What is a Hacker?

Hackers are often kids who might grow up to work in computer security or become computer Programmers just like hoodlums often grow up to become police officers if they don't kill anyone in the process of growing up.

So, a hacker has an attitude usually in some ways it is the same kind of macho that a police officer has.

But, a hacker is somewhat different than a hoodlum or police officer in that instead of feeling physically immortal they feel like they "Know Everything" at least about computers. So, this is part of the profile of a hacker. So, "I'm smarter than you are!" is the byword of a hacker.

And just like police officers share their "War stories" hackers share with other hackers their successes at hacking whatever they are hacking worldwide.

And there are different types of hackers depending upon their needs and their individual psychologies. For example, a rich smart hacker doesn't need money. A rich smart young hacker wants kudos from other hackers for being successful hacking something. So, often these are some of the best hackers because often they have both the time and the equipment to learn the most about hacking. And often they wind up making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year working for a prestigious computer security firm if they are smart and don't go to jail first.

Then there are the needy hackers who need money and so they are going to find a way to make money hacking.

Then there are the hackers who countries hire like China and Russia to hack countries like the United States, and this tends to be like a very organized military operation.

Their purpose often (likely in the case of China and Russia) would be to plan an attack that permanently takes down the U.S. and so electronically at least turns it into Somalia for several months or years. This would be a way to cause the complete economic collapse of the U.S. which might make the U.S. vulnerable to a military attack too, (or just to destroy the U.S. economically so other countries like China or Russia or both could take over the whole world to make it a complete dictatorship and therefore because the U.S. would be so weak would no longer be a threat economically or militarily to the world within a few years.

In the end the damage done by a fully organized cyber attack over several years and being nuked wouldn't be much different because either way economically the U.S. would be over for months or years because of how dependent we have become as a nation on computers and software and robots for everything. it would likely take about 1 1/2 billion people to replace what computers and software do for us every day here in the U.S. So, imagine the U.S. without those 1 1/2 billion extra people in the form of computers and software? It would be either a temporary or permanent end to the U.S. as we presently know it. Even if we installed new and better computers and software within months or years, still many businesses (even big ones would already be bankrupt after just a few months of not being functional) nationwide. And this would have extreme affects on nations who are trading partners with the U.S. too including China.