Cyber Wars...the Punishment Due

If you had to guess one high tech thing you were almost certain the Pentagon was already doing, it would be working to protect government, stock exchange, and air traffic computer systems with a elite squad of hackers and nerds, right? I mean Michael Bay thought to have it in the first Transformers movie. Surely our government is smarter than Michael Bay. Nope. But they are finally getting to it. The Pentagon is finally making steps towards weaponizing and militarizing Geek Squad.

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.
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Mr. Obama, officials said, will announce the creation of a White House office — reporting to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council — that will coordinate a multibillion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system.

White House officials say Mr. Obama has not yet been formally presented with the Pentagon plan. They said he would not discuss it Friday when he announced the creation of a White House office responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States — largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments — every day.

This is a tricky issue. Will this enable Skynet or can it be used to fight Skynet? I guess we'll never find out until the bombs start dropping.

But you will also be grateful to know that our government's deranged perversion about putting someone in control of something and then calling them "_______czar" is still intact. The man who'll run the militarized Dell Support Center will be given the title Cyberczar. If that title gave you an idea for a movie about a Putin-esque despot who, through some electrical accident that happens while he's touching his computer, is transported into the intarwubs, and an elite squad of Ukranian hackers has to do battle with him for control of cyberspace, well then you can just fuck right off, because I already thought of it and patented the idea.

Still, better late then never. I mean it's not like China has been launching cyberattacks on us for years, is it?