Be Careful What You Wish For

The big advantage of open internet protocols is that a lot of smart people can tinker all the time with the system. But if you set up a closed, supposedly secure system you'll create something like Windows hopped up on steroids. Totally vulnerable. If I were feeling perverse I'd hope that Gen. Alexander gets his way — teach the guy a hard lesson — except that the results in busted public utilities, havoc in critical data bases, and who knows what assorted crashes, would directly affect me. So, no, having a separate, government secured internet is not a good idea. What's even worse is that a bunch of official goofballs, somewhere, also seem to think it's productive to play around with cyberwarfare. Surely that won't turn out very well, either. I predict that if and when we get into a serious exchange of hacks our military establishment will be shocked to discover how vulnerable it really is.