Just today it is widely reported the Pentagon is setting a new policy that cyber attacks can be considered acts of war which lets the Pentagon retaliate with conventional weapons. Hack my email, get an ICBM.
I saw this a few days ago. I believe that if another country hacked the US and took top secret data, it could potentially cause as much damage as a conventional weapon. So, using conventional weapons in retaliation for cyber-attacks doesn't seem that far fetched.
We are definitely in an interesting time with regards to technology and policy. Both exciting and scary.
I would not be surprised if the United States got a specialized "Cyber Force" branch of the military sooner rather than later to go along with Army, Navy, and Air. There are apparently already papers about it like this one from 2008:
Granted, that niche is somewhat filled by the NSA, but it is not a branch of the military per se. And increasingly cyberspace will be as important or more so than land, sea, and air.
The problem is any formal "Cyber Force" announcement will kick off the 21st Century arms race. But forming a Cyber Force in secret will severely limit effectiveness. I think we're about at the tipping point when the United States sees a hacker battalion here and there as not enough. It needs strong hacker branch.
The problem is attribution. Imagine if all an Al-Qaeda hacker had to do to start a major war was to compromise a Chinese computer and use it to attack a sufficiently sensitive US military target.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13614125
Just today it is widely reported the Pentagon is setting a new policy that cyber attacks can be considered acts of war which lets the Pentagon retaliate with conventional weapons. Hack my email, get an ICBM.