From the Figurative to the Literal

As recently as this past January, I was using the phrase "arms race" with respect to malware in the metaphorical sense that Udi Manber had originally intended. However, a special report for Reuters by Joseph Menn, which was released last Friday, throws a new light on the current state of play in cyberwarfare. The development of malware has now become a literal arms race. Unfortunately, while the original arms race of the Cold War involved a "coevolutionary" link between two parties, the United States and the Soviet Union, the "ecology" of malware development has become far more complex, perhaps to the point that no one has any reliable estimate of just how many "runners" are participating in a race that, for all intents and purposes, is no longer purely metaphorical.