Assets

It's not a given that the Crisis is about Data Wars, and even less clear how something like that could really be the sort of event that people will be reverently honoring 80 years from now. Really, how valuable is data, really, and who would fight over it or because of it?

One way that might make sense is as a new Cold War  - cold as in without bullets or explosions. But by acting in secret, releasing data people believe secure, and acting on said data in other ways, you can affect policy and possibly demand terms. 

If someone could credibly attack and hold on to critical assets, they are engaging in warfare   We should be calling it cyberwar, though, if the assets are systems - it's only data wars if, well, it's about the data.  

Which means Sony's capitulation seems more of a cyberwar - unless it turns out specfic data was the key to forcing the issue. Which seems unlikely. It is worth noting that ,as an overall terrorist threat,  they gained credibility due to their other successes. 

At some point data would seem to be a subset of cyber. Still what on the data side alone would be more than intelligence and approach actual attacks? We have seen some of that so far - where's the line?