technology. Modern hospitals are fully equipped with computer servers and database programs, for the purpose of processing and recording all types of information, from the purchase of consumables to the behavior of personnel.
Businesses monitor the performance of its employees as readily as the movement of its product across the country and the world. Every competitive company utilizes the internet and e-commerce. The production of products, the tracking of consumer spending activity, of business sales and inventory movement is made effortlessly thanks to computer based technology. Our military and security related industries, police, fire, emergency response; Homeland Security could not function today without technology. Practically everything that runs on battery or electricity uses some type of computer based technology.
Ironically, the very products which have shaped America’s rise to immeasurable wealth over the past thirty years, all these technological necessities, all the electronic computer based devices and gadget, all the necessary software and internet related activities, all these which have made daily life and business practices so much easier, are now our Achilles' heel. How is that possible?
Today Internet-related activities are targeted, under more aggressive attacks then ever thought imaginable. Ever increasing, at the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, daily cyber attacks and on-line incursions are perpetrated against trustworthy, innocent personal and business internet and e-commerce activities.
As global and national economies sour, technology driven minds are fast becoming criminally oriented. Each day reports are aired, revealing increasing episodes of Cyber-crime, of internet incursions, fraud, terrorism and espionage. There is not a day goes by which finds yet another new “data-stealing malware.” This type of software is intended to steal proprietary information such as online banking credentials, personal bank accounts, credit card numbers, social security numbers and other bits of personal information in order to fuel an underground cyber crime economy which knows no geopolitical boundaries. What was designed to facilitate business transactions, making life easier, is daily sabotaged. Personal, on-line identity theft causes great stress, on individuals and collectively on society. On-line criminal activities devour already diminishing economic resources. These crimes simply do not help our crippling economy. Wasted time and financial loss are the results.
Wise King Solomon once wrote, “This only have I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Many intelligent minds, imbued with sharp insight, skills and creative genius, seek out craftiness, focusing on corruption and nefarious activities. Carnal man, possessing the potential for good, incessantly seeks out corruption and evils. No truer words could be spoken when it comes to the creativity of cyber criminals whose inventions result in misery for innocent people, costing businesses and the national economy untold billions.
But the aforementioned type of attack is of minuscule concern when compared to what lurks ahead. Constantly engaged in a cat and mouse game, computer hackers, professional and amateur, national and foreign, make strides to breach the American government’s sensitive computers. It is already known the United State’s Cyber-defense System doesn’t work as expected. The latest version of the system, called Einstein is still some 18 months behind full implementation. It is reported by the Department of Homeland Security, the number of breaches of government computers has doubled between 2006 and 2008.
More alarming are the reports that occasionally surface regarding computer driven utility power grids, water-filtration facilities, and emergency response systems being hacked into. It is believed many utility grids are susceptible and many may have already been breached, allowing that sometime in the future rogue hackers or foreign operatives need only engage in a few keyboard key strokes to set off calculated electrical disruption within the United States.
Still a threat of mind-boggling proportions lies in wait. It is well understood, although not highly publicized, how quickly electromagnetic pulse [EMP] emitted from gamma rays, a side effect of high altitude nuclear bomb detonation, can damage a nation’s technology, crippling its cyber infrastructure. The computer based technologies and electronic devices which have propelled the United States into greater ease of living; everything that runs businesses, transportation, law enforcement, communications equipment; everything from the family automobile, I-pods, I-Phones, cell phones to every type of personal communications device, home appliances and electronic systems; all would be affected, compromised, rendered useless.
The United States is vigilant, extremely concerned with the likes of North Korea, Iran, Russia and China; nations that have nuclear capabilities and ICBM weaponry which can be used to attack the United States. Such an attack would result in the demise of a society that is faithfully dependent on its technology. Society would go into hyper-shock convulsions, as its very way of life would be set back decades, if not centuries. Our nation’s food distribution, transportation and commerce, communication networks, medical and law enforcement infrastructures, our way of life, would come to a grinding halt. Those who have written about the possibility of EMP destruction estimate the loss of life in the months to follow easily surpassing tens of millions. This very possibility exists.
The Scriptures reveal there will occur a unique time in history called the tribulation, which will occur just prior to the return of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ prophesied that unless God intervenes, all life would be lost. “Except those days be shorten, there should no flesh be saved” (Matthew 24:22). The prophet Hosea foretold of the calamity to befall the end-time House of Israel, indicating that “a month shall devour them and their lands” (Hosea 5:5-7). Only in the 21st Century can we begin to comprehend the impact thrust upon a society if all computer based, technology driven equipment, appliances and devices were to instantaneously fail and be rendered useless.
Only now can we more thoroughly understand the calamities, the loss of life, the utter chaos the Bible reveals will occur to the nation that is blatantly disobedient to God and faithless in its worship of God. Knowing of the conditions in the United States of America today; utter dependence on vulnerable technology driven, computer based devices; a vulnerable cyber-based internet and infrastructure, enemy nations that seek our destruction and a Christian religion that is vain in its worship and disobedient to God’s words; it is not hard to understand what lies ahead.
Just how close is the United States to the day when, what the Scriptures predict will occur, will actually occur? You are living in perilous times, in which the push of a button, the click of a mouse can change your world forever. Perhaps before it is too late, you can heed the words of Jesus Christ. “Be careful or your hearts will be weighted down with excess and anxieties of life, for the day will close in upon you unawares. For it will come, like a trap, upon all those who live on the face of the earth. Be always on the watch and pray always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all that is about to happen and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36).
Now is the time for you to take a good hard look at this country and the potentials that exist. Now is the time to start looking at your life. Are you living acceptably before God?
As you have now been made aware of what is happening and what will occur in the years ahead, it is time to humble yourself before God, to be faithful and obedient to Him. Pray that you may be accounted worthy to escape the monumental events just ahead of us, as God can protect you from the calamities ahead. Repent and pray always that you are secure in salvation, being accounted worthy to stand before the Son of Man.
Destruction is ahead of us in this United States of America. But you
don’t have to be “afraid for the terror by night nor the arrow that
flieth by day” (Psalm 91:1-16) if you humble yourself under
the Mighty arms of Jesus Christ and start being obedient to Him. |
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