Apparently the Pentagon is working on plans that will categorize hacker attacks on key US systems as acts of war, meaning future US presidents could impose economic sanctions or send in the military to invade whoever cyber-threatens ‘Merica.
“We reserve the right to use all necessary means – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic – as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests.”
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”
When you think about it, this kind of makes sense. There are so many crucial, unsecured networks out there that they’ve got to do something to deter people/nations from trying to mess with them. But at the same time it’s rather hypocritical of the United States to do this after being accused of using cyber warfare against other nations themselves (hint: Iran, Stuxnet). Guess being a military superpower has its perks though – you get to make the rules.
