anything is an excuse to go to war. since when did they need to specify?

It's utterly reasonable, although it's going to be exceptionally difficult to separate government actions from those of civilians. Who wants to bet that this will, sooner or later, be used as an excuse for invasion?

Things that America does don't count though, right?

So if a citizen of China, Russia, or Zimbabwe originates a successful (or even mildly irritating) attack against the US government, they will see it as an act of war?
I didn't read TFA, but looks like them terrists can spark a war by simply hacking via *name your country here* proxy.

Let's say that isn't even the case, does the Pentagon think that an international cyber attack is going to just come from an address registered to chinacyberwardivision.cn?

This seems shaky at best to declare war on phantoms... th

Spam is a problem. All these malware infections too. And it is often next to impossible to trace the real origins of these attacks. Are we preparing to lock down the internet to fight a nebulous foe? "War on Cyber-terrorism?" Funny that the government doesn't seem interested in regulating the money trail these scammers and malware pushers use.

" how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. ."

How is this any different from the current situation? The US went to war in Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts. The Bush administration ginned up the supposed threat that Iraq would have nuclear weapons in a very short time and we had to act NOW! Are we to start a war because we think that a hacking attack is immanent?

Since the Pentagon has such an expanded idea of "war," it's great to know that only Congress can declare war.

Oh, wait . . . .

Hey, if China want to turn a blind eye to their 'patriotic hackers' and let them run riot, rather than doing the sensible thing, like keeping their powder dry, then let them. The West will ultimately benefit. We benefit from hardened systems and security practices, and push comes to shove, we'll be in much better shape. As it is, amateur Western hackers are learning Mandarin and running riot through Chinese systems. They are as vulnerable as hell.

I think the threat from China is overhyped. It's typically Ch

...but I find this kind of hard to take seriously, kind of like when the US government declared cryptography to be a form of munitions and imposed the same export controls.

Here's what I don't get: If someone maliciously attacks a physical base, fine. You can't lock down physical things entirely -- there's always the possibility of an inside man, or, say, a nuke. But these sorts of things, we already have ways of dealing with.

However, if someone can carry out a successful "cyberattack" from their home countr

is not to play.

US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.

“I don’t think you take anything off the table. We’re particularly looking toward one group in Seattle [newstechnica.com].”

The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or in

Isn't Echelon a permanent cyber-attack ?

What about that virus in the Iran nuclear program ?

That should be the question. If it's state supported, then aggressive acts against the US should leave the option of reprisal, be they physical or virtual. However, as often is the case, the power of the state is waning and more often homeless smaller groups are posing as the real threat. You can declare war on drugs or Al Qaeda or other non-state elements all you like, but all it really amounts to is a way to justify to your people that you're cutting their resources/services to go after something with

1. They are making a case for more funding to combat "cyberterrorism".

2. To a hammer everything looks like a nail. To the Pentagon everything look like war.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all.

Because that means we performed an act of war against Iran with the release of that Virus...

When you open a box, it's not a one way street... Your enemies get to use your excuses as well.

"If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a 'use of force' consideration, which could merit retaliation."

So just hacking into a system would NOT merit an armed response. Might merit a retaliation in kind, however.

Also, not all cyber-attacks would be over the internet. Not all systems that are networked are reachable over the internet. The internet itself runs over other networks, but

Think more deeply for a moment. The meat of this issue is not that the US is suddenly comfortable with bombing somebody's router when it threatens their power grid -- every country whose infrastructure is worth protecting already has this in their contingency plans. The real news is that the US is SAYING it and making it explicitly clear.

For those of you who still think in terms of moralities in geopolitics, I don't know what to tell you except grow up -- realpolitik defines the world beyond your Matrix-lik

Dear Representative:

We should not go to war over a cyber crime that does not cost the lives of American Citizens. We should not go to war over drugs, we should not go to war over oil prices, we should not go to war over a conflict that is unlikely to cost American lives. We are not the world police, we do not have a morally superior nation, our way is not the only correct way.

We should go to war to save American lives. Including the lives of our soldiers. I understand that it is not always easy to deter